A new search engine namely ‘Neeva’ is set to be launched by Sridhar Ramaswamy who formerly ran Google’s massive Ad business.
Google has been dominating the market for search engines where several startups have failed including Microsoft’s Bing. Neeva will be a direct competitor to Google which will not have Ads and is subscription-supported which had so far raised USD 37.5 million and has 25 employees. Furthermore, it will not track users while allowing personalization without data mining and can even search personal or local files and emails as well.
Ramaswamy left Google in 2018 as a result of disillusionment where the useful search results were pushed down the page to squeeze in more advertisements with the relentless pressure to maintain Google’s revenue growth. In addition, the privacy was sacrificed for online tracking tools to track what the users see resulting in a higher cost to the company’s users as the quality and usefulness of search results are compromised.
Neeva will initially be free and will cost less than USD 10 per month later with an ambition to decrease as more subscribers join as stated by Ramaswamy. The new search aims to deliver its promise on search quality and differentiate from that on Google and promote through word-of-mouth of technology search influencers. The company would first develop a large enough user base to become sustainable in the long run and then capture a greater share of the market.
