The best alternative from a privacy point of view is DuckDuckGo, which won't track your activity, store your search history or share any of yor personal information. Better yet, the service routes any links you click in a way that prevents your search terms from being shared with other websites. DuckDuckGo includes many of the handy features you find in Google Search -- type a math calculation or a currency conversion and it will instantly provide an answer, for example. But some features, such as instant translation to and from English, are absent. And, because DuckDuckGo doesn't gather data about you, your search results aren't always as relevant. On the upside, you won't be targeted by adverts.
If you want the benefits of Google's high quality search results without all that tracking and profiling, then you could try StartPage -- a search engine that pays Google a small fee to use its search technology, but doesn't record your results or track you. Like many free services Startpage uses advertising to make money but these ads aren't generated by using your personal data. The result is a good balance between accuracy and privacy.
