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Correction: There is no ad scrubbing involved. The results pages Scroogle scrapes (output=ie) have no ads to begin with. And, for whatever it's worth, they trigger less cookies from Google (only the PREF cookie is used, when I checked).

To reiterate what I said before, the difference is Scroogle allows the user query to be submitted via POST and over SSL.

The POST method effectively limits what the server can do with the data and what it can trigger automatically in the browser, without user input. Perhaps this is good for the user (more control), and bad for the marketer (less control). As such, it could be a controversial topic.

RFC 2616 Sec. 15.1.3 discussed the use of POST in the interests of privacy.

It would be nice if the output=ie option worked with Google Scholar/Patents and if Scroogle then supported Scholar searches.

It should be no surprise that Google's API's will never let users use the HTTP POST method. Those HTTP GET query strings are "valuable data"; Google is a business, not a charity. Hence Scroogle is doing something unique (AFAIK) by letting users use HTTP POST.

It seems like the Slashdot and Hacker News comments have missed perhaps a key point. If any of you know of other search engines that meet these two criteria, please let me know:

1. Queries are passed as x-www-form-urlencoded via HTTP POST not as plain text strings via HTTP GET e.g. www.example.com/?q=heres+my+query+for+you+to+look+at vs www.example.com/cgi-bin/do.cgi

2. Queries of numerous diverse users at numerous diverse IP's are aggregated through a small set of IP's (Scroogle's), and Scroogle's servers are not scattered across the globe.

While this may not offer "privacy", it certainly makes it more difficult for a server to filter and/or redirect based on query string and approximated geolocation. Scroogle is obviously not catering to the common marketing platform. Otherwise they would be more interested to know what people are searching for, and where they are are searching from.

Scroogle's design makes it difficult for Google to serve up "personalised" and/or "localised" ads and results. (Even if they did not go through the trouble to scrub the ads and dump all cookies this would still be true.)

Some users may appreciate such relatively "raw" results.