Looks like I'll dump Google now.
link Use
Ixquick. It is a metasearch engine (searches Google, and Bing, and Yahoo, and Dogpile... and bunch of others.
1) You will not be at the mercy of any single search engine (many of whom make their money buy charging companies to put them near the top of the list of hits).
2) ixquick anonymizes your searches and does not even record your IP address, so you have much better privacy
There even a nice Firefox add in.
John