http://www.google.com/intl/en/images/logo.gif

Google is viewed by most people as the ulitmate search engine or their homepage. However there are some things that are not so great about Google like search logging and other privacy issues.

I will start with the good stuff. Well Google is the best search engine out there it has the best results and for the most part you will find what you are looking for. Google is also a strong supporter of opensource technology like firefox one of the most advanced browsers out there.
http://mozilla.org.tr/firefox.jpg They also have their summer of code and support other projects. They have come out with products like Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Earth and have released the api's for some of them allowing people to create many cool modifications. They are also strong opposition to Net Neutrality

Now some not so good stuff. Google might be the fastest and most reliable search engine but it is not the most featureful. Sites like www.ask.com have implemented preview features that allow you to see the site before you goto it this can only be accomplished in Google if you have the right firefox extensions (Google Preview which uses alexa and CoolIris which works on any link). Another thing is most of their products never come out of beta. For example so many people use Gmail and they are just now releasing it out of beta for certain areas. Staying on the Gmail theme I dont know about everyone but for me I get about 10 to 50 spam emails that dont get caught by the flter a day and if im gone for say a week my inbox is jam packed with junk.

Now all that stuff most people can live with, but here is something that is kind of scary. Google has the ability to log whatever search you are doing so if someone abuses this it could be bad for everyone. Now I have recently found an article on how to solve this. First you need to be using Mozilla Firefox. There is an extension for Firefox called FoxyProxy that you will need. Then you need a proxy server running for this I am using TOR (the onion router) to achieve this.
1. install TOR and have that running leave everything default.
2. then install foxyproxy and you can leave most setting default but you need to add some listings.
3.you need to add two whitelist patternst to the foxyproxy configuration that will look like this:
http://*.google.com/*
http://google.com/

Now you have installed a proxy server which in a normal case would severly slow your internet connection, but since you set it to only use the proxy server on google (and whatever other sites you add) you will be anonymous there and can surf the rest of the web just as fast. Now here is the second part of this little tutorial. Google logs your searches through a cookie that it sets for 2038. So you need to go into your firefox settings and change your cookie settings to "until I close Firefox". To edit the settings goto Tools/Options/Privacy/Cookies and select the option from the drop down menu.

Hope this was insigtful and I would like to cite the originating article
http://www.freenet.org.nz/misc/google-privacy.html for the privacy tips.