Google's potential competitor Neeva to shut down its search engine

Acquisition costs, economic environment and impact of generative AI and LLMs main reasons behind shutdown

Co-founded by former Google executive, Neeva announced that it is shutting down its consumer search engine on June 2, 2023.

Neeva is known for being a private and ad-free search engine. Based on its features, the platform was being termed as a potential competitor to Google Search.

In a blog post, the company's cofounders Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan narrated their struggles in building a search engine despite all the competition. They said, "Building search engines is hard. It is even harder to do with a tiny team of 50 people who are up against entrenched organisations with endless resources."

The cofounders admitted the existing competition and said, "We've discovered that it is one thing to build a search engine and an entirely different thing to convince regular users of the need to switch to a better choice."

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The main reasons behind the shutdown are the increased cost of acquiring users, the current economic environment and the upcoming impact of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs).

The paid subscribers of Neeva Premium will get their refund, and all the user data will be deleted as a part of the shutdown. The platform will now be focusing on opportunities related to AI and LLMs.