CNET News did a survey on privacy for major search engines. This includes storing your IP address, cookies and/or the queries you type. To make a long article short, Ask came out on top. Why is privacy important? Because of the potential for abuse would be my first, off the cuff response. If ultimate power ultimately corrupts, what does ultimate information do? Already we’ve seen court cases where search engine data was used as evidence against the accused? Has that information already been abused to convict innocent people? How else could it potentially be abused.