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“On a large scale, an ad-supported product serves the business that shows you ads, it doesn’t serve you.” With that thought, Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan, IIT alumni and former Google executives, are set to roll out Neeva, an ad-free private search product, which, by the middle of this year, hopes to deliver a customer-centric alternative, at a time when growing concerns about the control exercised by technological megaliths.
“The advertising model has been great for bringing search to everyone on the planet, but over time there is more and more pressure to show more ads and not really what the user wants. Our thesis is that we can create a much better research product, just focusing on the needs of a customer, ”says Ramaswamy, CEO of Neeva, speaking on a video call from her California home. It’s an area the 54-year-old is familiar with, having served as senior vice president of advertising and commerce at Google, and having also led its travel, shopping and research infrastructure teams.
Raghunathan studied at IIT Mumbai and was previously VP of Monetization at YouTube.
“So it’s actually a wide range of experiences. Likewise, Vivek was the first technical lead for what is now known as the Google Assistant. So we actually worked on research on both sides, ”says Ramaswamy, a graduate of IIT Chennai. That’s why they felt “confident enough” that they could build the technology relatively inexpensively, he adds.
With a team of 45 people in the United States, the plan is to deploy Neeva in “four to five months”, first in the domestic United States market, then in English-speaking regions such as Western Europe. , Australia and India. “Fortunately, we have a great team of engineers, designers and product managers, and great backers,” says Ramaswamy. Neeva has raised $ 37.5 million so far, with equal investments from Greylock, Sequoia Capital and Ramaswamy himself.
The product will be different from what people are used to, offering a single window for searching and querying personal data on services like Dropbox and email accounts, Ramaswamy says. “We need to rethink the core technology. And at some level, things like the way you explore the web, the way you index the basics are similar, ”he says. Like Google, Neeva will also use artificial intelligence and machine learning to create the secret sauce – rankings for search.
Regarding the apprehensions that may arise regarding personal data, Ramaswamy says: “We guarantee that the product and the company are designed in such a way that personal data is indexed to serve your results, and for nothing else… We create a company that from the start has been customer first and customer only. We absolutely want to make sure that this is the one and only source of income. “
A blog on Neeva also reiterates its commitment to be ad-free, guarantees that “your data will never be sold in any form”, and promises that the search history will be deleted by default after 90 days. (Google’s default is 18 months.)
After spending 16 years at Google, Ramaswamy says he has come to believe that it is “just not healthy” to have so many big tech platforms under control. “There are good people out there, that’s not the problem. If you need to make more money, the temptation to run an additional ad is just very strong, ”he says, adding that what Neeva is offering is a choice. “And giving that choice creates a richer Internet.”
He is aware of the challenges of offering a paid product and of the need to ensure that it is “excellent”. However, says Ramaswamy, for him it is motivation. He cites the example of services like Spotify and Dropbox, which have been successful in segments where there was no shortage of free options, and hopes Neeva could force competitors to cut ads as well. “… You can’t say now, I’m going to show a page full of ads… Users are going to go for a paid option, because enough is enough.”
Ramswamy adds, “We are convinced that a certain segment of the population will see the value of a superior product. And especially in the current environment of worry about the size and influence of tech companies, we think we can get enough of the people saying, “ I just want a simple alternative, a service that I use, which I pay ”. There you go, there is no more worrying about the data, there is no more worrying about what else is happening. “
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