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CloseReviews for Startpage HTTPS Privacy Search Engine
73 reviews for this add-on
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
5/5 For being compatible with Pale Moon v25 against discrimination of software "Gecko browsers".
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Ticktock, try IXQuick (also mentioned in other reviews.) From their website: "StartPage returns Google results in complete privacy and never shares your information with Google.
However, if you prefer to search without receiving Google results, please check out our sister search engine, Ixquick.
Ixquick is also a 100% private search engine, just like StartPage, but instead of providing Google results, Ixquick is a "meta-search" engine that submits your query privately to multiple search engines.
Ixquick never queries Google and never returns Google search results."
So, as to the other reviewers who say IXQuick is gone: nope! Add it, too.
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
Not much to say outside what's already been said other than my favorite part, other than the security aspect, is the ability to customize your result pages so much, especially being able to change default of 10 results per page to 20-50-100...100!! In response to rwizard and IMD4U, as far as I understood from reading Ipsquailetch's(?) (Startpage's) info was that the difference is that the former uses multiple search engines while Startpage uses google. For whatever its worth. Anyway kiddos, Ilike it, it's my favorite anonymous search provider. 4 stars cause it's ugly.
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
I feel relieved when I use this. Thank you!
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
You have to open up a private browsing window in order to add this. At least for me it would not download unless I did that.
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
Add-on works fine. This review is more about StartPage search engine. Privacy search, search results by date, image and video search.
Frequently gets not specific results, contrary what you asked about. Tip: use advanced search to make sure that search was done not for "any of the terms" instead of "all". If this fails, use a different search engines for better results.
Despite all of this, Ixquick and StartPage are my search engines of choice for years.
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Love this, great to have.
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Protect your privacy! This is a must add-on for anyone. Period. If you're hot convinced go to their home page and educate yourself.
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
apsolutely great,finds much more than any search engine i ve ever used,i like the name ixquick you can say "you gonna have to xq it" as a shortcut :) but i guess start page is great too but whatever you do,dont experiment on graphics cause the current one is awesome :) having it for a really small amount of time but the functionality and design made me write a review and i think i wont regret it
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
This is a great add on since Google blocked the Scroogle search engine. Protect your privacy boycott Google.
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
The two other reviews here cover this search engine quite well. I would just like to add that it as a search engine itself is great: You get fewer but more relevant results, and the star rating system used makes it very easy to find what's relvant for you: More stars equals more search engines picking that exact result as relevant. Startpage/Ixquics is secure and accurate. What more can you ask for?
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
I have been using the Startpage search engine (formerly when only called Ixquick) for nearly one year now, and knowing that my searches are being kept private with HTTPS & not stored anywhere by Startpage is a welcome relief and of great comfort! I have only occasionally used Google since I switched (like rwizard posted before me, you can still use any other search engine you want to).
RE: My incident when the name changed from Ixquick to Startpage.
I was using "Ixquick" as my home page and they happened to switch over to their newly created name of "Startpage" just after I had exited my Firefox one day. A few minutes later when I opened Firefox again, I saw "Startpage" as my home page instead of my "Ixquick", and I thought someone was hijacking my PC! For whatever reason, I decided to exit Firefox immediately. I didn't get a chance to open my browser for another 15 minutes, and when I did, that "Startpage" was gone and "Ixquick" was back! So I went to Ixquick's website and contacted them, informing them that something called "Startpage" had overtaken their Ixquick on my home page for about 15 minutes and thought they should know what happened. I quickly received a reply from Ixquick telling me not to worry, that they had just changed over to calling it "Startpage" because that would be a much easier name for everyone to remember! I have contacted them twice; each time receiving a quick response and they were extremely friendly & informative.
When I stopped into this website to check out some information, I was really surprised to find only one review, and also surprised that more users haven't downloaded yet. Once more people hear about this wonderful "private" search engine, I can only assume that the users will multiply quickly!!!
To Startpage: Thank you very much for this wonderful search engine. It's a breath of fresh air to know "some" people really do care about users' privacy concerns!
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
As an ixquick user, I was puzzled when searching here for ixquick brought up startpage as well. It looked as if they were one and the same, but with a different domain name. I downloaded the add-on, and did some searches to see.
It appears that someone firgured out that "ixquick" isn't exactly a memorable monicker. Can you see anyone saying, "hey, why don't you just ixquick it?" So, obviously, "ixquick" is not the next Internet meme.
I can only assume that someone at ixquick accidentally wandered into a marketing seminar at The Learning Annex, and thinking it was the "How Ninjas are more Leet than Pirates" meeting, they sat down. The very next morning, feeling all full of marketing goodness, they thought, "Good Lord man, we need a new name, a name that will cause everyone to use us as their start page !"
And hence, ixquick begat startpage.com. At least, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Since ixquick and startpage seem to be exactly the same thing, here is my ixquick review. I leave the difficult substitution of "startpage" for each appearance of "ixquick" as an exercise for the reader:
I am in the early stages of using ixquick, but wanted to make some observations. First, if you are using this, I'd assume you believe in privacy. If so, I would suggest that you select the https version, not the http.
Ads, yes, their SITE has ads. So does Google. If you do a little reading on ixquick you will discover that while Google is busy compiling massive databases about your search activities and tying them back to you, ixquick does not. This means that Google makes a lot of money selling you to others, while ixquick gets all of its income from you clicking on ads.
Which do you prefer - being Google's chattle, or wading through a few more ads?
After all, we all have bills to pay - I'd even suggest clicking on the occasional ad to keep these folks in business.
As for search results, ixquick is a meta-engine. This means that it searches other search engines. Notably missing from the list is Google. The biggest name present is Yahoo. I'd love to see them have Google in the mix, but I assume that for some reason or another, they felt that wasn't an option. I've done some test searches for pretty off the wall stuff, and the results seem satisfactory. You always have the option to search with another engine if you don't find what you need, or, if you prefer, to use ixquick just for your more nefarious or embarrassing searches.
Overall, I would encourage everyone to use ixquick. While I am not a Google hater, I do think we need to support alternatives so that we don't end up with only one search engine in the world, with our every Internet activity being tracked on it. Try it. It may actually be fun to search wthout the Google-Monster peering over your shoulder !
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