[tor-talk] Google as default search engine revisited

[Maxim Kammerer]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 22:24, Sebastian Hahn <mail at sebastianhahn.net> wrote:
>> 1. Why is Google the default search engine in the TOR browser bundle?
> Because it's the default search engine in Firefox

The reason Google is the default search engine in Firefox is that
Firefox gets money from Google for putting it as the default search
engine and start page in the Firefox package:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Financing.

However, by keeping that setting you are compromising the privacy of
the users, since, for instance, Google tracks clicks on the returned
results (it uses redirecting links). DuckDuckGo does that as well. As
far as I am able to tell, ixquick doesn't do that — at least, I don't
see redirects (but there could be other means of tracking employed,
e.g., via Javascript).

-- 
Maxim Kammerer
Liberté Linux (discussion / support: http://dee.su/liberte-contribute)