Old and Horrified,
Apt screen name by the way !
Whilst you could follow the "use other search engines" advice suggested by others, I would propose two things :
(1) Don't use Google Search whilst logged in
(2) Just incase you can't entirely avoid (1), review ALL your Google privacy settings on your Google account (they are hidden away all over the place, it'll take you a while to find all the nooks and crannies).
(3) Either set your browser to block Google's ability to set cookies (Firefox can do this quite easily) or configure your browser to work in private browsing mode. If Google can't set cookies, then it has limited ability to do any sort of long term tracking ....