This looks awesome and I hope it succeeds, but I have a tiny nitpick: it's too bad that when they came up with the name they didn't think of a name that sounded good when you say "Just X it": "google it" is basically second nature now, "neeva it" is hard to say/sounds weird
Neeva Announces Public Availability of Its Ads Free, Private Search Engine
71–80 of 100 posts
Re: Neeva Announces Public Availability of Its Ads Free, Private Search Engine
#72I tried signing up a few weeks ago and they are not allowing international or Australian access. I'm surprised the comments here are missing the elephant in the room. Sridhar Ramaswamy was the Google executive directly responsible for putting all those ads on Google's search results. If Google search got broken then I reckon he did more than anyone to break it. He had a brutal rivalry with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.…
> Those ads are so bad Google makes money from people paying to remove them. Arguably those ads have to be that annoying if people want to use YouTube for free, at least in its current state - it’s a globally free service that receives 500 hours of content every minute[0]. Less annoying ads drive less clicks and thus generate less revenue. Paying to remove them is a sign that you actually value YT for how much it cos…
I don't value YT for how much it costs to run I value it for the videos that people choose to upload for free. I am not sure that it matters much to me that I am downloading videos from an enormous site with massive traffic. Some of the best videos I get from YT have very few views and the uploaders are not looking to financially profit from sharing them. These videos could easily be served from smaller sites with less traffic that do not cost much to run. I get reliable downloads from all over the internet, not just Google servers. I would not complain about YT because I never see any ads, and downloads are relatively easy, but I do think it's a bit myopic to imagine that YT is the only way we could ever have accesss to so much video. I think that was/is inevitable. The internet allows people to share stuff.
Re: Neeva Announces Public Availability of Its Ads Free, Private Search Engine
#73I am 100% in favor of any product that features no ads and centers its experience on the user. I have high hopes for this site, I feel like the cost may dissuade some, but a small fee is a small price to pay for privacy.
Re: Neeva Announces Public Availability of Its Ads Free, Private Search Engine
#74[deleted]
Re: Neeva Announces Public Availability of Its Ads Free, Private Search Engine
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210415072450/https://neeva.com... We could read this like a confession from ex-Google managers: "There are technology products [like the ones we acquired at Google] that work better when they [anthromorphising the software] know some information about you, like your interests or what country you live in. However, companies today [(read: Google)] collect whatever information they can abou…
Certain jurisdictions may have records retention regulations so e.g. search history can be supoenaed in a criminal investigation.
I would be very surprised if there way a law requiring search history to be recorded.
Just because some data can be supoenaed doesnt mean you are required to store/create the data in the first place.
Re: Neeva Announces Public Availability of Its Ads Free, Private Search Engine
#76I tried signing up a few weeks ago and they are not allowing international or Australian access. I'm surprised the comments here are missing the elephant in the room. Sridhar Ramaswamy was the Google executive directly responsible for putting all those ads on Google's search results. If Google search got broken then I reckon he did more than anyone to break it. He had a brutal rivalry with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.…
This is literally one of the quotes: "Ramaswamy fought a battle with other Google executives to prevent them from mining the search histories of Google users to improve ad-targeting on non-Google sites." Did you actually read the business insider article that you linked? Seems like you went into your research with preconceived notions, didn't find anything glaringly against your viewpoint, and proceeded to provide it…
It's a fair question whether the architects of Google's ad monopoly are the right people to build a private search engine. As noted in the comments here, Neeva's own website says "Neeva was founded by Sridhar Ramaswamy (ex-SVP of Ads at Google) and Vivek Raghunathan (ex-VP of Monetization at YouTube)." Anyone who reads the NYT or Information articles can draw their own conclusions.
If the counter-example you quote is Ramaswamy arguing to go not-quite-so-far abusing people's personal information as others at Google wanted, then I think that's pretty damning. It's a very Google-like position to argue that it's okay for Google to mine personal information to drive more ad clicks on Google properties, but not to let other websites do it as effectively. That's the argument to which your quote refers and it's both anti-privacy and anti-competetive.
Seems your account was created within a week of OP, and this is your only comment or post on HN.
I've found some extra supporting quotes and links below, detailing that Ramaswamy oversaw all advertising at Google, was the exec responsible for increasing ads on search results (which was only 3% of the screen originally), and that he knew doing this made search results and privacy worse for consumers.
"Earlier, he [Ramaswamy] spent 15 years at Google where, as a senior vice president, he oversaw all of its advertising and commerce products, including search, display and video advertising, analytics, shopping, payments, and travel. When he joined the company in 2003, Google Ads was a $1.5 billion business. By the time he left in 2018, its annual revenue run rate was $100 billion." https://www.globalindiantimes.com/globalindiantimes/2021/5/1...
"I was the exec in charge of many of the increases in ad load, there was an expectation of a certain amount of growth" - Ramaswamy quoted on CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/16/sridhar-ramaswamy-ex-google-...
"Useful search results were pushed down the page to squeeze in more advertisements, and privacy was sacrificed for online tracking tools to keep tabs on what ads people were seeing" - Ramaswamy discussing his 15 years at Google https://searchengineland.com/former-google-ad-boss-ramaswamy...
Re: Neeva Announces Public Availability of Its Ads Free, Private Search Engine
#77This looks awesome and I hope it succeeds, but I have a tiny nitpick: it's too bad that when they came up with the name they didn't think of a name that sounded good when you say "Just X it": "google it" is basically second nature now, "neeva it" is hard to say/sounds weird
Neev it?
Re: Neeva Announces Public Availability of Its Ads Free, Private Search Engine
#78For those who have joined, I'm curious about the following query: Are women better than men at limbo? The results on Google[0] and Bing[1] are both entirely useless clickbait. I just want to know if women can bend back farther than men without falling over. 0. https://www.middleendian.com/limbogoogle.png 1. https://www.middleendian.com/limbobing.png
What do you want out of this query (yes, the SERPs are pretty bad)? I rewrote the query to [ who is best at limbo ] and got a much better result from Google. But as soon as you add 'gender' to the query it switches to articles about being in 'gender limbo' which is't totally surprising.
With DDG on my phone in incognito mode (my normal usage) I get nothing at all related to bending over backwards.
Re: Neeva Announces Public Availability of Its Ads Free, Private Search Engine
#79I agree with others that a new business model for search is refreshing. But... for a privacy-oriented service, Neeva is doing a poor job in earning my trust. I spent some minutes in their website and all I could find are vague promises and grandiose marketing-speak. Where's the evidence and the technical detail? Where are the privacy experts, data experts and engineers impressing me with the robustness, openness and…
We live in a post evidence world
Re: Neeva Announces Public Availability of Its Ads Free, Private Search Engine
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is literally one of the quotes: "Ramaswamy fought a battle with other Google executives to prevent them from mining the search histories of Google users to improve ad-targeting on non-Google sites." Did you actually read the business insider article that you linked? Seems like you went into your research with preconceived notions, didn't find anything glaringly against your viewpoint, and proceeded to provide it…
It's a fair question whether the architects of Google's ad monopoly are the right people to build a private search engine. As noted in the comments here, Neeva's own website says "Neeva was founded by Sridhar Ramaswamy (ex-SVP of Ads at Google) and Vivek Raghunathan (ex-VP of Monetization at YouTube)." Anyone who reads the NYT or Information articles can draw their own conclusions. If the counter-example you quote is…
Read what I said again, and then re-read in just in case you didn't get it that second time.
Also my account was created 2 years ago.