As you will notice from the second link I posted above, I am quite critical of Startpage. However, they are better than DuckDuckGo in the following two ways:
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Their search, particularly their image search, works well with JavaScript disabled, whereas DuckDuckGo’s image search with JavaScript disabled is difficult to use. This is such a critical issue that it is hard to overstate. Even if you are dealing with a distrusted entity, they are very limited in the ways they can compromise your privacy without JavaScript. With JavaScript disabled, there is no way they can abuse information they cannot collect.
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DuckDuckGo is currently hosted on Microsoft’s Azure platform (at least in the United States, previously it was hosted on Amazon Web Services).
$ nslookup www.duckduckgo.com
Non-authoritative answer:
www.duckduckgo.com canonical name = duckduckgo.com.
Name: duckduckgo.com
Address: 52.250.42.157$ whois 52.250.42.157
NetRange: 52.224.0.0 - 52.255.255.255
CIDR: 52.224.0.0/11
NetName: MSFT
NetHandle: NET-52-224-0-0-1
Parent: NET52 (NET-52-0-0-0-0)
NetType: Direct Assignment
OriginAS:
Organization: Microsoft Corporation (MSFT)
RegDate: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Ref: https://rdap.arin.net/registry/ip/52.224.0.0
Microsoft has access to all data stored on every server on Microsoft’s Azure platform. Even if you fully trust DuckDuckGo, how much do you trust Microsoft?
Regarding Swisscows and JavaScript, see commend 1 above. Three is no guarantee of privacy with a search engine running JavaScript.