How does one "unsmart" StartPage and revert back to the "just a search engine" that it used to be?
Consider a world where you ask a friend:
How do I get to the local drug store?
Simple, right? You're asking for the directions to the store. So the logical response is...you know...directions to the store.
You wouldn't expect said friend to feed you a bunch of irrelevant responses about drug abuse, overdosing, drug interactions etc.
But that's what StartPage is now doing. And it makes no sense.
Here's an example query. You can try yourself:
The expected responses would be pages that either validate, or debunk, the notion that smartphones are a scam.
Instead you get this:
It's obvious what's happening: for whatever reason, StartPage is taking the word "scam", running it through some ChatGPT, and prioritizing what the robot says the user is likely "most" interested in. While completely ignoring the context of the question.
On the Google side, this is represented by a toggle: All vs. Verbatim. But even when you don't specifically ask for Verbatim, Google's results are spot on to respond to the inquiry:
StartPage's results weren't always this broken. Something changed sometime in the past half year or so, and if you want to appeal to those that can't think for themselves that's fine - but you need to add a "Verbatim" toggle to tell the system to just take the question and answer it, for those that are looking for a specific question.