I have been a longtime fan of the metasearch engine Searx. It would be my preferred go-to for a web search, having tried many other privacy-oriented search engines [the next best of which I would say is the privacy respecting Dutch indexer StartPage].

img

: Searx running on linux.

What exactly is a metasearch engine?

It is a search engine that aggregates results from other engines, such as Google or DuckDuckGo, but unlike other 'botnet' engines, searx does not incorporate logging, tracking, cookies or any other methods of user profiling.

There are many so-called "private" search engines, the problem being with most of them is that they are proprietary, they are sitting on some privately hosted server or by a private entity or company and their code is not open-source for scrutiny.

Why should we care about privacy online?

Edward Snowden:

Ultimately, saying that you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.

Searx can be self-hosted, a project I have not gotten around to yet. The kubricks privacy project are one such publicly hosted Searx engine, a project aiming to empower people to reclaim their privacy. 

img

: Publicly available searx instances

There are also many other public nodes available, so there is ample opportunity to pick and choose a domain of your liking for any web searches, should you wish to take back a little bit of your privacy, or... stick with a Google search if privacy is not your thing.

Searx may not give the level of results that Google offers, but at the same time it won't build a "profile" of you, it won't share your search history with 3rd parties and of course, most importantly, it's open source.