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We will be shutting down neeva.com

neeva.com

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Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com

#201

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

summerlight wrote: post #115
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think consumers care a lot about privacy, it's just not clear to most of them just how much it's being violated on a daily basis.

This is a common misconception rife across regular "techie" audiences. Many consumers do understand its privacy implication (+ads) and they consider it as a plausible economical trade-off to freely use the service. Some younger people even see it as utility! (which to be honest I don't fully understand yet) This is why those privacy narrative doesn't resonate well across the majority. If you want to promote a specifi…

People claim this every day on HN but I never see any proof.

I have never seen or spoken to a person who fully understands the implications of privacy violations and still doesn't care. I meet some people who do care and understand, but don't know how to fight it so they give up. I meet tons of people who think they're trading off privacy for convenience, but when I question them they're completely unaware of the extent to which it's happening. When I explain it to them they always enter the first group.

Sorry, I'm just not buying it. To the extent that people "want" this, it's mostly that they've had the wool pulled over their eyes, not because they've made a well educated decision.

This is nothing but a lie we in the tech industry tell ourselves to feel a little better about the horrible things we're doing.

Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com

#202

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

dopeboy wrote: post #116
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think consumers care a lot about privacy, it's just not clear to most of them just how much it's being violated on a daily basis.

Let me refine: consumers care about privacy but are OK sacrificing it for convenience.

You're still wrong.

Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com

#203

Post by mi_lk »

usaar333 wrote: post #189
nugget wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neeva failed because they didn’t understand distribution. Sundar became a rising star and ultimately CEO of Google because he directly managed more paid distribution and user acquisition for Google search than anyone else. Not a coincidence. Google promotes the narrative that they organically grew to dominate the search market when in fact they spent many billions of dollars on user acquisition (while also, for most…

> Neeva failed because they didn’t understand distribution No, the team and its VCs fully understood distribution. Neeva never got to the point of having a compelling enough product where cost of user aq was below LTV for a large enough market.

Yea, distribution > product (most of the time) is almost startup 101 these days. It's dismissive to think the team and its big-name VCs behind it don't know the importance of distribution

Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com

#204

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

fogzen wrote: post #142
freediver wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I accept that, I am not trying to predict the future, but to create it with my work. How do you see search develop in two to five years?

The exact same, maybe using AI on the backend to improve results, maybe for language translation. But AI is useless in search for the most part. People are looking for a specific thing quickly with the least typing. People don’t want to have a conversation with a chat bot to personalize their results. I think AI is overhyped right now. Very few real businesses being built on GPT outside of copywriting and blog spam,…

Different use cases. For writing code or poetry, being able to follow up is wonderful. Or for exploring a topic you're curious about. Or for summarizing. For other things, maybe less useful. But I think you're underestimating. People Google for Google or type domains into search and click the first link regardless of what it says. If chat gives people what they want with vague queries, they'll use it.

Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com

#205

Post by giantrobot »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #131
nugget wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neeva failed because they didn’t understand distribution. Sundar became a rising star and ultimately CEO of Google because he directly managed more paid distribution and user acquisition for Google search than anyone else. Not a coincidence. Google promotes the narrative that they organically grew to dominate the search market when in fact they spent many billions of dollars on user acquisition (while also, for most…

Not best product. The only product. IMO altavista and yahoo were so far behind they were hopeless, relying on unchanged habits and noisy news.

Yahoo never had great search, they started life as a directory rather than a full search engine. Their first search functionality only searched their directory. Later they used Inktomi's crawler based search.

Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com

#206

Post by janandonly »

kovac wrote: post #167
freediver wrote: post #8

There is an all out war for search supremacy right now between two trillion dollar companies, with one having everything to win and the other everything to lose. In those circumstances a standard VC model of buying growth does not work even if you have a huge war chest, as you will be outspent no matter how big your investors are. As a founder of a startup in the same space (Kagi) we feel these challenges. We face di…

Hello, I looked at Kagi and found it too expensive. I'm a paying user for many software I use: vpn, email, git to list a few. And i am willing to pay a reasonable price for a search service. To put it in to perspective, my vpn costs less than $9 a month and I use it for high speed multimedia streaming, video games with no limits on usage. I hope you can come up with more reasonable pricing plans or consider open-sour…

I’ve asked the Kagi team before to provide a pay-per-search option.

Of course, I would pay 2c per search! Or even 5c. Or maybe even 10c!

But, no, I’m not going to pay a lump sum up front. And certainly not every month through a subscription.

There are good paywall options out there that don’t eat into your % and that are effortless to set up. The user on the paying end doesn’t have to make a profile with the payment processor, either.

For a proof of concept, just look at Yalls.

https://yalls.org/

Just to be clear: I know Yalls runs on the bitcoin "Lightning Network." I am fully aware that many HN readers don't see the use case for bitcoin yet. It is my firm conviction, if micropayments had existed earlier in the development phase of the internet, we wouldn't be flooded by adds today.

The Lighting network allows for such payments, as little as a fraction of a dollar cent.

Users don't even need to know or see that in the background you're running your payment rails over bitcoin. A wallet like BBW can simply show you a dollar amount, and when paying, all the uses sees is that he paid a few dollar cents.

https://www.bbw.sv

I think that the current obstinacy or refusal to use the micropayment tools that exist today are holding us back and are keeping the world firmly in the grasp of Big Advertising.

And I get it: the market if flooded by nonsense "crypto" coins or nonsense NFT projects, that are obvious scams or money grabs. Numerous early websites were plain nonsense, and plenty of people thought that because of that, the Internet would go nowhere. Some pushed through though and saw the bright future behind the clouds.

Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com

#207

Post by fauigerzigerk »

bruce511 wrote: post #195
cmer wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I was a customer for a long time and loved the service, but having to watch my “search spend” and constantly going over limits is really annoying. I ended up cancelling but I really wish I didn’t. Personally I’d like to see an ad-supported, or partially ad-supported version that isn’t evil. The way Google started out with relevant ads in the sidebar or a single relevant ad at the top is acceptable in my op…

I'm not a Kagi user (yet) but I think you're missing the point. In order to display just one ad, the engine has to start tracking you. The converse, just display a random ad, is not valuable to advertizers and they won't pay for it. Equally, the kagi user base is so small that even if I -wanted- to put an ad on Kagi, I'd get very few impressions per month. Lastly given that the user base is self-selecting as a group…

>In order to display just one ad, the engine has to start tracking you.

I don't think so. Selling ads based on keywords in search terms has always been a viable strategy.

But you're right about Kagi's current user base. Selling yourself as an ad-free alternative and then introducing ads sounds difficult to say the least.

Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com

#208

Post by giantrobot »

bruce511 wrote: post #195
cmer wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I was a customer for a long time and loved the service, but having to watch my “search spend” and constantly going over limits is really annoying. I ended up cancelling but I really wish I didn’t. Personally I’d like to see an ad-supported, or partially ad-supported version that isn’t evil. The way Google started out with relevant ads in the sidebar or a single relevant ad at the top is acceptable in my op…

I'm not a Kagi user (yet) but I think you're missing the point. In order to display just one ad, the engine has to start tracking you. The converse, just display a random ad, is not valuable to advertizers and they won't pay for it. Equally, the kagi user base is so small that even if I -wanted- to put an ad on Kagi, I'd get very few impressions per month. Lastly given that the user base is self-selecting as a group…

> In order to display just one ad, the engine has to start tracking you.

They most certainly do not. Ads can be contextual for the search like AdWords was. Instead of selling their users they could sell their content.

Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com

#209

Post by collaborative »

Zak wrote: post #151
collaborative wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distribution is blocked by big tech and even mentioning what you are working on will get you perma banned from most subreddits because of "spam" In fact, HN is a rara avis in that it allows "Show HN" posts

"Hey everyone, I'm working on [commercial product]" from someone who isn't already an active member of a community will be seen as spam most places regardless of big tech influence. A bit of searching finds a couple posts about Neeva on big subreddits, which typically didn't get any traction[0]. Of course, the conspiratorial answer is that reddit lies about votes to suppress things it doesn't like, but I have seen no…

Interesting. What I mean is that forums used to feel welcoming and moderators were much more hands off - usually only acting because of general outcries

People would also usually post from multiple users whereas now it's all about tanking karma

Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com

#210

Post by wbl »

somat wrote: post #87
wbl wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The buggy wip maker couldn't have stopped Ford

A strangely mixed metaphor, and incorrect, the buggy manufacturer did well enough... for a while at least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebaker

Because they invested in the new up and coming thing and transferred the knowledge that applied.
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