"The only reason I've heard to not prevent search leakage is that marketers use Referrer info to do better search engine optimization (SEO). But the information doesn't have to disappear, just the current mechanism of transferring the information in a personally identifiable way."<p>I struggle to see how this could work in a way that's a fraction as useful to webmasters as the current system. Sites that sell things like to tie keywords to conversions. They can learn, for example, that keyword X drives sales, but keyword Y doesn't, and assign resources accordingly. Online businesses become more efficient, and searchers get more of what they want. I think it's largely a good thing all round.<p>My respect goes to DuckDuckGo for coming up with a clever way to differentiate themselves from their competition. However, if the problem is that sites are inadvertently sharing keywords with third-party ad networks, then point the finger at those ad networks, not at Google. Blaming Google makes about as much sense as blaming Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and the web in general for sending referrers in the first place.