"Google doesn't track you. Your browser sends a referer header..." that's missing the forest for the trees, i think. while it's true that the browser is what

"Google doesn't track you. Your browser sends a referer header..." that's missing the forest for the trees, i think. while it's true that the browser is what sends the referrer, Google has some say in 1) what the referrer is (ie, what url is sent as the referrer) 2) and what Google itself does with that information once they (Google) have received it. Google could have a stated policy of discarding or anonymizing referrer data. to my knowledge, they do not (i will gladly be corrected on this). they could also structure their results pages urls in such a way that the search terms are not sent as part of the referrer. for the record, i think that Gabriel has seriously messed up here. i think he's approached this issue in entirely the wrong way, that he is going to lose a lot of good will over it. however, that Gabriel has done something foolish does not detract from the technical merits of either his search engine, or his argument with regards to search leakage. either they're sound, or they're not. i don't use duckduckgo (yet?). but his argument with regards to search leakage seems to be sound, even if his ad campaign is not.