I guess I don't see the problem here... if you look in your cookies folder, there are a TON of sites that do this... pretty much any site that has any marketing component. It's one of the reasons why Google doesn't cost money to use. I think what people fail to realize, is that these services are absolutely free, and to maintain that business model, they have to stay afloat with advertising, and targeted advertising. I guess someone could come along and make a search engine that was funded on a subscription-based basis and wouldn't log anything and wouldn't leave any cookies on your hard drive... but who would ever pay for a search engine these days?