Neeva is Shutting Down Its Privacy-First, Ad-Free $4.95-a-Month Search Engine

Two years ago Slashdot covered "the ad-free, privacy-first search engine from ex-Googlers" — with a $4.95 monthly subscription fee.

Today long-time Slashdot reader imcdona brings the news that "Neeva" is now shutting down. From Neeva's announcement: We started Neeva with the mission to take search back to its users. Having worked on search and search ads for over a decade, we sincerely believed that there was space for a model of search that put user and not advertiser interests first — a private, ads-free experience.

Building search engines is hard. It is even harder to do with a tiny team of 50 people who are up against entrenched organizations with endless resources. We overcame these obstacles and built a search stack from the ground up, running a crawl that fetched petabytes of information from the web and used that to power an independent search stack.

In early 2022, the upcoming impact of generative AI and LLMs became clear to us. We embarked on an ambitious effort to seamlessly blend LLMs into our search stack. We rallied the Neeva team around the vision to create an answer engine. We are proud of being the first search engine to provide cited, real-time AI answers to a majority of queries early this year.

But throughout this journey, we've discovered that it is one thing to build a search engine, and an entirely different thing to convince regular users of the need to switch to a better choice. From the unnecessary friction required to change default search settings, to the challenges in helping people understand the difference between a search engine and a browser, acquiring users has been really hard. Contrary to popular belief, convincing users to pay for a better experience was actually a less difficult problem compared to getting them to try a new search engine in the first place.

These headwinds, combined with the different economic environment, have made it clear that there is no longer a path towards creating a sustainable business in consumer search.

As a result, over the next few weeks, we will be shutting down neeva.com and our consumer search product, and shifting to a new area of focus.
"As part of the shutdown, we are deleting all user data..." the announcement emphasizes. "We are truly grateful to our community, and we are truly sorry that we aren't able to continue to provide the search engine that you want and deserve."

So what happens next? Many of the techniques we have pioneered with small models, size reduction, latency reduction, and inexpensive deployment are the elements that enterprises really want, and need, today. We are actively exploring how we can apply our search and LLM expertise in these settings, and we will provide updates on the future of our work and our team in the next few weeks.

Space for another?

[coopertempleclause]

we sincerely believed that there was space for a model of search that put user and not advertiser interests first — a private, ads-free experience.

There is, it's called DuckDuckGo, but they don't charge a subscription.

First, understand the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

we sincerely believed that there was space for a model of search that put user and not advertiser interests first

And you were wrong.

There is, it's called DuckDuckGo, but they don't charge a subscription.

And their search results suck. I wish that DDG was a viable alternative to Google, but they aren't.

Google makes a gazillion dollars a year from selling advertising. That huge pile of money allows them to build giant data centers all over the world. **THAT** is what you are competing against.

Re:First, understand the problem

[alvinrod]

I use Duck Duck Go fine for at least 95% of searches so it's a perfectly fine Google replacement. The only time I need to use Google is for some obscure programming related searches. They're plenty viable for most people, particularly as Google seems hell bent on making their own search less useful.

Re:

[The Evil Atheist]

Google has been making its search less useful, but it's also a losing battle against unindexable sites, generated content, SEO, and other attempts to hijack search terms.

Re:

[Can'tNot]

You can use Startpage [startpage.com] for those 5% of searches that you can't do on Duck Duck Go. It's anonymized Google search results.

Yes yes, "anonymized." I know the problem, but this is still a big step up over using Google directly. And I'm not sure that Duck Duck Go is really any better in that respect.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

It's also not private [bleepingcomputer.com].

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I see you're one of those less-intelligents TFA complains about that don't understand the difference between a search engine (free and private) and a web browser (loaded with Microsoft trackers).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[isj]

We (Findx) didn't remove search terms. We did add synonyms and word variations (with lower score of course).

We shut down in 2018. I would say that our downfall was that the team was too small (there's a lot of work in making a search engine), and that we didn't have a large enough user base to use user clicks to rank results

Re:

[aaarrrgggh]

I subscribed to Neeva because DDG's results have become useless; they are really focused on giving bad results to increase the number of searches you need to try to get closer to a non-merchandised result.

It isn't great. The generative LLM is pretty much worthless for my needs. Sad to see they are folding... guess I am out the remaining $30 of my annual subscription, but not that big of a deal.

The 'tyranny of the default'

[nocoiner]

>"it is one thing to build a search engine, and an entirely different thing to convince regular users of the need to switch to a better choice. From the unnecessary friction required to change default search settings, to the challenges in helping people understand the difference between a search engine and a browser, acquiring users has been really hard. Contrary to popular belief, convincing users to pay for a better experience was actually a less difficult problem compared to getting them to try a new search engine in the first place"

As some people have called it, the "tyranny of the default" settings is something that's very, very hard to break when already entrenched.

Re:

[fahrbot-bot]

As some people have called it, the "tyranny of the default" settings is something that's very, very hard to break when already entrenched.

I think DeSantis and a few other people are experiencing that right now ...

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

MSN and then Bing have been the default for years, and people still switch to better services. DuckDuckGo also managed to create a self sustaining search service that somewhat respects privacy.

Anyway, $5/month is overpriced. For the same amount you can get Mullvad, which offer both a VPN and a search service.

Subscription is incompatible with privacy

[ffkom]

If people have to reveal their identity to a search engine for a paid subscription, that is already contradicting any efforts to provide better privacy for Web searches. I am therefore not surprised at all that this business model failed.

Re:

[Nrrqshrr]

I agree with you, but you gotta pay for the service somehow. At least with a paid service, you know that you're just giving them your payment info.
With "free" services, you're giving them everything else. Hell, most of the time they know your payment info too, anyway.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

> I agree with you, but you gotta pay for the service somehow. At least with a paid service, you know that you're just giving them your payment info.

ZCash, Monero - there are ways, Dude.

Re:

[bn-7bc]

Well yea, but they could organize it as to separate business units, one that does the billing and sends only the revenue on to the other bu that deals with the development and running of services, the only thing the bu deling with no biking matterscevere seas is a user id and avariable thet tells them if the session is valid and whar account type it is ( this might be needed for future functionality, such as number if queries/month for apis etc) Presto login in users but no way fot the be dealing wwith dev

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Never heard of it, seems kind of interesting

[spacec0w]

A lot of great ideas just don't catch on because of a lack of media coverage or the right viral vector. I would have at least given it a try if I'd heard of it before it was shutting down. Shame.

Re:

[brickhouse98]

Same. But I also think people like ourselves are not indicative of the general public. A lot of people clearly do not value their own personal data much, if at all.

I said it here firt...

[Sir Holo]

And you Slashdotters of old will remember what I had to say back then:

Nothining at all. I was unaware.

Good ideas are not enough

[Tony Isaac]

There are millions of patents that describe great ideas that never went anywhere. Yet there are plenty of inventors that think to themselves, "If I could just patent a great idea, I'll be rich!"

I am personally named as an inventor of US patent 7,865,504, for work I did for my company at the time, that filed for the patent. Both the work itself, and the company, came to nothing. Why? The company was over-confident in it's abilities to actually sell their invention.

The point is, it takes more than a good idea to be successful. It also requires good marketing and good execution, and generally speaking, lots of money.