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Count me out. I'm willing to pay for things that improve my life, but if anything, this is likely to be a downgrade in terms of user experience. Google benefit

Count me out. I'm willing to pay for things that improve my life, but if anything, this is likely to be a downgrade in terms of user experience. Google benefits from the fact that they have billions of users. The nominal cost of their overhead per user is very very low. A company like this is gonna struggle to get even a million users, let alone billions. So even if they charge, it's unlikely they can keep up with Google's infrastructure. I care about my privacy a little, but less than the cost of a subscription + added hassle / downgraded user experience. I'm betting the the market of people for whom the tradeoff is worthwhile is low enough thast this company won't take off. But I support competition, so I hope i'm wrong.

gentleman11 6y ago
Even if you don’t care much about your own privacy, take a moment to consider whether the entire population should lose their privacy as well, and what that sort of world could look like if a bad leader took over (or just at China). The issue isn’t just about personal consequences
6510 6y ago
> cost of a subscription + added hassle / downgraded user experience you forgot the ads! > it's unlikely they can keep up with Google's infrastructure. A custom search engine for a specific scope of interests will very quickly get better than google. Take YaCy, feed just HN into it and have it crawl 2 or 3 pages deep. The level of curation around here isn't modest. Take your own comments and have it crawl a bit deeper for those. If someone without technical skills can make something like that in a few [low effort] days without any fancy hardware it should be easy to make the proverbial google killer. Finding a niche worth buying a subscription for is a different story entirely ofc. I imagine it could be bundled with something less ambitious that people are used to pay for that caters to the same niche.
- robjan 6y ago
  You've just described the Google filter bubble
- chris_f 6y ago
  >...it should be easy to make the proverbial google killer. Let's say that's the case (which absolutely isn't true), the challenge is that Google currently controls the access points to the web for most people. Google owns the default settings in Chrome, and they pay Apple and Mozilla billions of dollars a year to also be the default search engine in their browsers/devices.
  - 6510 6y ago
    They are renting the access point for billions!
  - 6510 6y ago
    The quality of google results depend a lot on the topic. Depending on your interests you millage may vary. We hear a lot about SEO spam but the other end of the spectrum seems underestimated: Google likes to dictate how your website looks and behaves. If you fail to live up to those demands you shall either not be indexed or indexing will be limited to a hand full of pages. It makes a good example in it self. The search results here are dominated by penalized SEO practices. The reality is that you need to stop linking to things google doesn't like. When I write an article I aim to write quality content. This involves gathering all relevant websites about the topic. I want the reader to have access to ALL pages written by knowledgeable people but also all pages advocating opinions I do not agree with or what I consider misconceptions. Ideally there is a flat list of references and material that creates the full picture of stuff available online. I have a lot of interests and like to zoom out. My next article might be related to the first in some alien harebrained way only understood by me or it might be about something entirely different. After just a few of such repeated "offenses" google will already punish the site. One could write 3 of those masterpieces per day for a decade. You can revisit previous write ups and add even more links. Those will be ones you couldn't find previously! The really "bad" ones. And oh? Look what you've done! You've added to many links to the article. If you wanted good ranking you should have pooped out one of those shallow turds google loves so much. Short articles, very limited information around a very limited scope and lots of links pointing at your own pages rather than the topic at hand. (the person or website you wrote about) Articles about SEO penalties of course do not link to the google documentation for webmasters.
matlin 6y ago
It's actually using Bing under the hood so it doesn't need to get to Google-size on its own to get similar quality from user interactions. If I had to bet, Neeva will go after business users and combine Bing's index of the public web with their index of internal business data to make a catered experience that's subscription worthy. I mean it kind of makes sense. How is there not currently a company offering businesses a way to circumvent Google's ad machine and have customizable scope and indexes?
- chris_f 6y ago
  >If I had to bet, Neeva will go after business users and combine Bing's index of the public web with their index of internal business data to make a catered experience that's subscription worthy. Completely agree. There is much easier money to be made in a B2B premium search app than in the consumer space. It is also a common path for search companies; for example FAROO went that direction.
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    Yep - there are already major players in that space: https://www.algolia.com/ https://www.algolia.com/
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  That's even worse. It's the Duck Duck Go model of reskinning Bing search, except now they're charging a subscription for service that's free elsewhere.
- mc32 6y ago
  Business could be a good market is they stress privacy and anonymity in the sense that they neither track searches nor extract information from searches (trends and such) which can expose company information (people in your company start searching for IPO, or they search for domain specific information which could leak data, etc.) Also maybe they won't proactively tweak results to make political statements. At least in this regard Bing is better, but again they know what you search for.
Barrin92 6y ago
I listened to his podcast with Swisher and to my surprise they also collect and analyze user data, so I'm not even sure what I'm gaining here privacy wise. Not even Google hands user data to third parties. And given that the search results themselves are not for sale I didn't understand the arguments about better results from Neeva either.

gentleman11 6y ago

Even if you don’t care much about your own privacy, take a moment to consider whether the entire population should lose their privacy as well, and what that sort of world could look like if a bad leader took over (or just at China). The issue isn’t just about personal consequences

6510 6y ago

> cost of a subscription + added hassle / downgraded user experience you forgot the ads! > it's unlikely they can keep up with Google's infrastructure. A custom search engine for a specific scope of interests will very quickly get better than google. Take YaCy, feed just HN into it and have it crawl 2 or 3 pages deep. The level of curation around here isn't modest. Take your own comments and have it crawl a bit deeper for those. If someone without technical skills can make something like that in a few [low effort] days without any fancy hardware it should be easy to make the proverbial google killer. Finding a niche worth buying a subscription for is a different story entirely ofc. I imagine it could be bundled with something less ambitious that people are used to pay for that caters to the same niche.

robjan 6y ago
You've just described the Google filter bubble
chris_f 6y ago
>...it should be easy to make the proverbial google killer. Let's say that's the case (which absolutely isn't true), the challenge is that Google currently controls the access points to the web for most people. Google owns the default settings in Chrome, and they pay Apple and Mozilla billions of dollars a year to also be the default search engine in their browsers/devices.
- 6510 6y ago
  They are renting the access point for billions!
- 6510 6y ago
  The quality of google results depend a lot on the topic. Depending on your interests you millage may vary. We hear a lot about SEO spam but the other end of the spectrum seems underestimated: Google likes to dictate how your website looks and behaves. If you fail to live up to those demands you shall either not be indexed or indexing will be limited to a hand full of pages. It makes a good example in it self. The search results here are dominated by penalized SEO practices. The reality is that you need to stop linking to things google doesn't like. When I write an article I aim to write quality content. This involves gathering all relevant websites about the topic. I want the reader to have access to ALL pages written by knowledgeable people but also all pages advocating opinions I do not agree with or what I consider misconceptions. Ideally there is a flat list of references and material that creates the full picture of stuff available online. I have a lot of interests and like to zoom out. My next article might be related to the first in some alien harebrained way only understood by me or it might be about something entirely different. After just a few of such repeated "offenses" google will already punish the site. One could write 3 of those masterpieces per day for a decade. You can revisit previous write ups and add even more links. Those will be ones you couldn't find previously! The really "bad" ones. And oh? Look what you've done! You've added to many links to the article. If you wanted good ranking you should have pooped out one of those shallow turds google loves so much. Short articles, very limited information around a very limited scope and lots of links pointing at your own pages rather than the topic at hand. (the person or website you wrote about) Articles about SEO penalties of course do not link to the google documentation for webmasters.

matlin 6y ago

It's actually using Bing under the hood so it doesn't need to get to Google-size on its own to get similar quality from user interactions. If I had to bet, Neeva will go after business users and combine Bing's index of the public web with their index of internal business data to make a catered experience that's subscription worthy. I mean it kind of makes sense. How is there not currently a company offering businesses a way to circumvent Google's ad machine and have customizable scope and indexes?

chris_f 6y ago
>If I had to bet, Neeva will go after business users and combine Bing's index of the public web with their index of internal business data to make a catered experience that's subscription worthy. Completely agree. There is much easier money to be made in a B2B premium search app than in the consumer space. It is also a common path for search companies; for example FAROO went that direction.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  Yep - there are already major players in that space: https://www.algolia.com/ https://www.algolia.com/
three_seagrass 6y ago
That's even worse. It's the Duck Duck Go model of reskinning Bing search, except now they're charging a subscription for service that's free elsewhere.
mc32 6y ago
Business could be a good market is they stress privacy and anonymity in the sense that they neither track searches nor extract information from searches (trends and such) which can expose company information (people in your company start searching for IPO, or they search for domain specific information which could leak data, etc.) Also maybe they won't proactively tweak results to make political statements. At least in this regard Bing is better, but again they know what you search for.

Barrin92 6y ago

I listened to his podcast with Swisher and to my surprise they also collect and analyze user data, so I'm not even sure what I'm gaining here privacy wise. Not even Google hands user data to third parties. And given that the search results themselves are not for sale I didn't understand the arguments about better results from Neeva either.