DuckDuckGo is not very trustworthy either, though it seems to have a good search index. But like any other big project on the Internet, its ownership is very questionable and leaves much to be desired ethically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startpage

so it still seems a good choice, definitely better than google search and duckduckgo (which I already wouldn't use because it's a US company and therefore subject to the Patriot act).

In my view, selling out privacy focused software projects to an ad company was not a smart move - and in the case of startpage, registering a deceptively named company for that purpose, hoping no one would notice, reveals the intent.

I don't know why anyone would want to use G's services either, least of all directly. It's the same G as the one between the square and compass, if you know what I mean. There are still very decent alternatives out there for email, browsing etc. But a lot of traps as well.

https://factually.co/fact-checks/techno … ive-930c63
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System1
https://cyberinsider.com/startpage-syst … one-group/

and yes, different browser behave differently. am using satellite internet since few years and it has helped me solved quite some problems that otherwise would have taken me down the "vpn" route which is just cumbersome, not to speak of TOR, where does the captcha thing much more easily happen.
(it used to be difficult to achieve, now its just one click only solution, so probably not the big problem solver it is portrayed, but not in the know):

Thanks, but the difficulty is putting up with them when there is no reason.
I do not mind captchas when a site needs to use them to filter out bots and such.

No, I don't use any of that.

Not until hell freezes over.
Twice. 8^°

Thanks, I'll have a look at that one.

Interesting, thanks.

Many years ago (2009/10?), when Tor was a new-ish thing, I downloaded it and had the bright idea to use it to log into my bank account from my netbook+office network, just like I did with my ministry issued PC.

Not a thing anyone was allowed to do but I could because I was in charge of 1st. tier TS for 60+ PCs. 8^°

Next morning I received a severely worded email from the bank summoning me to see my account officer -no option to decline the invitation- and when I got there the very annoyed chap told me that my PC had malware and that I had to sign this long waiver full of legalese because otherwise I would lose my account.

He did not have a clue so explaining all the protections my PC had in detail made no difference whatsoever.
So I signed the waiver and never used Tor again.
I recall that at that time it was rather slow to fetch pages.
But I will check it out.

The problem is that Google seems to have better/more complete search returns, or at least, more of them.
You (obviously) have to filter out the crap and this captcha thing is just the new recipe/texture/flavour available crap.
Unfortunately, I have the feelng that it will only get worse.

BTW:
Looking at the [about:config] from my LibreWolf I found these entries when I did a search for the term [captcha]:

captchadetection.actor.enabled        true		
captchadetection.hasUnsubmittedData   true		
captchadetection.lastSubmission       1789597		
captchadetection.loglevel             Warn

Any idea as to what these do?
The first and the fourth are default settings.
But the second and third are probably modified during each (?) session as they are in bold letters.

Thanks to all.

Best,

A.

Then I switched from firefox-esr to tor-browser and got right to the page I wanted.

Well, take it or leave it. Behind the slight insanity, I found that it is a reliable service after all. Can't say the same about searx unfortunately, just when you think you found a good working instance it suddenly stops operating correctly and one is forced to find a new one, only for the same cycle to repeat itself soon after.

a search engine proxy like https://4get.ca/

Thanks Calamity but.. the captcha here, presented as an "IQ test", is: "Pick 6 images from minecraft" with no choice to load an alternative.

WTF is minecraft? (Is it a game?) My intelligence must be sub standard after all.

Anyway, point is, there are others e.g. searx instances.