Google challenger Neeva search engine shuts down

NEW DELHI: Neeva, which challenged the Google search engine, is winding up operations as Founders Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan admitted that they had faced significant challenges attracting new users.

The founders wrote in a blog post that they 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, the added.

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”.

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,” said the founders. Neeva launched an ad-free, subscription-only search engine in the US two years ago, before adding a free tier. Neeva had reached more than 600,000 users.

But, as per the founders, 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”.