…Yandex, you mean Russia?

Startpage’s majority shareholder is System1 who is an adtech company. We don’t believe that to be an issue as they have a distinctly separate privacy policy. The Privacy Guides team reached out to Startpage back in 2020 to clear up any concerns with System1’s sizeable investment into the service, and we were satisfied with the answers we received.

From privacyguides.org

Is it a surprise? Bing is controlled by M$, and their search results are taken by Qwant and DDG. Ecosia also runs with google results so it isn’t affected.

If it’s Sailfish OS (Xperias or Jollaphones, updates are paid), apart from apps (hit or miss if it’s popular enough, pure miss if it isn’t), everything works fine (I guess, I haven’t tried it).

If it’s anything else, it’s still murky.