Startpage

Startpage is a Dutch search engine whose product is the search request itself: your query is stripped of identifying metadata and passed on anonymously to the search partners that supply the index, with Google and Bing named, and un-profiled results come back. It needs no account, and it ships as a website plus the Startpage Private Browser app for iOS and Android, which uses Startpage as its default search engine. Anonymous View, offered next to each result, proxies third-party pages so the site you visit does not see your connection.

Nothing about the person searching is retained: Startpage states it does not record IP addresses, the only exception being automated query floods it blocks as abuse, and it logs no search queries. It serves two cookies, a preferences cookie expiring after 90 days without a visit and a security-check cookie expiring within seven days, and no tracking cookies. Revenue comes from clearly labelled, non-personalized sponsored links retrieved from platforms such as Google AdSense, and the company says it has been profitable since it started. It won the first European Privacy Seal in 2008, complies with the GDPR, and says any government request for user data would have to come from the Dutch judicial authorities.

Startpage launched in 2006 as what it describes as the world's first private search engine and is a global privacy technology company. It is owned and operated by Surfboard Holding BV at Wilhelmina van Pruisenweg 104, The Hague, Netherlands. The service is proprietary and vendor-hosted rather than self-hostable, and the same privacy stance extends to the mobile app, where search queries are not collected, stored or shared.