Benjamin Ellis, a leading consultant for digital businesses and tech startups in the UK seems to be in the mood for being challenged at the moment. After tackling awareness of prostate cancer with the ritual challenge of movember, he has now turned his attention to online privacy.

In the wake of the storm of blogging reactions to Eric Schmidt’s comments on privacy, Benjamin intends to document the results of taking an extreme counter position to CNBC’s Mario Bartiromo question to Schmidt, “People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they?”

Embarking on a week long experiment to see how one might live if they absolutely did not trust Google and had to block it out of their lives, Benjamin reports from his blog Day 1 of living without Google. You can follow his activities from there.

Amongst other things, what he finds is that Google is deeply embedded in his favourite Mac products and the tension between Apple and Microsoft prohibits him from easily switching to another search engine. What a shame that entrenched rivalries seem to prevent strategic alliances over new battlegrounds.