lynx program failing with 'Can't access startfile'?

The default Lynx homepage is set in /etc/lynx.cfg by the STARTFILE statement. You can set $LYNX_CFG to your own config file, or set $WWW_HOME to your preferred homepage.

export WWW_HOME="http://www.google.com/"

Or you could just give an address on the command line:

lynx www.google.com

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Aside: You could also try elinks or w3m browsers.