Along these lines I have already removed Google from my broswer search engines. I have StartPage installed now, and while I'll leave it to my betters to compare the merits of them vs Duck Duck Go, the point is that because I spend all day at work logged into Gmail, they can't get much out of my occasional youtube searches.

How about peer-to-peer search engine ?  http://yacy.net/en/ ;

Maybe, I have a junk connection, gimme an hour to download it, look at it, etc.

the future of the web is tracking.. no doubt about it. google is just getting or leading with the trends.. if you don't like it don't use google. that's all.