StartPage and Ixquick Join Forces in the Fight Against Big Brother

The world's most private search engines StartPage.com and Ixquick.com are combining forces to make an even bigger impact on privacy: Ixquick has rebranded as “StartPage by Ixquick.”

"Our search engine traffic has grown a hundred-fold in recent years, with most of the increase coming from StartPage,” said CEO Robert Beens. "In light of StartPage popularity and changing market conditions, it makes sense to focus on our StartPage brand so we can reach even more people.”

Like StartPage, “StartPage by Ixquick” will privately give users actual Google search results in full anonymity. “You could say that by doubling up on private Google searches, we're doubling down on privacy,” Beens said.

The company will no longer actively market Ixquick, but will still offer the classic Ixquick metasearch results, from a combination of other search engines, at www.ixquick.eu.

All the company’s search engines return results in total privacy: they do not collect IP addresses, use tracking cookies, or collect any personal information. Since they are based in Europe, they offer the crucial protection of being outside U.S. jurisdiction, where they are not subject to the Patriot Act and other U.S. data collection mandates.

Ixquick has served powerful metasearch results since 1999, and in 2006 broke new ground by becoming the world’s first privacy-friendly search engine. In 2009, the company launched Ixquick’s sibling StartPage.

Privacy is the company's mission and the driving force behind its innovations. In addition to the search products, which process over 6 million queries a day, the company also developed the revolutionary private, encrypted email service StartMail.com.

“Fighting surveillance is a high-stakes battle society must win,” Beens said. “We’re doing our part by providing easy-to-use services that empower consumers to take back their privacy.”

About StartPage and StartMail

StartPage is the world's first and most trusted private search engine. StartPage is based in Europe, outside the reach of U.S. data collection mandates, has been third-party certified, and offers a free proxy service with every search. For more information, please visit StartPage.com.

StartMail.com is the paid, private email service that simplifies PGP encryption and makes state-of-the-art privacy protection easy and available to everyone.

Dr. Katherine Albrecht
Surfboard Holding B.V., StartMail B.V., Boulevard 11, Zeist, 3707 BK

This release was published on openPR.