[say_]

I have a probably dumb question about search privacy, but what are the chances of Google actually screwing up/getting hacked, and spilling our search histories into the public (like AOL from a few years ago)?

DDG's search results are fine, but I like Google just a little bit more. Assuming I don't care about the government or Google's advertising algorithms, and I just don't want my private thoughts/questions spilling out into the public, does the risk make it worth using DDG?

[docgnome]

Well, it's sort of a hard question to answer. But Google has been hacked in the past. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/operation-aurora/

I think the creepier (and more likely) problem is an Evil Googler. http://gawker.com/#!5637234

Not that that is a problem that just Google has, but given that Gabriel really has no way at all to link two searches together, let alone build a profile, makes it attractive to me.

I also seem to be one of the few people who actually finds that DDG returns much better results. All the people I've talked to irl seem to think the opposite. Wonder if that is a placebo effect of sorts on my part ("DDG is one, pretty cool guy so of course it's better than giant corperation!") or what.