Search engine startup from former Google Ads boss raises $40M(axios.com)
axios.com
Search engine startup from former Google Ads boss raises $40M
https://www.axios.com/neeva-google-ad-fundraising-b23006ca-e9ee-410b-9914-7083beecbd1c.html
114 コメント
Almost all meta search engines use Bing or Google's data and inherit this to a greater or lesser extent.
I would argue that a search engine can't be truly privacy focused without independence. Mojeek is one of the only ones that falls into this category. Compare their policy with Neeva's - https://www.mojeek.com/about/privacy/
I would argue that a search engine can't be truly privacy focused without independence. Mojeek is one of the only ones that falls into this category. Compare their policy with Neeva's - https://www.mojeek.com/about/privacy/
Couldn't a privacy-focused search engine potentially proxy all searches through a single Google and a single Bing "user" such that they weren't able to build a profile on any individual?
Yes, and I suspect that's the aspirational model that is used by most. But ultimately they are at the mercy of Google and Bing's terms when they use their data. Realistically DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Yahoo, Ecosia, Lycos, etc. won't just shut down their businesses if they feel that Bing crosses a privacy line in the sand. And neither will Startpage or Ask if Google do the same. Follow the money and all that.
You would think, but the search engines have a tight-lid on that sort of thing via at-least terms of use.
Ideally, the HTTP/proxy layer of the internet could have solved this with caching of the search URLs, but caching has pretty much been gimped thanks to "privacy", HTTPS, logins, etc. I'll add this as another data-point to my tin-foil hat explanation of why privacy and HTTPs has so heavily been forced upon us by Google et al.
Ideally, the HTTP/proxy layer of the internet could have solved this with caching of the search URLs, but caching has pretty much been gimped thanks to "privacy", HTTPS, logins, etc. I'll add this as another data-point to my tin-foil hat explanation of why privacy and HTTPs has so heavily been forced upon us by Google et al.
That’s exactly what Startpage does. Everything’s proxied on their own infra in different countries. IIRC we were the only ones allowed to do that because we had a legacy contract from Google.
Yes, I assumed as such as soon as I read "personalized" in this article. Companies don't tend to do all that in-house, so they'll try to figure out your personal life and send it off as usual. I find this ethically questionable practice a bit strange when filter bubbles are not necessarily even good for your search experience. You'd think it would make more business sense out of both technical reasons and PR to steer clear of it. I mean, I see many complaints about Google results lately and they're the experts at this. I'd stick with DuckDuckGo if what you're looking for is something other than Google that is also more privacy concious.
Howdy! Wanted to help share some context as I'm the Head of Product for Neeva.
First, thank you for this feedback and everyone else's in the thread, as well. We are listening and improving based on what we hear from our early users and all those interested in our work.
For context on some of the choices we made when thinking about building a private search engine:
- First, one of the biggest risks to people’s privacy online is advertising. To present a true alternative requires an alternative source of revenue than advertisers. By being a subscription service we only put users first.
- Second, a search engine that stores nothing can’t get better. Even on this thread people have preferences like wanting to never see Pinterest results or see more of them. We want to offer a better search experience and privacy so you don’t have to choose one or the other.
Unfortunately, we can’t build all things ourselves to get there. Whenever we work with a partner, we are very careful to ensure that they see only as little as they need to see. For example, while we do use Stripe to process credit card payments, they are never going to see what anyone searched on Neeva. However, in order to cover the full, diverse spectrum of what people search we have partners like Yelp, Xignite and Bing in addition to our own tech. Given what’s required, there isn’t a viable, private search engine that exists without such partners, as well. Whether others disclose them is another question. Particularly the advertising partners of the “free” search engines...
In each of these cases, we vet the privacy standards of these businesses and make sure they align with our privacy policy and values, as well. In cases like Bing we take proactive measures to protect user privacy by obfuscating or omitting all other personal information outside of a query.
Therefore, clauses like the above are meant to help bring transparency more than anything.
Lastly, in terms of aggregated and de-identified information, we’ll take another look at this language. We've already updated our policy based on user feedback and we have no intention of ever sharing de-identified information like the above. Thanks for the callout.
Keep the feedback coming! We're listening. This is hard stuff and we appreciate all the support we receive.
First, thank you for this feedback and everyone else's in the thread, as well. We are listening and improving based on what we hear from our early users and all those interested in our work.
For context on some of the choices we made when thinking about building a private search engine:
- First, one of the biggest risks to people’s privacy online is advertising. To present a true alternative requires an alternative source of revenue than advertisers. By being a subscription service we only put users first.
- Second, a search engine that stores nothing can’t get better. Even on this thread people have preferences like wanting to never see Pinterest results or see more of them. We want to offer a better search experience and privacy so you don’t have to choose one or the other.
Unfortunately, we can’t build all things ourselves to get there. Whenever we work with a partner, we are very careful to ensure that they see only as little as they need to see. For example, while we do use Stripe to process credit card payments, they are never going to see what anyone searched on Neeva. However, in order to cover the full, diverse spectrum of what people search we have partners like Yelp, Xignite and Bing in addition to our own tech. Given what’s required, there isn’t a viable, private search engine that exists without such partners, as well. Whether others disclose them is another question. Particularly the advertising partners of the “free” search engines...
In each of these cases, we vet the privacy standards of these businesses and make sure they align with our privacy policy and values, as well. In cases like Bing we take proactive measures to protect user privacy by obfuscating or omitting all other personal information outside of a query.
Therefore, clauses like the above are meant to help bring transparency more than anything.
Lastly, in terms of aggregated and de-identified information, we’ll take another look at this language. We've already updated our policy based on user feedback and we have no intention of ever sharing de-identified information like the above. Thanks for the callout.
Keep the feedback coming! We're listening. This is hard stuff and we appreciate all the support we receive.
Although I've asked before, a great many times, can anyone explain to me why, if I search for "Carburetor for Ford Fiesta", just showing me ads for carburetors with no intrusive data mining isn't enough for companies these days?
I would, in all likelihood, click on something like that.
It's easy to infer "oh, this guy needs a new carburetor for his Ford Fiesta" from my search. What possible additional benefit is there to mining the ever-living hell out of me further?
Who is paying for this shit?
Is advertising and tracking a massive ponzi scheme?
Edit: I should point out that although the content piece doesn't explicitly mention ads, the creator is an ad-man from Google and I'd put money on it having ads anyway... hence my comment.
I would, in all likelihood, click on something like that.
It's easy to infer "oh, this guy needs a new carburetor for his Ford Fiesta" from my search. What possible additional benefit is there to mining the ever-living hell out of me further?
Who is paying for this shit?
Is advertising and tracking a massive ponzi scheme?
Edit: I should point out that although the content piece doesn't explicitly mention ads, the creator is an ad-man from Google and I'd put money on it having ads anyway... hence my comment.
Do you live in Minnesota? If so, you might prefer to buy from somewhere online-but-local.
Do you normally buy the branded dealer part, or a generic? That would impact which ad you want to see/click.
Will you be wanting to buy this carburettor outright, or would you prefer to pay $1 per month for the next 20 years for it?
Will you also be wanting fitting instructions, a guarantee, tools etc. etc.
The answers dramatically impact what kind of products you might buy. Yet there are only slots to show a few companies/services, so unless Google correctly guesses, you will think the results are useless. They need data to make the right guesses.
Do you normally buy the branded dealer part, or a generic? That would impact which ad you want to see/click.
Will you be wanting to buy this carburettor outright, or would you prefer to pay $1 per month for the next 20 years for it?
Will you also be wanting fitting instructions, a guarantee, tools etc. etc.
The answers dramatically impact what kind of products you might buy. Yet there are only slots to show a few companies/services, so unless Google correctly guesses, you will think the results are useless. They need data to make the right guesses.
Those are good points, but:
I really doubt Google (or even worse, Facebook) segments people on any dimension like those, except for location. There is nothing on their analytics or ads buying interface that even hints at those, and it really doesn't show at their choice of ads.
Somehow, when Google did what the GP was talking about, their ads were incredibly useful. People would google stuff just for the ads (I was one of those, but I've met more people like that).
I really doubt Google (or even worse, Facebook) segments people on any dimension like those, except for location. There is nothing on their analytics or ads buying interface that even hints at those, and it really doesn't show at their choice of ads.
Somehow, when Google did what the GP was talking about, their ads were incredibly useful. People would google stuff just for the ads (I was one of those, but I've met more people like that).
Google uses ML models to predict which ads are most likely to be clicked.
The ML could easily be taking into account any of those things. There is no way to know how it decides which ads are most likely to be clicked - ML is a black box.
The ML could easily be taking into account any of those things. There is no way to know how it decides which ads are most likely to be clicked - ML is a black box.
Not to argue that this is a good thing, but to expand: the UX of having your ad purchaser decide how best to target a demographic is really bad, so Google abstracted it away.
For example, you might not know that only homeowners in Minnesota like to buy cheese, but you want to sell cheese to Minnesotans, so Google will automatically target your ad to homeowners. It doesn't need to know the former fact explicitly either; it's just a large correlation matrix that they learn on the fly.
For example, you might not know that only homeowners in Minnesota like to buy cheese, but you want to sell cheese to Minnesotans, so Google will automatically target your ad to homeowners. It doesn't need to know the former fact explicitly either; it's just a large correlation matrix that they learn on the fly.
It's all machine learning, they don't manually segment people. They just feed in a bunch of tracked features and the AI says what you are most likely to choose.
You make some good points but is the trade-off worth it.
Finding out where someone is from these days is fairly trivial using the IP address: the shortage of IPV4 means that it may not be 100% accurate sometimes though.
So, using your example, working out that I am in Minnesota should be easy enough. At that point, I'd wager that people will either buy from Amazon (sell many cheap/fake/knockoff stuff that does the job) or would buy from Minnesota Bob's Local Car Parts Emporium... no data to back that up but I'd imagine either of those scenarios would account for a large number of people - My own preference (for the most part) these days is local business with a delivery option (not Amazon any more due to reasons).
With your example, there is a whole bunch of extra options in there that I would put serious money on that no one can tell what I want from mining the shit out of me. Not Google, not anyone.
Even with all the data they can muster, there is no way that they can make the decision that "this guy wants ad number 15, not ad number 16" with enough accuracy that the people paying to have their ad shown are actually getting a return.
With context-sensitive ads, I'd wager there'd be a high chance that someone in Minnesota searching for carburetors that sees an ad for Minnesota Bob's Local Car Parts Emporium would want to buy from him... again, no data to back it up, but equally, I have yet to see any substantive data that mining actually results in an appreciable, measurable increase in sales... none!
I still believe it's all (mostly) a ponzi scheme.
Finding out where someone is from these days is fairly trivial using the IP address: the shortage of IPV4 means that it may not be 100% accurate sometimes though.
So, using your example, working out that I am in Minnesota should be easy enough. At that point, I'd wager that people will either buy from Amazon (sell many cheap/fake/knockoff stuff that does the job) or would buy from Minnesota Bob's Local Car Parts Emporium... no data to back that up but I'd imagine either of those scenarios would account for a large number of people - My own preference (for the most part) these days is local business with a delivery option (not Amazon any more due to reasons).
With your example, there is a whole bunch of extra options in there that I would put serious money on that no one can tell what I want from mining the shit out of me. Not Google, not anyone.
Even with all the data they can muster, there is no way that they can make the decision that "this guy wants ad number 15, not ad number 16" with enough accuracy that the people paying to have their ad shown are actually getting a return.
With context-sensitive ads, I'd wager there'd be a high chance that someone in Minnesota searching for carburetors that sees an ad for Minnesota Bob's Local Car Parts Emporium would want to buy from him... again, no data to back it up, but equally, I have yet to see any substantive data that mining actually results in an appreciable, measurable increase in sales... none!
I still believe it's all (mostly) a ponzi scheme.
You're misunderstanding a significant part of the equation.
Also, companies measure their advertising success in their conversion rate and A/B test vs broad based ads that target more widely. They have the opportunity to advertise super broadly if they so choose, and can measure that impact.
By narrowing the targeting, advertisers can advertise to "just" the people who are over a certain level of confidence interval, and not advertise to the people who don't give a damn.
Ad targeting is actually an exclusion business, it's about companies wanting to rule out as many people as possible, reducing their ad spend, who are then picked up by others.
Companies just don't want to buy junk ad slots. There are actually not all that many ad slots and the cost can get moderately steep for broad base, low conversion ads.
Also, companies measure their advertising success in their conversion rate and A/B test vs broad based ads that target more widely. They have the opportunity to advertise super broadly if they so choose, and can measure that impact.
By narrowing the targeting, advertisers can advertise to "just" the people who are over a certain level of confidence interval, and not advertise to the people who don't give a damn.
Ad targeting is actually an exclusion business, it's about companies wanting to rule out as many people as possible, reducing their ad spend, who are then picked up by others.
Companies just don't want to buy junk ad slots. There are actually not all that many ad slots and the cost can get moderately steep for broad base, low conversion ads.
I get what you are saying, however I do not believe for one second that there is a measurable change in sales (for the company that places an ad) for an ad like the one I mentioned above vs the mega-targetted, data-mined tracked-to-hell-and-back ads that companies like FB and Google tell you about.
Sure, a scattergun approach would be pointless but someone in Minnesota searching for carburetors has provided enough data in that one search that I don't believe targetted, mined, tracked users will be more lucrative.
I've asked on here before if anyone had a link to research that wasn't commissioned by an ad company about targetted and mined data and no one has provided one.
I'd love to be proven wrong but I don't believe targetting, mining, whatever you want to call it, moves the needle enough except for the ones at the top of the tree selling the belief (Google, FB etc.)
Sure, a scattergun approach would be pointless but someone in Minnesota searching for carburetors has provided enough data in that one search that I don't believe targetted, mined, tracked users will be more lucrative.
I've asked on here before if anyone had a link to research that wasn't commissioned by an ad company about targetted and mined data and no one has provided one.
I'd love to be proven wrong but I don't believe targetting, mining, whatever you want to call it, moves the needle enough except for the ones at the top of the tree selling the belief (Google, FB etc.)
You'd be wrong - lots of data and very precise targeting can multiply the effectiveness of some kinds of ad campaign by 10x. That's the kind of change that turns an unviable business into a viable one.
I suspect that if ML based targeting gets as good as it theoretically could (ie. The ads predict what I need before I even think I need it), there would be another 10x gain.
I suspect that if ML based targeting gets as good as it theoretically could (ie. The ads predict what I need before I even think I need it), there would be another 10x gain.
> That's the kind of change that turns an unviable business into a viable one.
What, like going from 1 in every billion people clicking on your ad to 1 in every 100 million?
I'm sure that in some niches there is going to be a particular data set that yields mega results for someone. But I'm talking as a general concept, that the whole advertising industry is built on total lies all the way down and that all the data mining hardly moves the needle compared to context-related ads like my example.
I suspect that no one wants to know if it actually works or not. It'd be like pulling on a thread that everyone can see, plain as day, but no one wants to touch it as there are hundreds of billions of dollars on the line if they do. That, plus people are employed and have livelihoods built around ads so they won't jeapordise that.
I don't buy it. I still think it's all bullshit.
But let's say it's true. There still remains the fact that many don't want their data in anyone's database in the first place. It's an industry built on gathering data without consent - and before you say there are opt-outs and all that, the industry built itself up long before any rules came into effect.
What, like going from 1 in every billion people clicking on your ad to 1 in every 100 million?
I'm sure that in some niches there is going to be a particular data set that yields mega results for someone. But I'm talking as a general concept, that the whole advertising industry is built on total lies all the way down and that all the data mining hardly moves the needle compared to context-related ads like my example.
I suspect that no one wants to know if it actually works or not. It'd be like pulling on a thread that everyone can see, plain as day, but no one wants to touch it as there are hundreds of billions of dollars on the line if they do. That, plus people are employed and have livelihoods built around ads so they won't jeapordise that.
I don't buy it. I still think it's all bullshit.
But let's say it's true. There still remains the fact that many don't want their data in anyone's database in the first place. It's an industry built on gathering data without consent - and before you say there are opt-outs and all that, the industry built itself up long before any rules came into effect.
If I'm a new grocery in your city, what keywords should I put my ads under?
People don't usually search for "groceries around me" more than once, and if you don't happen to ever drive by the storefront, you'll never know it existed.
Sure there are other ways to advertise, but they are going to be less effective than what Google can do today
People don't usually search for "groceries around me" more than once, and if you don't happen to ever drive by the storefront, you'll never know it existed.
Sure there are other ways to advertise, but they are going to be less effective than what Google can do today
I wish them success, but honestly I'm just curious around how a search startup (and I mean a true search startup, one that does its own indexing) can even hope to compete against the giants these days (and let's face it, in the English language it's pretty much all Google with Bing a distant second).
I mean, when Google started the internet was actually small enough that it could be indexed relatively cheaply. These days, the internet is so enormous, and user expectations around hyper local content and being constantly up to date are so high, I don't see how one could begin to compete without billions.
I mean, when Google started the internet was actually small enough that it could be indexed relatively cheaply. These days, the internet is so enormous, and user expectations around hyper local content and being constantly up to date are so high, I don't see how one could begin to compete without billions.
Google's search is appalling these days. If I search for three terms, I have to include "each" "of" "them" in quotation marks, or else Google assumes I didn't actually want to search for them.
It's incredibly frustrating when the front door to the internet doesn't actually do the one thing it's supposed to do.
It's incredibly frustrating when the front door to the internet doesn't actually do the one thing it's supposed to do.
And the amount of spam in search results now is even more appalling. Pintrest + translated content is the first two things that comes to mind.
Google can't even solve the Pinterest image search problem, which has gone on for years. I think they are becoming the incumbent too heavy to move under it's own technology platform, or unwilling to change.
Even if you gleefully state that the algorithm finds what users most want, Google is a search product not a technology art installation, and what user's engage with is a function of what you show them in the first place. Pinterest should not be 50%+ of the results for any image search. Pinterest is not the greater internet.
Even if you gleefully state that the algorithm finds what users most want, Google is a search product not a technology art installation, and what user's engage with is a function of what you show them in the first place. Pinterest should not be 50%+ of the results for any image search. Pinterest is not the greater internet.
Yeah, this is a really bizarre one, in my opinion.
Google indexes and provides results for many sites whose content is inaccessible without an account, yet these results take precedent over actual unrestricted content.
Similarly with Google News, why are they showing me headlines of articles I am not able to access?
Google indexes and provides results for many sites whose content is inaccessible without an account, yet these results take precedent over actual unrestricted content.
Similarly with Google News, why are they showing me headlines of articles I am not able to access?
Google could go a long way toward improving their search results by just flat out banning the worst offenders, but that is where their size limits their options. If Google banned Pinterest they would likely face an immediate anti-competitive complaint.
Google is so big—has such a large market share—that they have to operate pseudo-governmentally, by creating and managing neutral rule sets (or at least what appear to be).
It feels to me like there are search opportunities somewhere between Google (the everything engine) and individual site searches (which usually suck). I often get my best results out of Google by using their “site:” operator to target the few sites I know are likely to be useful.
Google is so big—has such a large market share—that they have to operate pseudo-governmentally, by creating and managing neutral rule sets (or at least what appear to be).
It feels to me like there are search opportunities somewhere between Google (the everything engine) and individual site searches (which usually suck). I often get my best results out of Google by using their “site:” operator to target the few sites I know are likely to be useful.
I'm starting to think over 50% of google's magic is trying to actually get rid of the spam.
I think a new search engine would have a very hard time getting through challenges google has already, like link spam, authority domain spam (using medium etc for spammy content), and many many other issues about people manipulating results.
I think a new search engine would have a very hard time getting through challenges google has already, like link spam, authority domain spam (using medium etc for spammy content), and many many other issues about people manipulating results.
This is exactly how Google Ads conflicts with Google Search.
Google needs to show you results in order to be able to show ads as much as possible.
And so they make it difficult to restrict your query even if that's what you want to do.
Google needs to show you results in order to be able to show ads as much as possible.
And so they make it difficult to restrict your query even if that's what you want to do.
Exactly. A search for test -test used to produce 0 results. One day, that changed into billions of results.
This also shows that Google filters their results. test -test produces 4,000,000,000. Yet, jim -jim finds 0 results.
This also shows that Google filters their results. test -test produces 4,000,000,000. Yet, jim -jim finds 0 results.
>test -test
0 here
0 here
> test -test
About 4,040,000,000 results (0.57 seconds)
> jim -jim
Your search - jim -jim - did not match any documents.
About 4,040,000,000 results (0.57 seconds)
> jim -jim
Your search - jim -jim - did not match any documents.
When I changed locales in Google settings from _my_country_ to US, then "test -test" returned 3 890 000 000 results
Locale is probably a far more desirable feature than {term -term} producing inconsistent and filtered results. The definition of that type of search used to always be a set size of 0.
The other day the sole man behind this search engine popped up here on HN: https://gigablast.com/ He apparently does his own spidering and own indexing. Absurd, right?
I did a few tests. It's not as fast, it's definitely not as good for current affairs (ie, very recent stuff) and the author says it's not so good with synonyms. But outside of that it was hard to fault, so as DDG (well bing's) results are annoyingly uneven I switched to using it as my default. I didn't realise how lazy and dependent I've become on Google and Bing's ability to guess what I meant from the spelling mistake ridden crap I entered. If I put those quibbles aside, I'd rate it better than DDG. Which I find extraordinary.
For now it remains my default.
I did a few tests. It's not as fast, it's definitely not as good for current affairs (ie, very recent stuff) and the author says it's not so good with synonyms. But outside of that it was hard to fault, so as DDG (well bing's) results are annoyingly uneven I switched to using it as my default. I didn't realise how lazy and dependent I've become on Google and Bing's ability to guess what I meant from the spelling mistake ridden crap I entered. If I put those quibbles aside, I'd rate it better than DDG. Which I find extraordinary.
For now it remains my default.
[deleted]
> I'm just curious around how a search startup ... can even hope to compete
If you held a gun to my head and told me to build a Google competitor, I'd start off with smaller products with shared search infrastructure.
Start off with some hyper-focused projects that you can actually compete with Google for: code search, product search, news article search, review search, search focusing on kids, etc. Build a better YouTube search and pay a legal team to force Google to let you have some access to it. Maybe a better and free "search my site" functionality. Make some of them good enough the people just use them, get Bing or DDG interested in supplimenting their results with yours.
Have these as separate brands that people know, but for every search have a button that takes you to the wider search and start building brand recognition.
If you held a gun to my head and told me to build a Google competitor, I'd start off with smaller products with shared search infrastructure.
Start off with some hyper-focused projects that you can actually compete with Google for: code search, product search, news article search, review search, search focusing on kids, etc. Build a better YouTube search and pay a legal team to force Google to let you have some access to it. Maybe a better and free "search my site" functionality. Make some of them good enough the people just use them, get Bing or DDG interested in supplimenting their results with yours.
Have these as separate brands that people know, but for every search have a button that takes you to the wider search and start building brand recognition.
Is there a good YouTube search out there?
say you’re trying to find a ChrisStuckmann review for a particular movie.
Sometimes even when you explicitly include a channel’s name in a search their magic excludes it from results.
The same query from within YouTube search and from Google search can lead to different results.
And YouTube’s search within a channel from that channel’s page is even worse.
say you’re trying to find a ChrisStuckmann review for a particular movie.
Sometimes even when you explicitly include a channel’s name in a search their magic excludes it from results.
The same query from within YouTube search and from Google search can lead to different results.
And YouTube’s search within a channel from that channel’s page is even worse.
Looks like their goal isn't to compete with Google on volume, but something else. It's a paid search, and it's ad-free, so I assume they're targeting people who care about privacy.
I don't think they believe they'll surpass Google. But if they can get 0.05% of Google's users to pay them $5/month, they're making $120 million a year. That's a great business by most normal standards.
(Now, I don't think this will happen, necessarily... but I understand why you'd make that bet)
I don't think they believe they'll surpass Google. But if they can get 0.05% of Google's users to pay them $5/month, they're making $120 million a year. That's a great business by most normal standards.
(Now, I don't think this will happen, necessarily... but I understand why you'd make that bet)
Hey I just pointed out this 0.05% idea in another comment! It really is a common sentiment amongst investors that you can just fling shit towards a market giant and hope to capture a fraction of their market share. At FAANG scales even a fraction of a percent is big bucks.
Hmm.. the ex-Head of Ads providing an ad-free privacy-first search engine? Not sure I’d trust them...
I mean, counter argument is that nobody knows how shitty and toxic ads are as he does. Google was just a job and I doubt he was ever enthusiastic about ads.
It’d be like someone who worked at a meat packing factory going vegan.
It’d be like someone who worked at a meat packing factory going vegan.
I think there's lots of room for something interesting here.
Partly because google results aren't great at the moment and haven't been great for quite a while and partly because the internet is more balkanised than it was, and often I'd be happy to keep my queries within one of the partitions.
For example, search targetting just the websites that don't sell my data to 300 third parties, or that are available worldwide (not just outside the eu) or search that targets just a curated set of websites that are making an effort to provide authoritative content (e.g. wikipedia, stack overflow, respected news sources, actual academic papers). For searching for things I've recently discovered, search that spiders from aggregators and social media (reddit, hackernews, twitter, facebook) would be most valuable. Search inside audio (podcasts), video and images could also be much better.
If I could bring myself to trust them, I'd want something where every site I visited was spidered and I could do full text search within my own history.
The long tail stuff is hard, but I think it'd be OK to delegate that stuff to currently existing engines, you could provide massive value just by doing a better job of the basics.
Point being, I think the space has quite a lot of potential for disruption despite the challenges.
Partly because google results aren't great at the moment and haven't been great for quite a while and partly because the internet is more balkanised than it was, and often I'd be happy to keep my queries within one of the partitions.
For example, search targetting just the websites that don't sell my data to 300 third parties, or that are available worldwide (not just outside the eu) or search that targets just a curated set of websites that are making an effort to provide authoritative content (e.g. wikipedia, stack overflow, respected news sources, actual academic papers). For searching for things I've recently discovered, search that spiders from aggregators and social media (reddit, hackernews, twitter, facebook) would be most valuable. Search inside audio (podcasts), video and images could also be much better.
If I could bring myself to trust them, I'd want something where every site I visited was spidered and I could do full text search within my own history.
The long tail stuff is hard, but I think it'd be OK to delegate that stuff to currently existing engines, you could provide massive value just by doing a better job of the basics.
Point being, I think the space has quite a lot of potential for disruption despite the challenges.
>I mean, when Google started the internet was actually small enough that it could be indexed relatively cheaply.
Infrastructure is much cheaper today than it was in 1998. Anybody with the tech know-how can start a mini search engine from their bedroom today without breaking the bank.
I see Neeva as the search-equivalent of Hey. Both products compete against a free product that Google dominates in, with a subscription alternative. Time will tell if there really is a market for this model.
Infrastructure is much cheaper today than it was in 1998. Anybody with the tech know-how can start a mini search engine from their bedroom today without breaking the bank.
I see Neeva as the search-equivalent of Hey. Both products compete against a free product that Google dominates in, with a subscription alternative. Time will tell if there really is a market for this model.
If you read the original Anatomy of a Search Engine paper by Google co-founders, you'd be amazed at the constraints they had to engineer around with back then.
Many of the constraints that they had to engineer around don't exist anymore. The landscape has changed significantly since 1998. The decrease in bandwidth costs, increase in computing power, RAM, infrastructure as a service, and the rapidly moving ML research that pops out new NLP techniques.
You also have to consider Paul Graham's advice on working backwards. Google is nowhere near the final form of information retrieval. In an ideal world, I would have an answer to a search query instantaneously. Even we solve that problem, then you begin to try to solve the problem of why you even had to query for information in the first place.
Many of the constraints that they had to engineer around don't exist anymore. The landscape has changed significantly since 1998. The decrease in bandwidth costs, increase in computing power, RAM, infrastructure as a service, and the rapidly moving ML research that pops out new NLP techniques.
You also have to consider Paul Graham's advice on working backwards. Google is nowhere near the final form of information retrieval. In an ideal world, I would have an answer to a search query instantaneously. Even we solve that problem, then you begin to try to solve the problem of why you even had to query for information in the first place.
I agree with you in that I cannot imagine a search startup to successfully compete with Google in the current situation, but for different reasons:
I think the index is not the biggest challenge. Yes, the internet was small when Google started and is enormous now, but there has also been a lot of concentration in the sense that the most requested content is hosted on fewer and fewer sites. Also, the expectations changed. In the beginning, the idea was to index the whole web, and search engines bragged about the size of their index. Nowadays, it's all quality over quantity, and index size is probably not the most critical factor.
Apart from that: Building a decently sized index is a major undertaking, but it is not impossible. While the web has grown, technology also has advanced, and there are multiple companies that actively maintain a search engine scale index. SEO companies, like ahrefs or majestic, do it for their purposes, and there is also Common Crawl.
The real challenge, I believe, is that Google has access to a ton of engagement data. Google Analytics, AdSense, Google Fonts, Google Public DNS, and probably other services provide Google with excellent and hard to manipulate metrics about sites' popularity.
To successfully compete with Google, a startup would have to find an ethical alternative for this. I believe that building on unethically sourced engagement data from Browsers and Browser extensions will backfire in the long run. The Brave search engine is an example of this. The best chance to succeed here have the large CDN companies, like Cloudflare, because they could harvest some of the data in a non-invading way.
> [..] and let's face it, in the English language, it's pretty much all Google with Bing a distant second
I'd argue that the non-English world is, even more, all Google because it is the only search engine that works appropriately for non-English queries as well as for local search results. Baidu in China is the only real exception to this. Even in Russian-speaking countries, Google's market share is higher than their (decent) local search engine Yandex.
I think the index is not the biggest challenge. Yes, the internet was small when Google started and is enormous now, but there has also been a lot of concentration in the sense that the most requested content is hosted on fewer and fewer sites. Also, the expectations changed. In the beginning, the idea was to index the whole web, and search engines bragged about the size of their index. Nowadays, it's all quality over quantity, and index size is probably not the most critical factor.
Apart from that: Building a decently sized index is a major undertaking, but it is not impossible. While the web has grown, technology also has advanced, and there are multiple companies that actively maintain a search engine scale index. SEO companies, like ahrefs or majestic, do it for their purposes, and there is also Common Crawl.
The real challenge, I believe, is that Google has access to a ton of engagement data. Google Analytics, AdSense, Google Fonts, Google Public DNS, and probably other services provide Google with excellent and hard to manipulate metrics about sites' popularity.
To successfully compete with Google, a startup would have to find an ethical alternative for this. I believe that building on unethically sourced engagement data from Browsers and Browser extensions will backfire in the long run. The Brave search engine is an example of this. The best chance to succeed here have the large CDN companies, like Cloudflare, because they could harvest some of the data in a non-invading way.
> [..] and let's face it, in the English language, it's pretty much all Google with Bing a distant second
I'd argue that the non-English world is, even more, all Google because it is the only search engine that works appropriately for non-English queries as well as for local search results. Baidu in China is the only real exception to this. Even in Russian-speaking countries, Google's market share is higher than their (decent) local search engine Yandex.
>user expectations around hyper local content
For a general search engine yes. Less so for a specialty one. If I'm searching for javascript documentation I don't care if it's attached to a domain attached to a business with a physical location near me.
Imo if a search startup appears it'll be through a tiny niche -> larger niche -> even larger niche -> general search, path. Not nothing -> general search.
For a general search engine yes. Less so for a specialty one. If I'm searching for javascript documentation I don't care if it's attached to a domain attached to a business with a physical location near me.
Imo if a search startup appears it'll be through a tiny niche -> larger niche -> even larger niche -> general search, path. Not nothing -> general search.
> I mean, when Google started the internet was actually small enough that it could be indexed relatively cheaply. These days, the internet is so enormous, and user expectations around hyper local content and being constantly up to date are so high, I don't see how one could begin to compete without billions.
But you're dealing with insanely long-tailed distributions and the "meat" of the search engine business is in the fat heads of those distributions.
(1) A small proportion of queries makes up a huge proportion of query events that you'll see through the day. (2) For any given query, a small proportion of users will make up a huge proportion of the opportunity to monetize (researching a planned purchase, looking for a job etc). (3) For any given query, an infinitesimally tiny proportion of the documents on the web is where the value to the user actually is.
I think there are potentially many ways of making selections on each of those three axes and ending up with a viable business based on a manageably small search index E.g. indeed as a job search engine or amazon as a product search engine have manageably small document collections, great value to users and a stable user base, and great opportunities to monetize.
...from that point of view I find it surprising that there aren't a lot more search engine businesses.
Case in point: I really like wiby.me, the 90s nostaliga search engine. I don't think they are a profitable business, but I certainly think they could & should be.
And even Google is making very deliberate choices along those three dimensions, rather than naively indexing the web and naively executing keyword search against that index.
Dimension 1: Given a query, reinterpret as follows. Catch eyeballs by delivering entertainment value ("pizza" -> "entertaining videos related to pizza"). Monetize those eyeballs by reinterpreting as local queries ("pizza" -> "restaurants near me wanting to sell me pizza") or products queries ("pizza" -> "online shops trying to sell me pizza ovens or other pizza-related items")
Dimension 2: Given a query and document, always make relevance decisions on behalf of the kind of audience with disposable income. E.g. "farming" shows a lot of stuff you'd want to read if you're the kind of person paying £10 for a potato in Borough Market and nothing that you'd want to read if you're a subsistence farmer in Namibia.
Dimension 3: When comparing two documents for inclusion in the pool of documents that stand any chance of coming up on page #1, prefer recency over authoritativeness. E.g. for "programming languages", apparently "The 9 Best Programming Languages to Learn in 2021" is considered relevant while "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" or the Mozilla Developer Network are considered irrelevant.
There are huge audiences who don't agree with these choices that Google is making and who are just waiting to switch if someone comes along making better choices or using another product alongside Google if someone comes along simply just making different choices that are useful in some way.
So, again, far from the sentiment that any venture in the web search space is doomed given the size of the web and the existence of Google, I'm positively baffled by the fact that there isn't a lot more activity there.
But you're dealing with insanely long-tailed distributions and the "meat" of the search engine business is in the fat heads of those distributions.
(1) A small proportion of queries makes up a huge proportion of query events that you'll see through the day. (2) For any given query, a small proportion of users will make up a huge proportion of the opportunity to monetize (researching a planned purchase, looking for a job etc). (3) For any given query, an infinitesimally tiny proportion of the documents on the web is where the value to the user actually is.
I think there are potentially many ways of making selections on each of those three axes and ending up with a viable business based on a manageably small search index E.g. indeed as a job search engine or amazon as a product search engine have manageably small document collections, great value to users and a stable user base, and great opportunities to monetize.
...from that point of view I find it surprising that there aren't a lot more search engine businesses.
Case in point: I really like wiby.me, the 90s nostaliga search engine. I don't think they are a profitable business, but I certainly think they could & should be.
And even Google is making very deliberate choices along those three dimensions, rather than naively indexing the web and naively executing keyword search against that index.
Dimension 1: Given a query, reinterpret as follows. Catch eyeballs by delivering entertainment value ("pizza" -> "entertaining videos related to pizza"). Monetize those eyeballs by reinterpreting as local queries ("pizza" -> "restaurants near me wanting to sell me pizza") or products queries ("pizza" -> "online shops trying to sell me pizza ovens or other pizza-related items")
Dimension 2: Given a query and document, always make relevance decisions on behalf of the kind of audience with disposable income. E.g. "farming" shows a lot of stuff you'd want to read if you're the kind of person paying £10 for a potato in Borough Market and nothing that you'd want to read if you're a subsistence farmer in Namibia.
Dimension 3: When comparing two documents for inclusion in the pool of documents that stand any chance of coming up on page #1, prefer recency over authoritativeness. E.g. for "programming languages", apparently "The 9 Best Programming Languages to Learn in 2021" is considered relevant while "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" or the Mozilla Developer Network are considered irrelevant.
There are huge audiences who don't agree with these choices that Google is making and who are just waiting to switch if someone comes along making better choices or using another product alongside Google if someone comes along simply just making different choices that are useful in some way.
So, again, far from the sentiment that any venture in the web search space is doomed given the size of the web and the existence of Google, I'm positively baffled by the fact that there isn't a lot more activity there.
It's the 1% fallacy. "Surely we can steal 1% of the search market, Google will never have 100%. Just one percent of Google's profits is seventeen hojillibillion dollars per quarter. Makes perfect sense to put in $40 million to grab that market share"
See also everyone starting their own Facebook competitor back in the day.
See also everyone starting their own Facebook competitor back in the day.
The network effects of search are weaker than in social media though.
Network effect is strong, but we've overestimated the stickiness of Facebook. Have you been on it recently? It's effectively a ghost town. The most people use it for is for messenger.
I'm still profitable with a niche Facebook will never go after. Why reach for the stars when there's fruit in the trees?
Google itself only raised $35 million in total VC funding before going public in 2004
For this comparison to be useful, Neeva would have to be paying its devs 2004 salaries.
For this comparison to be useful, Neeva would have to be paying its devs 2004 salaries.
$35 million in 2004 is about $49 million in 2021 dollars, so they effectively raised less.
And point being that salaries for good developers have gone up much faster than that.
Ought be noted that the core of Google was developed with gov grants on standford
> In 1994 — the same year the Highlands Forum was founded under the stewardship of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the ONA, and DARPA — two young PhD students at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, made their breakthrough on the first automated web crawling and page ranking application. That application remains the core component of what eventually became Google’s search service. Brin and Page had performed their work with funding from the Digital Library Initiative (DLI), a multi-agency programme of the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA and DARPA.
> But that’s just one side of the story.
> Throughout the development of the search engine, Sergey Brin reported regularly and directly to two people who were not Stanford faculty at all: Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham and Dr. Rick Steinheiser. Both were representatives of a sensitive US intelligence community research programme on information security and data-mining.
> Thuraisingham is currently the Louis A. Beecherl distinguished professor and executive director of the Cyber Security Research Institute at the University of Texas, Dallas, and a sought-after expert on data-mining, data management and information security issues. But in the 1990s, she worked for the MITRE Corp., a leading US defense contractor, where she managed the Massive Digital Data Systems initiative, a project sponsored by the NSA, CIA, and the Director of Central Intelligence, to foster innovative research in information technology.
>...
> Thuraisingham goes on in her article to reiterate that this joint CIA-NSA program partly funded Sergey Brin to develop the core of Google, through a grant to Stanford managed by Brin’s supervisor Prof. Jeffrey D. Ullman:
> “In fact, the Google founder Mr. Sergey Brin was partly funded by this program while he was a PhD student at Stanford. He together with his advisor Prof. Jeffrey Ullman and my colleague at MITRE, Dr. Chris Clifton [Mitre’s chief scientist in IT], developed the Query Flocks System which produced solutions for mining large amounts of data stored in databases. I remember visiting Stanford with Dr. Rick Steinheiser from the Intelligence Community and Mr. Brin would rush in on roller blades, give his presentation and rush out. In fact the last time we met in September 1998, Mr. Brin demonstrated to us his search engine which became Google soon after.”
_____
Anyhow, I recommend everyone to read the full piece and it's sister piece where it goes deeper into NSA things
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...
> In 1994 — the same year the Highlands Forum was founded under the stewardship of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the ONA, and DARPA — two young PhD students at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, made their breakthrough on the first automated web crawling and page ranking application. That application remains the core component of what eventually became Google’s search service. Brin and Page had performed their work with funding from the Digital Library Initiative (DLI), a multi-agency programme of the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA and DARPA.
> But that’s just one side of the story.
> Throughout the development of the search engine, Sergey Brin reported regularly and directly to two people who were not Stanford faculty at all: Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham and Dr. Rick Steinheiser. Both were representatives of a sensitive US intelligence community research programme on information security and data-mining.
> Thuraisingham is currently the Louis A. Beecherl distinguished professor and executive director of the Cyber Security Research Institute at the University of Texas, Dallas, and a sought-after expert on data-mining, data management and information security issues. But in the 1990s, she worked for the MITRE Corp., a leading US defense contractor, where she managed the Massive Digital Data Systems initiative, a project sponsored by the NSA, CIA, and the Director of Central Intelligence, to foster innovative research in information technology.
>...
> Thuraisingham goes on in her article to reiterate that this joint CIA-NSA program partly funded Sergey Brin to develop the core of Google, through a grant to Stanford managed by Brin’s supervisor Prof. Jeffrey D. Ullman:
> “In fact, the Google founder Mr. Sergey Brin was partly funded by this program while he was a PhD student at Stanford. He together with his advisor Prof. Jeffrey Ullman and my colleague at MITRE, Dr. Chris Clifton [Mitre’s chief scientist in IT], developed the Query Flocks System which produced solutions for mining large amounts of data stored in databases. I remember visiting Stanford with Dr. Rick Steinheiser from the Intelligence Community and Mr. Brin would rush in on roller blades, give his presentation and rush out. In fact the last time we met in September 1998, Mr. Brin demonstrated to us his search engine which became Google soon after.”
_____
Anyhow, I recommend everyone to read the full piece and it's sister piece where it goes deeper into NSA things
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...
> Google founder Mr. Sergey Brin
I love how academics interject titles into their communication, even when they're not necessary.
I love how academics interject titles into their communication, even when they're not necessary.
I think that's there to highlight that he never completed his PhD, and therefore is a "Mr." rather than a "Dr."
How does a search engine, that talks about privacy, have a waitlist?
Does it mean that it does not support anonymous search and you need to login, or somehow identify yourself, in order to use it to search.
Does not sound very privacy oriented - am I missing something? Perhaps someone who has access can chime in.
Does it mean that it does not support anonymous search and you need to login, or somehow identify yourself, in order to use it to search.
Does not sound very privacy oriented - am I missing something? Perhaps someone who has access can chime in.
I'm not gonna hand out money to have my search history tied to my identity lmfao, who is the target demographics?
Neeva ask you to complete a very thorough questionnaire with 13 questions on signing up.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/neeva
That alone is not very comforting.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/neeva
That alone is not very comforting.
I do not mind paying, but not sure how it helps tracking: if you pay, they even know more about you than if you used google. So you have to believe them for not using the payment records for tracking you. They have valuable information about you; you are probably rich (who pays for search?!), you have a card so you are probably autonomous etc.
That said, more competition is good anyway in this space.
That said, more competition is good anyway in this space.
Not an anonymous search engine; their selling point is that you are the customer, not the product - so presumably no targeted ads.
Although afaik google too does not sell profiling data, rather they sell access to highly speficic demographics.
Although afaik google too does not sell profiling data, rather they sell access to highly speficic demographics.
Yes, but because it has your data (and more directly verified because it's payment data) it can turn into making your the customer later on when their shareholder want mo' money (which they will do).
Note that, based on progress so far, they're not actually building a new search engine as such - they're spending the money on buying the results in from Bing and on marketing[0].
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23960741
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23960741
I really don't think this is the answer at all.
Any true Google competition will need a world class crawler and ML like Google.
Any true Google competition will need a world class crawler and ML like Google.
I'm not convinced.
A world class crawler definitely.
ML? Maybe, I guess. Google took over search before ML was even a thing(or at least, a popular thing) because they were fast and had good results. And that's all most folks probably care about. Sometimes good results are truly those most relevant to the terms entered...not injected with ads, or targeted, or SEO'd to death.
In fact, I'd go as far as to say Google search results are worse today than years ago for a lot of queries.
A world class crawler definitely.
ML? Maybe, I guess. Google took over search before ML was even a thing(or at least, a popular thing) because they were fast and had good results. And that's all most folks probably care about. Sometimes good results are truly those most relevant to the terms entered...not injected with ads, or targeted, or SEO'd to death.
In fact, I'd go as far as to say Google search results are worse today than years ago for a lot of queries.
Yeah, you do need ML. But a tweakable one. I’ve built a crawler, scraped the first 10 pages of all public domains I could find, then made those billions of pages freely queryable with ElasticSearch. The result: moderately good. It was great for discovering hidden gems. But you needed a lot of longtail keywords and exclusions.
There is a massive amount of textual garbage out there!
There is a massive amount of textual garbage out there!
I gave it more thought in passing and am a bit curious what real, heavy ML might look like. And if there's value in such things.
Example: I often find myself remembering bits of things, and querying Google, and the results are way off or completely irrelevent. Things a human would know in a matter of seconds, generally.
I was for example trying to remember that newish Netflix movie that is very similar to the Michael Douglas movie "The Game." It feels like such a question should be easy for a sufficiently smart system. Something like Watson, I guess?, at the search engine level would be immensely mindblowing to me.
The answer btw for anyone curious was "Rebirth." Nearly every review of said movie makes the comparison.
Example: I often find myself remembering bits of things, and querying Google, and the results are way off or completely irrelevent. Things a human would know in a matter of seconds, generally.
I was for example trying to remember that newish Netflix movie that is very similar to the Michael Douglas movie "The Game." It feels like such a question should be easy for a sufficiently smart system. Something like Watson, I guess?, at the search engine level would be immensely mindblowing to me.
The answer btw for anyone curious was "Rebirth." Nearly every review of said movie makes the comparison.
This is where semantic data would be really handy (admittedly, it's not a great example because the two movies are not linked at the moment):
- https://dbpedia.org/page/The_Game_(1997_film)
- https://dbpedia.org/page/Rebirth_(2016_film)
- https://dbpedia.org/page/The_Game_(1997_film)
- https://dbpedia.org/page/Rebirth_(2016_film)
Google took over search when Alta Vista was a thing. Their search has improved gradually over the years to the point where it "understands" the web and the questions people are asking way better than any simple crawler/index could. It's not perfect but if Google turned off the ML, I expect I'd miss it.
You forgot it will need world class $$$. To pay a very big captcha farm because your crawler will be blocked everywhere. And a very big proxy farm, for the same reasons, because everywhere google/bing crawler is hardcoded, including your frienldy cloudflare, and you cannot have a partial of the internet.
It highlights Bing’s strength. There are many memes in popular culture that if you want political results, you use Google; if you want shockingly down-to-earth results, you ask Bing. I’m still missing Altavista to get the raw results, but you get the idea: Bing cultivates the image of being accurate, and wins in all the secondary markets.
>I’m still missing Altavista to get the raw results
This is called Yandex nowadays.
This is called Yandex nowadays.
Yandex: whatever the search query the image results are half naked women.
Regardless of the validity of the business case Sridhar is a really really smart guy who has seen how the sausage is made inside Google. If you think like a Google engineering VP you can understand why this isn't such a crazy bet after all. He knows how to rebuild the Google stack fresh.
I don't understand how that is even possible. The layers between a Engineering VP and the actual technology stack that runs thing must be vast... Googles secret sauce isn't the layers, but the actual implementation of each layer.... is Sridhar that level of smart?
Google's secret sauce are its users. They get many billions queries a day and feedback on what urls all those users click - simply throw all that into modern ML and you'll end up with pretty decent ranking already. A small startup, especially a paywalled one, will just starve for data and has little hope to compete here - that's why they'll be buying results from bing for the foreseeable future.
Sure if we gloss over the fact google invented those ML techniques.
He might not be that smart that he alone can rebuild Google from scratch (now that I've said that, it sounds even more obvious), but he might have the skills to find and hire the people who do.
I think at "Engineering VP" level, coding and knowing all the low-level details might not be the most important skill.
I think at "Engineering VP" level, coding and knowing all the low-level details might not be the most important skill.
Sure, but “to compete with google” that is the skills you need... think about how they started.
If the solution is: “I know who to hire” then anyone is smart enough to compete with any company... just hire the same people from the competition.
If the solution is: “I know who to hire” then anyone is smart enough to compete with any company... just hire the same people from the competition.
in short, yes. he's been there long enough to understand all the stacks.
I have an easier time understanding a subscription-model social network to help weed out trolls and bots, but subscribe just to search to get rid of the ads...? I mean, even if DuckDuckGo didn't exist, this would strike me as a funny concept. Also, I see they want to "personalize" my experience. So they want to harvest search patterns and figure out my personal life as usual? Besides the questionable ethics here, I'm not even convinced filter bubbles are a good way to reach objective information, and you'd think this would be sort of a technological goal for year 2021 onwards, given what took place in 2020.
Too bad they raised money from VCs, giving them control over the direction of this search engine, now they're on a treadmill.
Going to be acquired by Apple sooner or later for their search engine or (most likely) will shut down in less than 2 years due to pressure by VCs.
Any business that raises money from VCs and touts claims of privacy being a differentiator is almost always suspect.
Going to be acquired by Apple sooner or later for their search engine or (most likely) will shut down in less than 2 years due to pressure by VCs.
Any business that raises money from VCs and touts claims of privacy being a differentiator is almost always suspect.
Sridhar (the CEO) is a partner at Greylock Ventures.
I'm sure this is not the standard sort of "entrepeneur under the VC's foot" type of situation.
I'm sure this is not the standard sort of "entrepeneur under the VC's foot" type of situation.
Tried to use DDG for about 3-4 months on all browsers, desktop and mobile. Didn't work out. IDK why bc everything was good enough but there're small subtilties which felt better with Google, one thing I remember was Google's ability to understand that I just did a local search and showed me maps, Google Reviews and so on. I can't remember all issues buy I often appended the site to get the right results or those results I was expecting. Maybe I am just used to Google or Google is really somehow better (except with one thing, Pinterest). Just want to say that it's going to be hard to get people to move away from Google. Compared, leaving FB was a piece of cake.
> plans to unveil an ad-free, personalized search experience. Expect it to be on a paid subscription basis, likely with a free trial period.
Oh please gimme paid everything! But 100% ad-free, tracking-free, DRM-free, programmable and configurable!
I wish my ISP could just charge 3 times as much as it does for the broadband, distribute 2/3 (or a half - perhaps that would mean extra overhead so they should be given extra rewarded too) to the websites I visit and we could have no-bullshit web again...
Oh please gimme paid everything! But 100% ad-free, tracking-free, DRM-free, programmable and configurable!
I wish my ISP could just charge 3 times as much as it does for the broadband, distribute 2/3 (or a half - perhaps that would mean extra overhead so they should be given extra rewarded too) to the websites I visit and we could have no-bullshit web again...
I hope they’re successful. Competition in this space is good for everyone. And I wouldn’t mind paying a subscription to search without my every search being tracked.
> I wouldn’t mind paying a subscription to search without my every search being tracked.
Do you mind clarifying what you mean by "being tracked" here ? Regardless of exactly what you mean, if tracking is the only criteria, what do you think you'd gain by this "paid search that's not tracking" vs using DuckDuckGo or using Google with a fresh incognito window ?
Do you mind clarifying what you mean by "being tracked" here ? Regardless of exactly what you mean, if tracking is the only criteria, what do you think you'd gain by this "paid search that's not tracking" vs using DuckDuckGo or using Google with a fresh incognito window ?
Tracking is only useful for advertising. I figure a subscription would mean advertising-less search.
Please define tracking. That term can mean many, many different things. Also, ads-free is completely different and orthogonal from tracking-free.
Anyway, then the follow up question would be: if ads-free search is what you want, why would you pay for it, instead of using various adblock ?
Anyway, then the follow up question would be: if ads-free search is what you want, why would you pay for it, instead of using various adblock ?
Advertising free search does have a cost. Adblocking only works because not everyone does it. I also don’t use chrome. Eventually chrome will be the surveillance device.
Tracking: anything that can tie my searches or data back into a useful set of one or lore data points for selling ads against.
I don’t see how one can have a tracking free ads based search engine. I guess with ads based on context of the web property one visits, truck ads on 4x4.com for example.
Tracking: anything that can tie my searches or data back into a useful set of one or lore data points for selling ads against.
I don’t see how one can have a tracking free ads based search engine. I guess with ads based on context of the web property one visits, truck ads on 4x4.com for example.
"Google itself only raised $35 million in total VC funding before going public in 2004." - that's about $50M in 2021 money.
I'd love to be wrong, but I have a hard time seeing this succeed. However I feel somebody can/should disrupt Google by obsoleting search.
Search:Information retrieval as steering wheel: automobiles
With autonomy the steering wheel can be dispensed with. Hopefully someone invents something that can do the same with search, as we know it.
Search:Information retrieval as steering wheel: automobiles
With autonomy the steering wheel can be dispensed with. Hopefully someone invents something that can do the same with search, as we know it.
I just read QualityLand... Reminds me of the personal assistant's and the amazon like services that will query searches and make purchases before the user even knows they want them.
That always boggles my mind. There are a ton of startups out there which tackle serious environmental/sustainable problems struggling to get minimal funding and "another" search engine gets $40m? What good will that do? Oh, BTW, feel free to vote me down as usual.
A few years ago this was attempted but as a paid Twitter. I dont think its around anymore.
As far as ads go I personally like the search ones. If I'm searching for BMW car service I want the local shop targeting me not 10 pages of dealers. With that said I wouldn't mind seeing search competition.
As far as ads go I personally like the search ones. If I'm searching for BMW car service I want the local shop targeting me not 10 pages of dealers. With that said I wouldn't mind seeing search competition.
I often run into this problem where I google for X with the intention to get information about it, but I only get pages trying to sell me X. It happens the other way around sometimes as well - i.e. looking for a local store to sell me X, but I only find the Wikipedia article (finding local stores to sell you weird stuff is probs a niche for a new startup - especially people who move to different countries often can't figure out which kind of store would have a certain thing).
I think they should tab their results: Information, News, Shopping
I think they should tab their results: Information, News, Shopping
There is absolutely no competition in search engine market. Google almost host for 90% searches (approx) how do they even plan to compete with google. When big companies like bing is struggling even after a decade to even compete , i am surprised at this.
Am I the only one who is tired of this kind of stories?
"Former W of X raises Y Mio $ for Z Start-Up"
"Former W of X raises Y Mio $ for Z Start-Up"
The monoculture is definitely the most important bit. Imagine that elections can be controlled by Google, they will not always side with you.
I will stick with DuckDuckGo for now.
Is it a good search engine?
It's still a work in progress but so far the results just seem like a wrapper around Bing. Their (mandatory) browser extension has some cookie blockers that seem to break SSO without providing me any actual value. I hope Google gets some real competition but so far this isn't it.
A mandatory browser extension? Is that some kind of beta testing telemetry thing? Because that would be a no-go for me.
Cuil story, bro
I use DDG!
First thing I saw on their webpage, a box saying "Enter an email". Yeah, it's just a pre-launch thing, but not a good look from a privacy point of view.
Ok, it's to be a paid service. Well I checked their privacy policy and it's not very reassuring. I don't think I would sign up for a company that doesn't either fall into the jurisdiction of GDPR or commit to the same standards.
https://neeva.co/privacy
They still plan to collect a lot of data, and share it with:
Microsoft is one such provider where we may share limited personal information in order to make the Services available. You can read about their use of data in Microsoft's privacy policy.
So, Microsoft's frequently-changing (last updated: January 2021) privacy policy effectively applies:
https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement
While more competition is always good news, I can't see this as a privacy-conscious choice.
Edit: You can even connect your Google account, and they will collect the data about you and your contacts from it. I wouldn't be surprised if they end up getting blocked for this by Google on, ironically, privacy grounds (Google has no interest in assisting an emerging competitor like this if they can get away with it, and they probably can).
Then, there's this gem:
We may aggregate or de-identify the information we collect. Aggregated or de-identified data is not subject to this Privacy Policy.
It's been demonstrated before that this is also a privacy risk. AOL's "de-identified" release of search-engine data turned out to be a privacy disaster:
https://www.cnet.com/news/aols-disturbing-glimpse-into-users...
https://www.cnet.com/news/aol-apologizes-for-release-of-user...
A privacy-respecting search engine should just not collect all this data in the first place.