It turns out it went multi-engine, probably to prevent getting cut off of Google’s Results. It probably mixes results from multiple engines like the old multi engine search engines in the old days of the internet.

When they were purchased it was with the understanding that they would get no user data and that Startpage does not collect it, and it has the same CEO who started the company so I believe him.

Yeah, I should have said “by default” because that is how most people will use it, but the power users will use other engines.

AFAIK Startpage gives you google results with your privacy intact and less ads.

Uses Bing results.

On Vivaldi and yeah it was paywalled so I went straight to my collection of workarounds and no built in solutions. Overall faster that way.

For those who are paywalled https://web.archive.org/web/20240927171841/https://theintercept.com/2024/09/27/google-israel-defense-tech-conference/