Unless you live under one of the few remaining rocks with no Internet service, you know Ask has been on a major campaign to cut into Google's home front - search. While this is mostly a comical footnote with wonderful visuals, it may have just become a David v. Googliath (I'm copyrighting that phrase btw) tale. Ask has announced AskEraser - a method to control what information the search engine collects about your searches. You'll be able to see on a search results page the privacy level of that search, and if you wish, have no information about your search logged.
This comes on the heels of Google's announcement that it will expire cookies after two years (only if you never visit a Google site in those two years). It's hard to say Google threw much of a bone to privacy advocates, but it's clear Ask is serving up a steak dinner. It will be interesting to see Google's response; the Do No Evil Empire (also, copyright) is funded mostly with ads that target themselves based on your search history.
Is this enough to make you switch? I went ahead and put Ask as my default search in FireFox even though AskEraser is not online yet. I've become very used to Google over the last few years, so I'll give myself a few weeks of breaking the addiction before deciding if I like Ask. After all, there was a time I couldn't imagine leaving Yahoo.
