Oops, I can't edit my post anymore, but I wanted to add a little tip for Firefox users (as it is very good now), this addon[1] adds a search engine that does exactly what I do with my custom engine in Chrome.
Funny thing, I did not make this myself, which shows me clearly that I am not the only one feeling this way.
[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-1/?src...
Good lord, this is perfect. I had no idea about the verbatim setting. All I'd do was use the hl=en and q=%s. This new parameter is practically god-sent.
Thanks.
Last time I recall using a "least bad" search engine was when I was using Altavista. (before I started considering Google "least bad", I mean)
To some extent, I hope they're able to maintain their position. If Google were unseated, I would miss the big, audacious side-projects that they undertake.
Unlike you though, spam (at least recently) has not been a very strong issue of mine. If I had to name one, I'd say that "personalization" of the results was the worst offender to the quality my search results, and the positive thing is that we can turn that one off.
As crazy as it sounds, I wish another good search engine comes, as Google feels more and more like the "least bad" option, rather than the "good" one to me, and I'm just talking about search results, voluntarily excluding privacy & other topics from the debate.