I want to look up Aairn. OK maybe the guy is dumb for spelling his name like this, but I don’t want Aaron, Erin or anything else, you keep throwing at me.
I don’t want to sign in to search, I want it like it used to be, where I could put in a word and have 10 or 20 relevant sites come up in 2 seconds.
</rant>
Google is not the only search engine.
http://www.duckduckgo.com for example.
I wish that whenever they do the “Did you mean ___________?” thing, they’d have a button next to it labeled, “No, dammit!”.
Blame the Google autocompleter. 
Google just got FAR to pushy for me:
Associated Press Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Google to merge user data across more services
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/01/24/national/a133833S65.DTL
Google and Ebay both have become too interfering with searches. Amazon gives the alternate option below so it just an option.
I think it’s getting a bit creepy; I may be cancelling or at least abandoning) my gmail accounts. Google and its associated products are getting too facebooky for my taste.
Although, I don’t at all mind the google auto-correct feature. I’m a sloppy typist and misspell search terms often.
I’ve resisted getting an email account from any of the search engines, because it was pretty obvious that this was coming. Google would be dumb if they didn’t combine all the different ways that we give them data.
This is also one of the reasons I’ve resisted using Chrome. “We know what you search on (Google), we know who you email (GMail), we know what you watch (Youtube), and we know where you surf (Chrome).”
Unfortunately, I predict that in 10 years or so, I won’t be able to avoid having all of that information in one place. I fear that Mark Zuckerberg is going to win this one.
Put quotes around your search terms and you’ll always get results for what you entered. Or you could, you know, click the link at the very top of the page that says “Search instead for [your original terms]”.
Here’s the thing which you’re apparently oblivious to: people are sloppy as shit at typing and at most things in general, so 99 times out of 100 the suggested search actually is what they meant to search for. I can only imagine what a terrible burden it must be being so perfect and meticulous that you never make a typo. You must lead a very difficult life indeed.
They used to put the “did you mean _______?” as an optional clickable link below the results for what you actually typed. I wish it was still optional, instead of mandatory. They could at least make this a configurable option. I have gmail, so I’m pretty much constantly logged in to my google account anyway.
I also wish they didn’t remove my lovely + operand 
Re: the bolded bit. Is that missing from some people search engines or something? I often have to look for very unusual words, so Google often corrects me in a way which is slightly annoying (it’s a bit patronising), but I understand why they do it and all it means is I have to click one extra time.
I seldom use Google. When it first came out it looked to like a highly hyped run of the mill search engine with a stupid, silly name. It seems those most into the net can’t see through hype and love sillynames.
I mostly use Good Search, Yahoo based and it gives a pitanance to a charity of your choice. Now and then if it doesn’t give me good results, I try Google and usually get the same trashy kook sites. I am really sick of having to pick through everything on the net to find a little real information amoung all the agenda driven balderdash.
Try switching to Ixquick.com. They seem to be pretty standard, and advertise that they are the most private of any of the search engines. Have used them for over a year with no complaint.
Forgot to mention - I totally agree with the OP about Google. I’ve gotten so irritated with Google that I’ve tried to scrub all vestiges of it from my computer, with alas not much success. They seem to be worse than a virus when it comes to getting rid of them.
Hey, thanks for the recommendation. I really like the privacy policy they advertise.
I think it’s great that google is streamlining their privacy policy across all of its services. And google’s uncanny awareness of the things I’m looking to buy is helpful too. A few months ago I was searching in vain for something - I forget what - and was pleasantly surprised when I opened up gmail the next day to see ads along the right pane for exactly the thing I couldn’t seem to find the other day. I felt like google’s spiders had been busy all night long looking for the stuff I couldn’t find, and presented it to me upon my next sign-in. I think it was one of the few times I actually completed a purchase by clicking on an ad.
I also want more single sign-on. I like being able to jump over to you tube without having to sign in. For some reason I always used to fat-finger my credentials while signing into you tube from a tablet. But no more. The “sign in with your Facebook ID” that a lot of sites are doing now is great too, and it’s pretty much the same thing, allowing the site to access your FB identity and information.
More service optimization, please.
Another good search engine is altavista.com I used them for several years in the late 90’s before I became aware of Google.
Google is getting pretty creepy with their data spying. I’ve started doing searches on my old search engine. A lot of times I find what I want without Google.
Yeah, everybody used Altavista before Google came along, but it has not been an independent search engine for a long, long time. These days it is just an alternative front end for Yahoo (and, IIRC, Yahoo search is now really Bing).
When it started, Google was way better than Altavista or any of the plethora of other rival search engines that existed back then. Unfortunately it used that lead to push (or buy) all its serious rivals (except Bing, who are massively subsidized by Microsoft) out of business, and, now it has an effective near monopoly, has, in the last few years, turned to the dark side.
I never thought I would live to see the day when Microsoft would come to look like the good guys! 
I don’t get it, Aairn returns hits for Aairn. There’s a DYM for Aarin, which can be safely ignored.
More troublesome is the 2nd hit for Paul Vander Haar. Quoting it fixes it, but the system that outranks it over the rest of the results is a little rubbery.
I really don’t think you have, yet.
Have you people who are weary of Google’s privacy policies actually read them and availed yourselves of the rather straightforward Google Dashboard, Ad Preferences Manager, and their other extensive privacy tools?