intrigeri:

Hi,

we're in the process of upgrading Tor Browser to 4.5 in Tails, and I noticed the migration to Disconnect Search as the default search engine. That's the kind of changes that we often have to justify in face of users and auditors, but I wasn't able to find the rationale behind this decision on the corresponding ticket [1].

I see the release announcement [2] says:

...

Disconnect provides private Google search results to Tor users without Captchas or bans.

And below, Georg commented:

...

Startpage was not happy with our traffic and showed sometimes CAPTCHAs. Disconnect on the other hand approached us with respect to search engine traffic and donated some money.

So, just to clarify: is that the entire rationale behind this move?

Yes, although the donated money does not really count here. That did not influence the decision but I figured it might be good to add this anyway for transparency reasons.

Georg