Neeva — A Google Alternative for Ad Free Search Engine?

Naveen Gupta
nbloglinks
Published in
7 min readFeb 18, 2021

Neeva search engine is claimed to be a google alternative for an ad-free 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. It plans to make money on subscriptions from users paying for the service.

Why Another Search Engine?

As you know a new search engine crops every day in the internet market but most are built on google chromium style (even Microsoft’s Edge browser!) claiming to be fast but still based on google search engine algorithm.

So you may get the same results which are based on google search engine results i.e. ads all over on the first page which are now heavily biased towards google’s ad revenue model.

Now here is a new search player coming called ‘Neeva’ primarily focused to give you a choice in how you search and experience the internet.

According to Neeva search engine developers it is created to feel like your personal corner of the web, designed specifically for you — always ad-free and private. And their mission is to serve our users, and only our users.

>>>> Join Neeva Search Engine for Private And Ad Free Future!

Neeva Search Engine — Creation And Inspiration

Neeva is founded by Sridhar Ramaswamy (ex-SVP of Ads at Google) and Vivek Raghunathan (ex-VP of Monetization at YouTube). They met in the early days of search ads at Google and came up with the idea for Neeva over hikes and coffee.

Sridhar Ramswamy
Vivek Raghunathan

Duo team up for ad free search engine…

Sridhar Ramaswamy was the executive in charge(Senior Vice President of Ads & Commerce) of the google’s $115 billion advertising arm.

As per Sridhar Ramaswamy Google’s growth had come at a heavy cost to the company’s users. Useful search results were pushed down the page to squeeze in more advertisements, and privacy was sacrificed for online tracking tools to keep tabs on what ads people were seeing.

Neeva Search Engine Team: Man Behind It

As per Neeva website their financial investors includes:

  • Asheem ChandnaGreylock partner. Enterprise tech investor. Served on over 20 technology company boards. BSEE and MS Comp. E. from Case Western.
  • Bill CoughranSequoia Partner, Investor, Entrepreneur, Ran Search@Google, Computing Sciences@Bell Labs, Stanford PhD, CalTech BS/MS
  • Reid HoffmanGreylock partner. Investor, entrepreneur, strategist. Co-Founder of Linkedin and founding team PayPal. Investor: Airbnb, Facebook, Zynga. BS Stanford, MA Oxford.

Industry Leading Talent & Board Members includes search guru Udi Manber, consumer services expert Margo Georgiadis, and web browser expert Darin Fisher

Neeva has raised $40 million with equal investments from Greylock, Sequoia Capital and Ramaswamy himself.

Neeva developer team members has built iconic products at companies like Google, Snap, Dropbox and WhatsApp. And their focus on to create awesome privacy-focused products for its users.

Is It Ad Free Google’s Competitor?

Google’s businesses are the largest player of the ad revenue business market.

Google accounts for roughly 90% of all searches globally and competitors have tried unsuccessfully for years to make inroads.

Neeva’s main hurdle is of getting people to pay for something that google and others giving as free. While it true that free services from Google and Facebook come at the expense of personal data, many consumers, who express concern about their privacy, are too unwilling to pay for an alternative.

Sridhar Ramaswamy pointed to how Google has devoted more space to ads at the top of search results with the results users are seeking pushed down the page — an issue more pronounced on smaller smartphone screens.

Privacy Comes At A price!

It is expected that you will never be shown ads on Neeva, also Neeva made a guarantee that your data will never be sold in any form whatsoever (aggregated or not) to anybody. Neeva also made a promise to delete your search history by default after 90 days.

Neeva has not set a price for its subscription. It will be free for initial users until the end of the year. After that, Ramaswamy said he aimed to charge a monthly subscription of less than $10 and he hopes to bring the price down over time as more users sign up.

Here is an quote from an interview with Sridhar Ramaswamy

I want there to be a full-featured version that is $5 a month roughly, and we can potentially create bundles with other additional things for a higher price to create more of a premium tier. But we want this service to be high quality, low cost, and affordable. You should be able to afford Neeva for less than the cost of two cups of coffee and there are cups of coffee in the US that cost more than $5. So we think that is a very useful guiding principle for where we should set the price.

(As for partnership with publishers) I want us to be paid only by customers, and that is important for us because that’s what gives us independence. When we do things like surface up publishers’ content, it could be a blog page, or a portion of somebody’s premium inventory on Neeva, that’s when we want to do a revenue share to the publisher. This is something that is far down the line, but the point is that this model is very publisher-friendly. In terms of actual dollar costs will probably end up having one or two versions, depending on how we package things.

“The ultimate goal is to offer an alternative for the consumer base who are worried about their privacy, who don’t want Google hoovering up their data and targeting ads based on their search history”.

What Would Be The Future For Private Ad Free Search Engines?

Neeva is not an all-new search engine from the ground up. It has all kind of technologies behind it to come up required to compete google.

The search rankings are powered by Microsoft Bing, the weather information comes from weather.com, stock data from Intrinio, and the maps are from Apple.

When users link their Google, Microsoft Office or Dropbox account, Neeva sifts through personal files as well as the public internet for the right answers.

And because it knows the people in your contacts, the retailers you ordered from, and news publications you received newsletters from, Neeva’s private search engine results will become more personalized over time.

So, Is it going to become another google without ads?

Neeva private subscription search engine is now publicly available in the U.S.

If you are interested to join an private ad free search engine you can join neeva private search engine for free now

Neeva has 600,000 users in the US, where it launched last year.

Neeva is officially available in the UK(premium plan starts at £5 per month) , France, and Germany! Folks in these countries will now see the full Neeva experience including localized results for stocks, weather, restaurants, and more. Neeva members in these countries will be able to see rich, full-page experiences and customize preferred retailers and news sources.

Neeva Plans & Prices

Neeva Search Engine Price Plan

Neeva Free Plan is sufficient for test all of one’s privacy concern and it’s limited ad-free searches (50 searches a week) with personal account (limited to 3 apps like email, document or calendar) capabilities with private search+tracking blocking features!

Neeva Premium Plan comes in 2 price packages:

  • Premium Monthly Plan — It includes all features of free plan + unlimited ad-free searches with unlimited search across personal account. You will also get early access to new features as premium users and premium password manager + VPN (Best in class privacy tools like Bitdefender, Dashlane and Lastpass..) for monthly price of $5.99.
  • Premium Annual Plan — This premium plan provide all the above features on 30% off discount offer (U.S. residents will also get Insider benefits which including live Q&A’s with Neeva leadership, early access to new features, Premium NFT, and more) i.e. $4.17/month (if paid annually!)

Here is what Neeva search engine joining page promises to you!

  • We show only real results. No ads, no affiliate links.
  • We build for you, not advertisers.
  • We protect you from thousands of trackers.

>>>> Wanna try ad free future!

P.S. article is based on information gathered from various sources.

This Article is originally published at nbloglinks.com

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Naveen Gupta
nbloglinks

Hi, This is a middle-aged young man who’s life journey to perform various skills & develop them and then use them for world community 😜