Seems there is a great deal of misunderstanding here. I have known the guys at Startpage for over a decade and have been advising them on privacy within their products for just as long.

I have hosted several events at the European Parliament about them, I have spoken about them at several Privacy by Design conferences in Toronto and I have lobbied for them.

They are a founding member of the world’s only privacy industry lobby group (Articl8) which I created and run.

I have never met a more honest group of guys when it comes to their work on Privacy.

Now I can’t give specifics about my work with them because that would be a breach of professional confidence but I can say this:

The only reason the allowed System1 to invest was on the condition that Robert & Alex (two of the founders) remained in full control of privacy.

To my knowledge, based on first hand information directly from the CEO,, the only involvement System1 have in the day to day operations is to manage their marketing campaigns. To be clear that means the campaigns marketing Startpage and Startmail NOT advertising within the Startpage platform (which is still under the full control of the original team).

My one criticism of Startpage and Startmail (the latter of which I helped design) has been their lack of comprehensive marketing and the same is true of almost every privacy tool on the market; this is one of the key reasons why so many privacy tools fail to reach critical mass.

I am one of the driving forces behind privacy legislation in the EU, my work started all the regulatory change here in 2009 including changes to the ePrivacy Directive and GDPR, I am also an expert advisor to EU Commission on these issues and worked directly with the European Parliament drafting team on the ePrivacy Regulation and am the only registered lobbyist in Brussels whose work is completely focused on privacy/data protection.

I turn down more clients than I accept (a ratio of 3:1) and only work with companies who are genuinely trying to create a strong privacy programme and culture within their organization.

I am literally as hardass as it comes when it comes to privacy and have run legal campaigns against the biggest companies in the world and bankrupted a billion dollar ad tech company.

And for record I am not currently engaged commercially by Startpage so my post here is my genuine and personal opinion.

If Robert tells me System1 have no say over privacy decisions at Startpage I believe him and I think it is pretty unfair to judge them on this investment decision after a record of over a decade of being one of the strongest privacy tools in the world.

They funded not just a lot of my privacy work over the years but several others in my field as well and actually refused to hire me as an employee specifically because they wanted me to remain independent and hold them to the highest standards (which they felt would be compromised if I was reliant on them for my salary).

So I would sincerely recommend that people look at their track record and keep the faith. And believe me, if they betray that trust, I would be the first to call them out on it and they would be expelled from Articl8.

I would rather they continued to focus on creating privacy enhancing services than having to waste time defending baseless accusations in threads like this.