Default for the Tor project, which is a red flag imho. (single point of trust is also single point of failure, Tor project is commonly considered dubious among experts and has large code, lack of independent code validation and huge government funding. It's offtopic to futher discuss it here, just why I call it a red flag)
(1) Unless you can validate that they do it safely, they don't. (2) I cannot validate startpage. Thus, startpage does not do it safely. Q.E.D.
If you disagree with axiom 1, buy a (truly) random box of pills, swallow, post results (they should cure you even if you didn't know you're sick) (by your logic, not mine!) (assuming authority is a fallacy, which is debatable but so often true I'd rather not depend on it)
If you can invalidate 2, please do!
Is it better than just using Google? Yes. Maybe okay is still better than okay. (Swallow random pills if you're dying and can't improve upon random)
It's also much slower than Google, but at least it's faster than duckduckgo and actually returns results worth querying for.