Private search engine Neeva has abandoned its mission of making Google irrelevant. The founders of the privacy-focused search engine, Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan, have finally come to terms with the hard truth that building a search engine is near impossible when there is a giant already dominating the space. As a result, the Neeva service will officially shut down on 2nd June.
The goal of Neeva was to provide an ad-free search engine experience, and it managed to launch in the US in 2019, and then extended its operations to Europe. Alongside that, the company introduced NeevaAI, a chatbot aimed to challenge the ChatGPT frenzy. Unfortunately, customers were unable or unwilling to make the switch to Neeva, making it almost impossible for the service to gain any real traction.
Now the tech startup is looking for a new challenge, and its leaving statement provides some clues as to what this could be. Neeva has already developed expertise and technology in the area of large language models (LLMs), and the founders plan to apply this to create an effective, inexpensive, safe, and responsible new product or service. Additionally, cloud host provider Snowflakes is in talks to acquire the startup and help develop services for AI-related customers.
For existing Neeva users, the company is encouraging them to seek more private alternatives. DuckDuckGo and Mojeek are popular options, and help to ensure that online searches remain private and secure.
The Tech startup Neeva was founded by Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan. Ramaswamy is a former Google Head of Ads, and his journey started with one goal in mind – to create an ad-free search engine. Raghunathan, an ex-Twitter executive, worked on the development of NeevaAI. This was an AI-powered chatbot created with the intention of restoring a broken market.
The dream of replacing Google was not meant to be, however, and Neeva is set to close down in June. It will be interesting to see what the team comes up with next, and how it applies its knowledge and technology in the AI space. The future looks bright for the founders, and the success of whatever they choose to pursue next.
