Google Search challenger Neeva is shutting down

Neeva, which challenged Google’s search engine, is shutting down after founders Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan admitted they had faced significant challenges attracting new users.

The founders wrote in their blog post that they started Neeva with a mission to bring search back to their users.

“We’ve been working on search and search ads for over a decade, and we truly believed there was room for a search model that prioritized the interest of the user, not the advertiser — for a private, ad-free experience,” he added.

But during this journey, “we’ve discovered that building a search engine is one thing and convincing ordinary users of the need to switch to a better choice is quite another.”

These headwinds, combined with a different economic environment, have made it clear that consumer search is no longer the path to sustainable business.

“Over the next few weeks, we will shut down neeva.com and our consumer search product and move to a new area of focus,” said the founders.

Founded in 2019, Neeva launched the 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.

However, according to the founders, “acquiring users has been really difficult” from the unnecessary friction and challenges of changing search settings to helping people understand the difference between a search engine and a browser.

If you have a paid Neeva Premium subscription, you will receive a refund for the unused part of the subscription. “Over the past year, we have seen a clear and compelling need to use LLMs efficiently, affordably, safely and responsibly,” said the founders.

They are actively exploring how “we can apply our search and LLM expertise in these circumstances and will provide updates on the future of our work and our team in the coming weeks”.

Read all the Latest Tech News here.