Scroogle, the Good Librarian

Have you heard about Scroogle (www.scroogle.org)? Created by a guy named Daniel Brandt who dislikes (or distrusts) Google, Scroogle allows you to search without leaving a convenient pile of information revealing all of your interests to anyone who cares to look.

Basically, Scroogle sends your searches to Google, but doesn't give Google the "cookie" it needs to track your results, and then returns the search results to you. Scroogle then deletes its logs within 48 hours.

Kind of like a good librarian -- Scroogle never reveals what people are reading or looking up.

Now, I like Google as much as the next person, but imagine if your librarian was keeping track of everything you looked up, and then sent you ads fitted to your past library activity. And also had those files sitting around just waiting for the government to come by with a Patriot Act-inspired crowbar to extract them. Brrrrrr. I feel a chill.