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I have switched to Neeva (neeva.com) which has no ads, because you are the paying customer. So far, it's been a great experience. I have had to get used to payi

I have switched to Neeva (neeva.com) which has no ads, because you are the paying customer. So far, it's been a great experience. I have had to get used to paying attention to the first few results, which are usually ads in Google or DDG. While there is no privacy audit that I'm aware of, the theory is that there is no motivation to sell my searching habits to anyone. DDG plans such a feature, but it will likely never be their primary revenue driver.

ghastmaster 5y ago
The greatest feature of DDG in my opinion is that it does not put you into a bubble. Results are the same regardless of what I have been searching lately. Does neeva allow you to toggle features like that?
freediver 5y ago
Neeva's model is great but execution is suboptimal. Two examples: - While Neeva has no ads, they prioritize sites with tons of ads in their results (search for 'best laptop'). If your main premise is that ads are bad, why not penalize/remove second order sites that are heavy in ads? - They claim they respect user privacy, yet make technical choices like using raw Google maps in their product as Maps module, which sends requests from the client directly to Google
pmoriarty 5y ago
"While there is no privacy audit that I'm aware of, the theory is that there is no motivation to sell my searching habits to anyone." They could sell your data for even more of a profit. Why couldn't that motivate them? Or they could do it to comply with some jurisdiction's laws. Or they could do it accidentally or as a leak from within. The best protection is that no data is collected in the first place, but we need auditing to make the claim of no collection credible.
mdaniel 5y ago
I noped right out of Neeva after setting it as my browser's default engine, opening an incognito window, and getting the finger when I tried to search for something. I'm not installing a browser extension for a search engine. They have almost infinite ways of identifying my right to use their engine given that they're the one emitting the Open Search snippet from within an authenticated window; uuid hostname or uuid path/query param are the two which spring to mind

ghastmaster 5y ago

The greatest feature of DDG in my opinion is that it does not put you into a bubble. Results are the same regardless of what I have been searching lately. Does neeva allow you to toggle features like that?

freediver 5y ago

Neeva's model is great but execution is suboptimal. Two examples: - While Neeva has no ads, they prioritize sites with tons of ads in their results (search for 'best laptop'). If your main premise is that ads are bad, why not penalize/remove second order sites that are heavy in ads? - They claim they respect user privacy, yet make technical choices like using raw Google maps in their product as Maps module, which sends requests from the client directly to Google

pmoriarty 5y ago

"While there is no privacy audit that I'm aware of, the theory is that there is no motivation to sell my searching habits to anyone." They could sell your data for even more of a profit. Why couldn't that motivate them? Or they could do it to comply with some jurisdiction's laws. Or they could do it accidentally or as a leak from within. The best protection is that no data is collected in the first place, but we need auditing to make the claim of no collection credible.

mdaniel 5y ago

I noped right out of Neeva after setting it as my browser's default engine, opening an incognito window, and getting the finger when I tried to search for something. I'm not installing a browser extension for a search engine. They have almost infinite ways of identifying my right to use their engine given that they're the one emitting the Open Search snippet from within an authenticated window; uuid hostname or uuid path/query param are the two which spring to mind