I read that entry by Whittaker earlier today and wondered why he would find Microsoft, "the graveyard of creativity" to be better, or even acceptable. I realize that one has to have a job, but still, he's silent on what would be the elephant in the room to many people since those thoughts would be very relevant to this story.

As for searching, I actually find duckduckgo.com to be quit good.

Now facebook. I should probably not get started here. :) I recently wrote a long dissertation on some of the problems with that which I published here: http://notandor.wordpress.com/ The big problem to me is not so much the privacy issues, but the long term effect on the net and who controls it. Like many analysts, I see a possible death of the net as we know it. This fellow is certainly on board with that:
http://www.tnl.net/blog/2012/03/03/i-killed-the-internet/