Ex-Google ad executive creates tracker-free search engine
On Thursday, a search engine that does not contain any advertisements or trackers will be available in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.
According to Creator Sridhar Ramaswamy, who worked at Google for 16 years and oversaw its ad company, the technology sector has become “exploitative” of people’s data, and he no longer wanted to be a part of it. Ramaswamy told BBC News that he no longer wanted to be a part of it.
Trackers are programmes that collect and exchange data on a user’s activities online, primarily for the purpose of targeting advertisements.
Investors have provided $77.5 million in funding to Neeva.
It provides search that may be used without charge, but further services, such as access to a password manager and virtual private network (VPN) service, will be made available only through paid subscriptions.
Users are prompted to sign up for an account in order to begin building their subscriptions at a later time.
According to Mr. Ramaswamy, the pricing in the United Kingdom was anticipated to be somewhere about £5 per month.
According to what he had to say, “we believed that the old search engines had become about advertising and advertisers — and not really about serving consumers.”
“Google holds a strong position in the industry; but, the incentive for them to actually innovate, to truly develop experiences that are disruptive, is not really there.”
“And then also as a firm, they feel the obligation to show ever-growing revenue and profit to their shareholders, so they just keep raising the quantity of advertisements,”
Experimenting with Neeva
When you search for the word “migraine” on Google and Neeva, you will find that the first page of results is quite comparable, consisting of links to news items and material that is true.
But the distinction is much clearer when there is a brand involved.
When we search for “BMW,” both Google and Bing bring up results that connect to the BMW company website as well as the BMW item on Wikipedia.
Neeva, on the other hand, only links to BMW’s several official pages, whereas Google provides a map, feeds from social media, and links to used-car dealerships.
Google unmistakably steers us toward the acquisition of a vehicle, despite the fact that it offers a greater selection of products.
The Neeva Chrome browser addon identifies and displays all trackers that are present on visited websites.
Weworked on a few
- There were 351 trackers working for the Daily Mail.
- Tesco five, Sainsbury’s ten, and the parenting forum Mumsnet 27, those are your options.
- the main page of Reddit, Amazon, and three others combined – each in its own right
And virtually all of them had at least one that belonged to Google, which means that Google is obtaining information that is de-identified about users who visit those pages.
During the time that we had the extension enabled, there were no advertisements that appeared around the editorial content.
But in the end, none of Neeva’s other competitors have been able to challenge Google’s position as the industry leader in search.
To “to Bing” or “to Duckduckgo,” which is another service that prioritises users’ privacy, is not a verb in the same way that “to Google” is.
When Mr. Ramaswamy was asked if he could ever unseat his previous company, Steph Liu, an analyst at Forrester who specialises in privacy and search, responded by saying: “I don’t think so.” “In all candour, the answer is no.
“It’s a take on the classic tale of David and Goliath. Google has an excessive number of users and generates an excessive amount of revenue.
“The ultimate goal is to offer an alternative for the consumer base who are worried about their privacy, who do not want Google hoovering up their data and targeting ads based on their search history,” said the CEO of the company. “The goal is to offer an alternative for the consumer base who are worried about their privacy.”
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