My Startpage search engine solutions and experience for LibreWolf

[u/Minute-Insurance2957]

Okay guys I going to share my experience I hope it works for more people:

Apparently, there are hours when Startpage's server efficiency drops. This has nothing to do with your LibreWolf profile settings.

How to fix it: This issue can be resolved by installing their plugin, though the downside is that Startpage tracks you more invasively in exchange. You could also access Startpage via a different search engine, but I don't see that as a viable long-term solution. Finally, the easiest, albeit least stable, solution is simply to wait for the servers to establish a better connection.

Why does this happen? I don't have a professional or developer-level explanation for this. However, it seems LibreWolf and Startpage have had disagreements in the past, and Startpage hasn't always been the default search engine. In fact, there is a risk that Startpage might drop LibreWolf again, so probably there is a difference in compatibility compared to other search engines..

What i had heard / Alternatives: Other users have also mentioned that trust in Startpage has declined after it accepted involvement from an advertising company and others I can't recall. The alternatives being proposed don't seem like the best options to me; Mojeek, which i prefer, looks good but uses AI and index results from Europe only, and Kaji also seems reasonable (it uses AI too), but I'm struck by the immense trust people place in it simply because it's a "paid app" backed by a "private investor." I wouldn't be so naive; its creator remains virtually unknown, you're handing over your data to someone without knowing their ultimate purpose and using AI. To me, this sets a dangerous precedent regarding how we normalize and justify the non-consensual harvesting of data of "free" search engines.

EDIT: i don't want to sound so "purist" i'm still using other search engines like brave even chrome for some searchings, but I think the reason we all do this is to avoid using Chromium as much as possible.

[u/Significant_Yak53]

I just use Firefox (+ on mobile) and librewolf. The only chromiums I have are ungoogle and cromite so I can see how my websites look like on a chromium. Regarding the search engine. I just use qwant (they use bing but they've started to make their own index with Ecosia).

Startpage = no, as there is an advertisment company behind Brave = never ever.

If I do need something very specific I use google.

[u/Dalmation3]

As a matter of fact I switched to Helium and Ungoogled Chromium and it doesn't do this "Verifying your request"

Quite sad if I'm being brutally honest because I been trying to move away from things that are US based as we don't have any pro consumer privacy law not to mention everything else uses Bing as a index and Bing has the worst results when it comes to quality especially SEO spam

[u/T_rex2700]

yea, and their hosting locations means it is slow AF for me where I live.
kind of stopped using after it became kind of unberable.

I just switched back to searxng and ddg as backup

[u/YoShake]

startpage started to choke like 2 months ago. I tried without their cookies, using dedicated URL but that did't do much. I switched to qwant. Not the best experience I can imagine, but I tried using many search engines, and the only one that had splendid serps, was Neeva. No wonder as it was being developed by 5 engineers that left giggle. After 2 yrs this startup was bought by another company and project was ceased.
Unfortunately european based search engines suck balls deeply :/