Neeva, a search engine co-founded by former Google employees Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan in 2019, has announced to shut shop.
"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," a post on Neeva's website read.
The search engine was once thought to compete with tech giant Google by providing ad-free and privacy-oriented internet search.
The co-founders said that they will delete all the user data they have and added that that they are proud of being the first search engine to provide cited, real-time AI answers to a majority of queries early this year by integrating Large Language Model (LLM) systems with their search engine.
The co-founders cited the challenge of convincing regular users of the need to switch their search engine and the 'unnecessary friction' required to change default search settings as the reasons behind the closure.
A statement from the company mentioned that the challenge of getting users to switch to a new browser was bigger than the challenge of getting users to pay for ad-free internet-surfing.
"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," Neeva said in its post.
The post also mentioned that Neeva will be refunding the subscription charges paid by their users for Neeva Premium. Neeva also talked at length about the company's future plans involving working with LLMs and integrating AI with search engines.
"Over the past year, we’ve seen the clear, pressing need to use LLMs effectively, inexpensively, safely, and responsibly. 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," Neeva said.
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