As mentioned above - I'm a Startpage employee. I know quite a bit about the subject so I jump in when it comes up.

Advertising on a search engine is main form of revenue > pays employees > updates > keeps current users and gets new users. You could make the argument for crowd sourcing, but it doesn't always work.

Interesting. I'm happy startpage gets revenue, whatever it is. I think I'll keep using ddg and a searx instance.