Ixquick

Ixquick
Web address www.ixquick.com
www.startpage.com
Type of site
 Search engine
Proxy service
Owner Surfboard Holdings B.V.
Launched 1998
Alexa rank
 Decrease 8,319 (14 December 2014)[1]

Ixquick (styled “ixquick”) is a metasearch engine based in New York and the Netherlands.[2] Founded by David Bodnick in 1998, Ixquick is owned by Surfboard Holding BV of the Netherlands, which acquired the internet company in 2000.[3] Ixquick and its sibling project Startpage.com reached their latest record (28 day average) daily direct queries of 5.7 million on the February 2, 2015.[4]

Ixquick also provides the stand-alone proxy service, Ixquick Proxy, which has also been incorporated into both its Ixquick and Startpage search engines allowing users the option to open all search results via proxy.

Ixquick is developing a privacy protecting email service, called StartMail.[5]

History

Ixquick was re-launched on March 23, 2005, with many new features including a redesigned metasearch algorithm, an international phone, and lowest-price directory.[6]

On June 27, 2006, following Scroogle, Ixquick.com began to delete private details of its users.[7] IP addresses and other personal information were deleted within 48 hours of a search.[8] Ixquick has stated that it does not share its users' "personal information" with other search engines or with the provider of its sponsored results.[9][10]

Ixquick was awarded the first European Privacy Seal (EuroPriSe) for its privacy practices on July 14, 2008.[11] This European Union-sponsored initiative guarantees compliance with EU laws and regulations on data security and privacy, through a series of design and technical audits.[12] It was re-certified together with Startpage in 2009, 2011 and 2013.[13]

On January 28, 2009, Ixquick completely ended the recording of user IP addresses.[14][15]

Search mechanism and interface

Ixquick returns the top ten results from multiple search engines. It uses a "Star System" to rank its results by awarding one star for every result that has been returned from a search engine.[16] Thereby, the top search results are the ones that have been returned from the most search engines. Ixquick can search in 17 languages, including Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. Each language version includes local search engines.

Ixquick uses only one cookie, called "preferences", which remembers a user's search preferences for future searches and is deleted after a user does not visit Ixquick for 90 days.[17] It is however possible to save preferences in a bookmarked URL, thus avoiding cookies completely.[18] Also, preferences are not saved automatically. Only a visitor can decide to save his or her preferences.

Startpage.com

On July 7, 2009 Ixquick launched Startpage.com to offer its service at a URL that is both easier to remember and spell, and in contrast to ixquick.com, fetches results from the Google search engine.[19] This is done without saving the users' IP addresses or giving any personal user information to Google's servers.

As of February 19, 2015, Startpage.com is the default search engine in the Tor Browser.

References

  1. ↑ "Ixquick.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-12-14.
  2. ↑ "Ixquick Search." http://www.metamend.com''.
  3. ↑ "New Ixquick International Search Engine Unveiled." http://www.hventure.nl.'' March 23, 2005.
  4. ↑ "Ixquick/StartPage Direct queries per day (28 Day Average)". Retrieved March 20, 2015.
  5. ↑ "When is your StartMail private email service going to be released? - Startpage Support". 2013-07-23. Retrieved 2013-08-07.
  6. ↑ "IXQuick.com Q & A With David Bodnick & Alex van Eesteren". www.marketingshift.com. March 23, 2005.
  7. ↑ "Ixquick.com Eliminates 'Big Brother'". biz.yahoo.com. June 27, 2006.
  8. ↑ "http://ixquick.com/eng/protect_privacy_qa.html Privacy Q&A"
  9. ↑ Greenberg, Andy (February 15, 2008). "The Privacy Paradox". Forbes.com. Retrieved 2009-09-12.
  10. ↑ "Ixquick: Privacy Policy"
  11. ↑ "First European Privacy Seal Awarded" (Press release). Ixquick. 14 July 2008.
  12. ↑ "About Europrise."
  13. ↑ "Register of Awarded Seals". EuroPrise. Retrieved 9 July 2013.
  14. ↑ Albrecht, Katherine (January 28, 2009). "Privacy-friendly search engine Ixquick.com completely stops recording IP addresses". Ixquick press release. Retrieved 2010-06-21.
  15. ↑ Rodriguez, Sarah (May 1, 2009). "Search engines besides Google? Who knew?". Special to Wisconsin Law Journal (Wisconsin Law Journal). Retrieved 2013-07-11.
  16. ↑ Shuman, Bruce A. (2001). Issues for Libraries and Information Science in the Internet Age. Englewood, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited, Inc. p. 159. ISBN 1-56308-805-3.
  17. ↑ "ixquick Privacy Q & A". Ixquick.
  18. ↑ Ixquick Company FAQ
  19. ↑ "What is the difference between StartPage and Ixquick? - StartPage Support Center". Support.startpage.com. Retrieved 2014-04-09.

External links