Neeva is an ad-free, untracked search engine created by a former employee of internet giant Google. Neeva will be free initially and will eventually be available on a subscription basis for less than $10 per month.
This new search engine is still in development and is currently in the Alpha stage. Invitations and introductory experience are required to use it.
Neeva: A new ad-free search engine
Neeva differs from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and other search engines in its privacy and lack of advertising. The search experience created by Neeva’s product team also sets it apart from the competition.
In addition, the new search engine allows linking to personal accounts such as Microsoft Office, Dropbox or Google. Users can also search for their personal documents, such as emails, presentations, etc.
Neeva has not been created from scratch, but is based on Bing search results. It will also pull data from different sources, such as weather.com, Apple Maps and Intrinio sharing.
Committed to personal data security
Neeva is committed to not sending personally identifiable information, such as location and IP addresses, to third party providers.
However, its privacy policy states that Neeva “may share personal information with our affiliated companies” and that the data will be retained for as long as you use the service.
The founders of Neeva
The two creators of the new search engine Neeva are Ramaswamy (Google’s former president of ads and commerce) and Vivek Raghunathan (YouTube’s former president of monetisation).
Sridhar Ramaswamy
Sridhar Ramaswamy was once the head of Google’s advertising business. Today, the person in charge claims to be “disillusioned” with the system he helped build, which has boosted the company’s financial revenues by about $115 billion. Maintaining the advertising model has brought “endless pressure” on workers.
He left the company two years after the online child sex abuse scandal that directly affected YouTube came to light. The system designed by Sridhar’s team automatically monitored ads showing minors wearing nudity to promote child abuse networks.
He also pointed out that Google paid more attention to revenue generation than to the ad. He even quoted an excerpt from a paper published by Google’s creators when they were still in college and admitted that the constant pursuit of revenue would lead to poor quality results.
Sridhar Ramaswamy’s view
Ramaswamy argues that companies should look at the quality of content and satisfy user demand first, not customer demand.
This is what leads him to create a search engine that is not supported by advertising, but by subscription and payment of a monthly fee.
Neeva: Will it succeed or will it fail?
The success of search engines can be attributed to their ability to deliver relevant and quality results to search engines. The Neeva search engine has been at the forefront of innovating algorithms that can meet the needs of users.
Experts believe that Neeva’s success will depend on consumers’ boredom with privacy issues and big business, so much so that they are willing to pay for services provided by other search providers for free.
An additional hurdle for Neeva: The monthly subscription
Neeva faces the additional hurdle of getting people to pay for something that many expect to be free. While there is a growing awareness that Google and Facebook’s free services come at the expense of personal data, many consumers, even those who express a concern for their privacy, are often unwilling to pay for an alternative.
The economics of subscriptions show that people are willing to spend a nominal monthly fee for something they would otherwise have nothing for, but success will be an uphill battle for Neeva, like other startups around the world.