I've used all of the privacy search products for many months, some many years - looking into how they work, trying different settings configurations, keeping track of trends in results like accuracy, bias, and the similarity to results and adds offered by the major players. Adding Startpage is one of the first things I do when setting up a device/browser. Less bias, more unique results, less obnoxious ad tactics, and less creepy data fed to my digital twin. The only con is fewer results at times. Bears little weight when you compare the quality to the longer list made of endless repetative garbage.

add-on would be great if the more annoying then helfup "Escape Route feature" could be disabled.
blurring a site when pressing "esc" 3x but not reloading the site properly after that; closing tab when pressing "esc" 4x - that is not really what I need or expect from a privacy-/search engine-add-on.

Very cool looking page without hoopla with all the things I hate about Google taken out. I can't stand advertising because it has become the focus of everything, everywhere. Being able to search without it is similar to reading a book in a quiet place with no distractions. I would call it "comfortable". My laptop does not lag from everyone attempting to put things into my computer. My processor is calm. So am I. No blitzkrieg of unwanted ads. Finally a search engine that is up to date, quick, simple, and easy on the eyes. I hope it stays this way. Don't sell out to an alphabet agency. I will spread the word about this search engine as long as it considers my privacy. Thanks bunches.

It's nice to have such a nice little tracker-blocker.
The only thing that confuses me a little bit is that if I press three times Esc it blurs the page for a few seconds and when I press Esc a fourth time it closes the current tab and opens a new one with startpage.com

Startpage Privacy Protection is obviously based on EFF's Privacy Badger and does an okay job, although it's not as mighty as uBlock Origin, for example.

Though, what I find really irritating is that the addon apparently injects additional HTML elements into all websites for unknown reason; I suspect it's for analytics on startpage.com.

Since that can't be disabled in the settings, I don't use the addon anymore.

This addon states it doesn't use any keyboard shortcuts. However, as long as it is activated, pressing the Escape button three times will blur my current tab and pressing Escape four times will close the current tab and open a new one to startpage.com. This has broken all my trust in startpage's legitimacy, I'll both uninstall this addon as well as change my start page.
/edit in response to the dev: "up front"? I searched for that "feature" back then, but nobody seemed to know anything about it. After your reply, I searched both the addon's mozilla page as well as your homepage for ANY trace of it. Well, yes, you do mention it in one dedicated article (not on the addon's page, not in the features list, nowhere but this article) that I only saw after asking Google about it. Yes, Google.
Also, why is it not possible to delete this "feature"? Can't be too hard to code that in, can it?