I hope you also avoid using google chrome, and emailing anyone with a gmail account or email serviced by google. Along with that, I hope you avoid any and all websites that have their search powered by google (like Yahoo). And if you are worried about tracking, I'd be more concerned with Facebook, who tracks you through the like button on various sites. On top of all that, I'd be wary of who you buy your internet service from. Hopefully it's not one of the providers that many people know of, because they all are pretty much logging data. And be sure you don't connect to any site/computer/network that does, because otherwise your data will be transferred through there and logged. Worrying about google tracking your searches is about as silly as avoiding the internet entirely because ISPs log network traffic. If anything, I'd rather it be google than say Microsoft.
^^^ I forget what this is called, but basically you're saying "what you're doing is just a drop in the ocean, so why bother?" Or, worded differently, If you can't do everything, why do anything? I said I was "too invested" in my gmail, but that's not the whole picture. I also, rightly or wrongly, have the opinion that my data inside my email is relatively safe without a warrant. That also being said, I'm not ashamed or concerned about any of my activity (though yesterday I was defending the rights of muslim women to wear a Niqab if they chose, so I'm probably on a list somewhere now). My actions are less influenced by the concept of broad privacy and more the concept of encouraging what I perceive to be good business practices and discouraging what i perceive to be bad business practices, as much as one person can. I do my best to be a fickle online consumer.
Yea. I'm all for privacy, but explicitly avoiding google services because you are concerned about privacy is ridiculous. Considering there's so many other problems, and google isn't really all that evil about it. They just use it for statistics and relevant ads. Honestly, the day that google will automatically know what music, movies, and video games I like (and will suggest them to me) is a day I look forward to. I have to go out of my way in order to find things I like. Having google just know that shit would be nice. My thoughts: A search engine should know you pretty well. An ISP should not.