Hi all,
I’ve read a few things recently referring to Qwant as the default search engine for /e/, not least this tweet:
Is that right? I installed several months ago and haven’t reflashed since then, so maybe I don’t remember clearly or things have changed.
Cheers 
The default still remains spot…though Qwant is one of the options available in case a user wants to change.
Right the tweet was a bit confusing
Hi @Manoj, that tweet and news articles at that time aren’t the only time I’ve seen articles say that Qwant is the default, I’ve seen several articles on /e/ that say that Qwant is the default. It may be worth fact-checking some of these articles and getting the authors to correct them on this and other points.
Cheers
Or simply make Qwant the default search engine? why not
Startpage is a search engine that forwards the entered search queries to the Google search engine, thus displaying the search results anonymously.
Important note:
Startpage has a new shareholder: System 1 LLC with Headquarters in Venice, California (USA).
It’s an advertising and marketing provider that generate sales with the evaluation and processing of data(!)
Is it a modern data octopus?
Seems like bad news to me.
Funny you say this, I coincidentally dropped all use of startpage about a week ago.
A Searx instance could be a good compromise. Unlike StartPage, Searx is a meta search engine, i.e. it retrieves and processes results from various search engines.
Another important difference between the two is that Searx is free software and can be operated by yourself. DuckDuckGo and Startpage are proprietary software.
Welcome to searx. Searx - a privacy friendly, decentralized and non-commercial search engine. An interview with Adam Tauber, free software developer from Hungary.
https://netzpolitik.org/2018/interview-searx-the-web-search-engine-that-respects-your-privacy/
/e/ default search engine in the pre-installed browser is based on searX
To add to the confusion I notice that on this forum if the search produces no results it suggests searching with DuckDuckGo! 
The forum uses Discourse software and the default search on Discourse is Google. Even if the search button says DuckDuckGo the search results come from Google! I had checked with the folks at Discourse why we could not change the search engine. The response was that way to resolve it is to fork the code and make changes. We have a bug on this in Gitlab but it remains open…forking the forum code and changing it requires some time and resources - both of which are not available at the moment.
Thanks for the explanation @Manoj. I don’t think that you want to get into forking forum software do you? Maybe instead something can be configured on the server to redirect these requests.
Yeah, that’s what it looks like.
System1 has a majority stake in Startpage and so Startpage is majority-owned by a US company headquartered in Venice, California (USA).
System1 LLC has majority ownership of Startpage, although as noted above, the Startpage founders have control over the privacy components of Startpage. > Source
I was very satisfied with Startpage’s search results. But from now on I will avoid them completely.
@manoj here’s another example of a publication talking about Qwant being the default: https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-e-google-free-pro-privacy-android-phone-runs-well-for-a-beta/
I remember that @GaelDuval or the /e/ foundation twitter account retweeted this, so I’m surprised that the article wasn’t corrected.
