Search engines - Startpage
Features
Search results
Startpage is a private search engine acting as a proxy amd provides text, images, videos, news and maps search results from Google and Bing.
Localized search
Optional anonymous localized search is possible based on IP address or user provided city / postal code.
Instant Answers
Instant answers appears in the search engine page itself and can be useful for calculations, unit / currency conversion, definition, translation, weather maps or factual information.
AI-Free
Contrary to most other search engines it does not push AI.
Anti-Features
Ads
But displays sponsored content visibly within the search results.
Access
VPN and Tor
Users can easily access it using a VPN or Tor with an onion address.
JavaScript required
But are required to enable JavaScript although a less than optimal usage might still be possible without it.
Configuration
Configuration can be done using either anonymous cookies or settings URL. Users should disable search suggestions and promotional messaging.
Location
Surfboard Holding BV, the company behind it is based in the Netherlands with users benefiting from strong Dutch and European Union privacy laws, respectively the Implementation Act (AVG) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). While their no indication of impropriety users should be aware that the majority shareholder is the ad-tech company System1.
Privacy policy
It does not store or sell any personally identifiable information like IP address, or other unique identifiers and does not track users through cookies. But does collect aggregated anonymous usage data such as number of times the services is accessed by type of operating system, browser, language. When requesting data on users behalf it strips search queries sent to search and content providers of unnecessary metadata.