“Neeva is a search engine that looks for information on the web as well as personal files like emails and other documents. It will not show any advertisements and it will not collect or profit from user data.”

Developed by a team of former Google employees, Neeva offers private, ad-free search. Since launching, it has garnered loads of positive reviews.

Search--and online experience in general--is bad and getting worse. That's the premise behind Neeva.

“Perhaps in the ultimate rebellion against his former employer, Sridhar Ramaswamy, once head of Google’s $115b advertising arm, has founded a new search engine that neither shows ads nor profits from user data.”

“Neeva users will pay...to get the search results they want rather than what advertisers want them to see.”

Would You Give Up Google for This?

After being rolled out to paying subscribers last year, Neeva's now free to download for anyone who's sick of ads in their searches.

The search engine from ex-Googlers would still like you to pay. But it thinks it’ll be easier to make the sale to users who have lived with the product.

Search--and online experience in general--is bad and getting worse. That's the premise behind Neeva.

Developed by a team of former Google employees, Neeva offers private, ad-free search. Since launching, it has garnered loads of positive reviews.

Named “FastTap Search,” the feature allows users to bypass traditional search engine results pages and head directly to a site via the list of links generated based on the query.

When the search business no longer relies on advertisers for revenue, it gets the freedom to dream up new ideas and build the type of search experience that couldn’t exist before.

Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan helped turn Google into an ad giant. Now they’re starting over with a service whose only customers are its users.

Neeva's pitch is pretty simple: It's search without the ads. It's a cleaner, nicer-looking system, and one that doesn't try to game users into clicking on things they didn't want.

Sridhar Ramaswamy, former Google Ads SVP and Neeva CEO, joins ‘Tech Check’ to discuss how his subscription-based search engine which will take on Google and makes the case for why people would pay for search.

Neeva, founded by former Google executives, will charge $4.95 per month. Sridhar Ramaswamy says the project could not have been attempted at his former company.

Giants like Facebook and Google have long resisted the concept of paying newspapers and information services they link to or include in feeds, but Neeva is willing to share income with partners.

Neeva says it will commit to sharing "at least 20%" of its revenue with content creators, offering payouts when their content directly answers a user's search query.

Neeva said it would share at least 20% of its sales with content partners such as Quora and Medium in another break from search giant Google, which for years has faced criticism for not remunerating publishers.

We see our long-term responsibility in supporting the monetization of long-tail content in ways that don’t all completely depend on ads.

The goal is to create a deeply personal search engine that can trawl through emails and other files to provide the most relevant information.

“Neeva users will pay...to get the search results they want rather than what advertisers want them to see.”

“...Neeva’s most radical departure from the Google playbook is that it charges a subscription, promising fewer ads and greater privacy.”

“Sridhar Ramaswamy, sees an opportunity—he is developing a search engine that will be ad-free and focused on giving people the best results.”

“Neeva is developing a paid, privacy-focused search engine … ‘We hope the DOJ’s actions will create a more equal playing field for search apps like Neeva that want to create real options for customers.’”

“Part of my reason for starting Neeva was I did not want this very important function [search] to become a monoculture,’ says Ramaswamy.”

“His [Sridhar Ramaswamy’s] bet is that an engine spitting out ad-free results — with other features, such as an ability to scan personal data stored on, say, your laptop — will be a compelling alternative.”

“Neeva is a search engine that looks for information on the web as well as personal files like emails and other documents. It will not show any advertisements and it will not collect or profit from user data.”

“Perhaps in the ultimate rebellion against his former employer, Sridhar Ramaswamy, once head of Google’s $115b advertising arm, has founded a new search engine that neither shows ads nor profits from user data.”

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