In an unexpected turn of events, ad-free, privacy-focused search engine Neeva has announced plans to shut down its consumer search operations.
The company, co-founded by former Google executives Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan, announced today on their website.
Neeva’s journey
Launched in 2019, Neeva aimed to disrupt the search engine market by offering an alternative that prioritized user privacy and offered an ad-free experience.
The company was born out of Ramaswamy’s belief that an over-reliance on ads was compromising the quality of search results. As CEO of his own search company, Ramaswamy set out to create a better search experience without the need for ads.
Neeva’s mission was to bring search back to its users, focusing on providing an experience that put their interests first instead of advertisers.
The company built a search stack from scratch, using a team of 50 people to compete against larger, more established organizations.
By early 2022, Neeva had integrated Large Language Models (LLM) into its search stack, becoming the first search engine to provide real-time AI answers cited to most queries.
A rapid growth and a sudden end
Neeva quickly attracted a substantial user base, growing to half a million monthly active users four months after launch. Despite this impressive growth, the company faced significant challenges in convincing regular users to change their established search habits.
The company cited this user acquisition challenge and an unspecified change in the economic environment as reasons for the decision to cease operations.
As part of the deactivation process, Neeva will delete all user data. Neeva Premium subscribers will receive a refund for the unused portion of their subscriptions.
Despite the closure of its consumer search product, Neeva’s journey is not over. The company hints at a change in approach driven by the pressing need to use LLMs economically, safely and responsibly.
Many of the techniques that Neeva has pioneered, such as model size reduction, latency reduction, and economical deployment, are elements that are required by enterprises. The team plans to explore how they can apply their search and LLM expertise in these settings.
Implications for the search engine market
Neeva’s closure highlights the difficulties faced by new entrants to the search engine market, even with unique features and extensive experience.
It also raises questions about the viability of subscription-based models of search and leaves a void for users seeking privacy-focused, ad-free experiences.
Finally, Neeva’s use of LLM could influence how other companies approach the use of AI in research.
As the Neeva team embarks on their next venture, the search market and tech industry will no doubt be watching closely to see how they navigate these uncharted waters.
Featured image: Poetra.RH/Shutterstock
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