actually i have succesfully patch it with duckduckgo and post this soon, but the thing left is im still learning using git so its take more time pushing changes and update lately... sorry to made you going trough this issue @throgh
im eager to made it into another search engine, just let me know what is the best option, or best yet: just strip this feature out the package, peole use web browser anyway. regarding usefulness i bet many mate fans out there really love this package ,i see some on post desktop forum entry
this is my complete patch summary
/usr/share/mate-menu/icons/search_engines/ : replaced google.ico with duckduckgo.ico
/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/mate_menu/plugins/applications.py : replaced Google, google, google.com, and google.ico, lines in the code with DuckDuckGo, duckduckgo, duckduckgo.com, and duckduckgo.ico
/usr/share/mate-menu/plugins/applications.py : replaced Google, google, google.com, and google.ico, lines in the code with DuckDuckGo, duckduckgo, duckduckgo.com, and duckduckgo.ico
/usr/share/mate-menu/applications.list : replaced firefox.desktop, and thunderbird.desktop ines in the code with iceweasel-uxp.desktop, and icedove-uxp.desktop
ensure all those things are all properly fixed, one lines wrong and it will render mate-menu unstartable