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From Startpage: "You can’t beat Google when it comes to online search. So we’re paying them to use their brilliant search results in order to remove all trackers and logs."

It sounds like you're just using Google without the branding/tracking.

And now the question is, how is Startpage paying Google without monetizing its users?

If the product is free, you're the product. I don't know anything about Startpage, but I bet we'll find they're tracking something...

Startpage shows ads, just like DuckDuckGo: https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Artic...

Makes sense. So I was right; you are the product. They want to get ads in front of users. Note that there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

tl;dr they're paid to serve ads based on anonymized search terms

https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Artic...

Yes, they use Google results without tracking.

That's not my experience generally with technical and UK stuff. I do wonder why people seem to have radically different experiences.

Why not prefix with !s ?

// Ahem.