Guess there are still a few alternatives available.

https://startpage.com/
https://duckduckgo.com/

Or, you could use a free proxy and search Google directly.

http://www.xroxy.com/
http://www.proxyblind.org/

I was thinking that a browser add-on that only uses the proxy when searching might be a good idea. Anyone know of such an animal?

I can assume this is illegal? not scroogle but that Google is throttling them and the ddos? never really thought about hiding from Google as doing on an android is difficult.

With Firefox you don't actually need a plug-in if you configure your proxies manually in the Connection Settings dialog of the Network tab in the Advanced section of your Preferences. There is a Firefox plug-in which assists in this configuration.

More generally, the Electronic Frontier Foundation -- our perennial defenders of freedom and privacy in the digital realm -- has some advice on maximizing your Internet privacy in their article "Six Tips to Protect Your Search Privacy" and with a follow up article covering the Google policy changes.

I use IXQuick for protective searches, otherwise I just use Yahoo since I refused to do anything Google (unless I have no choice when certain websites I frequent use that engine) for nearly forever and my gut back then turned out to be correct. You can control privacy settings at the site. My ex-boss lead me to this cool site several years ago and I've been quite happy with it.

https://www.ixquick.com/

I would imagine that to be the case. We learned last year about the iPhone's hidden location logging and "call home" functions.

Yes, the two bottom links I provided contain lists of free proxies that would normally need to be configured manually via the connections tab. I've played around with FoxyProxy in the past and it did allow me to flip between several proxies rather easily. I was thinking more along the lines of a simple plug-in that gives me a proxy based Google search bar.

Can you configure FoxyProxy to only use a proxy on a specific list of websites? That would do the job.

lxquick is a good online option. It's tied into startpage.com and a search there allows you to visit a returned site using lxquick with a single click. Seems Yahoo!, Bing and MSN all return the exact same results. I do understand your concerns with Google but they do know how to index the web, in a comprehensive way.

I've never used FoxyProxy, and I've only used the manual proxy functionality of Firefox for one site (I'm not even sure I did it right).

I like Google's search engine, but I've never used any Google offering that requires registration (same for sites such as Facebook, Youtube, andTwitter that are focused on the gathering and sharing of personal data).

The DDOS is most likely illegal. Google can throttle anyone accessing their service.

I wrote a script to pull data from Google search results and ended up getting blocked for TOS violation. I signed up for a developer API key and was able to get much higher query volume, but they still would throttle after a certain number of hits per day, as per their policy, to prevent folks from "redistributing" Google's search results without Google getting "payment".

-Rob A>

I'm not too paranoid. I've disabled long-term proxies in my browser (except for a happy few, such as GC). I don't believe much in the future of IP tracking. A lot of my searches are done at/for work and are drowned in other requests from my colleagues, and even at home, my small household of 4 has 9 devices (including a family PC is shared among us 4) that can use Google and this could go up to 12 before year end.

Furthermore, my ISP as well as other French ISPs, use my router as a public-access wifi(*). So I can disconnect from my wifi and reconnect as a roaming user and I'll get a different address.

The randomness of the ads I get tell me that Google hasn't cornered me down yet

(*) it is shared between customers of that ISP. This let's me connect to the internet using someone else's wifi about anywhere in France (I have to provide an id for this). Bandwidth is limited of course (64kbits) to not impact the customer who is "lending" the router.

I do find these heavy chains and perfectly tailored ads a bit more worrisome at this point

Search.com that's me!
I only use Google for translate.

Curious... I looked up the location of my IP address. It looks like it is the phone company's hosting hub for the region -- it's about 50 miles from where I live. Not exactly on my doorstep. And that address does occasionally change. When I did a speed test, it had me located in Minnesota. Google never has the right region for their ads when I do a search. And a few other services had me located a hundred miles away in a different direction.

Do I need to worry?