Startpage - DuckDuckGo and Gigablast.
Now DuckDuckGo has some nice features like Bangs and they have a privacy minded policy.
Their Bangs are nice..
If you prefix your search with !g you will get the Google results....and the Google spying.
DuckDuckGo did collaborate with Yahoo that leaked all their data and since then All links between DDG and Yahoo are removed from DDG yet the collaboration stands.
Also DDG is a US company and can be forced to share their data and gagged so they cannot tell according to the Patriot act.
DDG presents OK search results and images and Maps..if you remember to turn them on in the settings.
So when searching for Hell DDG presents that place in Norway and you can find it on the map with some effort.
Startpage presents Google results and after some Google adds.
This leads you to think that Startpage is crap in terms of privacy - but that is not the case!
Startpage uses proxy and iframe to present the results so your ISP or any bad guys will have a hard time following you.
The Maps are intuitive but autocompletion has to be turned on in the settings.
Remember neither Startpage nor DuckDuckGo index their own search machine they use others and remove the tracking stuff.
Startpage uses Google and DDG uses Yahoo.
They both state that they will fight for your privacy and promise a lot to that effect.
Sadly; in the US those promises and good intentions are worth .....very little to put it mildly. Fiber cables are tapped and Encryption keys are forcefully requested.
That puts DDG in an akward position.
Startpage is the only search engine that has a third party certifying their promises and it is not US based.
So both technically and politically Startpage is superior in terms of protecting your privacy.
In the competition between DuckDuckGo and Startpage....Startpage is the winner.
The third search engine - Gigablast - does index its own stuff and is not depending on others.
That is a big advantage and Gigablast has this to say about it:
Some search engines on the internet purport to protect your privacy, and they do a decent job, but since they are not actually search engines, they relay your queries to a major 3rd party search engine. But since Gigablast is the ONLY search engine in the United States that only serves results from it's own index and does not have PRISM installed, you know we are not sending your queries off to a major search engine (which is tapped by the NSA) to get the results.
That is true ...maybe.... because if PRISM should be installed Gigablast would be forced to state that it is not, anyway.
Gigablast has a good privacy policy like the other two and delivers OK search results. It has become open source lately and that is a good thing.
Gigablast is also very frank about the weaknesses of the competition:
Consider this scenario. Joe Smith sends his query to his favorite privacy-enabled search engine, supersafesearch.com. His search query is encrypted as it travels across the internet to supersafesearch.com's server. However, his IP address is not encrypted. After all, the information supersafesearch.com sends to Joe will contain Joe's IP address and that needs to be unencrypted so the Internet routers can properly route it back to Joe. So, technically speaking, the NSA or Joe's ISP can easily infer that Joe Smith is communicating with supersafesearch.com and at what time he is doing so. Furthermore, at about that same time, the NSA ascertains that ten different queries were sent from supersafesearch.com to a large search engine that has PRISM installed. Therefore, the NSA could conclude, merely based on the timing alone, that one of these ten queries was conducted by Joe. Then perhaps Joe conducts a second query, of similar topic to the previous one. The NSA repeats the process, and then based on the query topic similarity, and cross-referencing IPs accessing supersafesearch.com at that time, concludes that Joe Smith is behind the queries.
This is a good example and a fair description.
They have forgotten one thing though - If you have your own Index ...in the US... what would be a more obvious target for the NSA than that?
If they can tap and force Google they can certainly do it with Gigablast.
Gigablast is a more obvious target for surveillance than both DDG and Startpage.
So neh..Startpage is still in the lead.
But there is ....one more thing...(Yeah all resemblance to IT super-gurus is unintended
)
https://searx.me/
This search engine is a community open source project and is presents good results and has a great overview.
Images and maps are easy to find and privacy is the main focus.
Searx is a metasearch engine, inspired by the seeks project.
It provides basic privacy by mixing your queries with searches on other platforms without storing search data. Queries are made using a POST request on every browser (except chrome*). Therefore they show up in neither our logs, nor your url history. In case of Chrome* users there is an exception, searx uses the search bar to perform GET requests.
Searx can be added to your browser's search bar; moreover, it can be set as the default search engine.
So this is pretty much what Startpage does but Searx is more likely to go under the radar. The project is on github and can be pulled from there.
Here is a site showing up-to-date informations about searx-engines and public searx Instances:
http://stats.searx.oe5tpo.com/
I can not declare a winner between Searx and Startpage...
What I am using as a default search engine?
I am using Searx!
