Oh really? I’ll look more into that thanks.

I saw people mentioning an open source and self hostable search engine (SearXNG) which is cool and I tried it out but it gives not very good results. I tried searching for specific sites and it would show anything but. But it’s fine for general info.

I still don’t think there is anything else other than startpage that is as private while giving good search results. I don’t believe that startpage is collecting data on users like google/Microsoft do and I don’t think duckduckgo is as good in that regard either. It still makes sense for startpage to be owned by an advertising company since it does show ads mixed with the search results. The difference is they are not personalised or tracked to you (so they say).

So if you have any evidence of System1/startpage tracking users and collecting personalised data on users for anything other than general usage and diagnostic analytics then I think it’s fine. If you do, then I will stop using and recommending it.

Start Page. Google results without the Google.

Or duckduckgo

Is there a list to check? I have a gen 3 Echo dot

That’s totally fair. I had the same pop up appear today and yes it’s really no big deal and quick to just close but we absolutely should have the option to not get promo ads especially that appear on our desktops in a huge panel. A small note in the apps is fine if out of the way.

It is also fair to do this if the user isn’t paying for the service currently. Then ads are expected. But if I have an active sub, I should not be getting ads forced at all.

Side note though, I am glad I saw this ad as I was thinking of switching from just vpn to ultimate as I started switching my emails over to proton and would also like the drive storage. So this will come in handy. Do you know when the promo ends?

It’s not working with .odt and .docx files. Still cannot open them on mobile.

That was a huge factor for why I didn’t end up going the proton route initially. But now I want proton mail and unlimited seems worth it. I can use the Web client at least on linux. I use another cloud storage for mass storage and can use proton drive for my documents and stuff that don’t need syncing or frequent access.

Keep us updated

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