DuckDuckGo is a search engine that is much less well-known than Google, but you should check it out. As the title of this article indicates, DuckDuckGo is a privacy-friendly alternative to Google. 

I started to use DuckDuckGo instead of Google about a year ago after reading an NY Times article which indicates that DuckDuckGo doesn’t track its users and it doesn’t alter web search results based on previous web searches, a process called filter bubbling. DuckDuckGo is an upstart company, but it’s growing rapidly. You can get an overview of DuckDuckGo from their own timeline or this Wikipedia article. I like the quality of the search results that I get from DuckDuckGo so I continue to use it. I use Safari as my primary web browser and it doesn’t offer DuckDuckGo as one of the possible search engines. Instead, I set www.duckduckgo.com as my Safari homepage. Here are instructions from Apple about how to set one’s homepage in Safari. Check out DuckDuckGo and see if you like it.

[Update October 2014: Starting with Safari version 7.1, DuckDuckGo is now available as one of the default search engines you can choose in the Safari Preferences.]