I use mapquest.com in place of Google Earth. I do believe it’s owned by yahoo, but I’m unsure. You can get the satellite view there too, and in some cases it’s better detailed. (I have seen both when looking at an integrated map on a site, basically one from google earth was embedded in a site I was on, and I compared it to the mapquest that I use). I cannot say it’s any better, we have so little privacy. But Google is certainly going to be the greater of two evils, no matter what two evils you compare.
I’m with you. Yahoo is the better, by far. I haven’t seen anything even resembling them wanting to get into our knickers as google has done.