@voltar13 @rail_ @rysiek
@qeef
"In October 2019, Privacy One Group, owned by adtech company System1, acquired a majority stake in Startpage."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startpage.com#Merger_and_recent_history

That said... their results are often best even vs DDG, and the Anonymous View function is handy. I noticed ad links with uBO off, but otherwise nothing nasty.
However, I'm personally moving to self hosted SearxNG, and testing Yacy.