Private Search Engine from TopClick

TopClick announced today the launch of what they're calling their "Private Search Engine" service. The engine is built around the following promises (from the press release):

1. No unsolicited banner advertising will appear in the search results (customers will be protected from the profile-building activities that many of the leading banner advertising companies undertake through the delivery of advertisements on public websites

2. No cookies or other invasive 'persistent identifier' technologies will be used at the site, (customers will be safe and free from the external development of personal profiles from their search requests at TopClick), and

3. No personal information will ever be sold or shared with third-party Internet marketing companies or direct mail/email businesses.

I don't know how large the engine is, but searching for "hydrocephalus" found approx 11500 results, which --- ooooh. Which is the exact same number found at Google. And the first five results for the two engines match exactly. And I got the same matching results searching for +"market segment" +iron +pipes . So are they built out of the same index? A couple of differences: TopClick doesn't have GoogleScout or the cache, and if you run a search on Google that brings up one of those blue text ads (a search like online music) you won't get that same blue ad in TopClick. You can see it for yourself at http://www.topclick.com . If you're interested in the idea of online privacy you might want to keep an eye on the TopClick Privacy Center, which is a clearinghouse of news and information on online privacy. That's at http://www.topclick.com/pc_main.h tml.

Posted to Search Engines-Various