Search engine startup asks users to be the customer, not the product

Search engine startup asks users to be the customer, not the product

3 years ago
Anonymous $GRbK1oXs9y

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/googles-former-advertising-vp-starts-a-subscriber-only-search-engine/

In November 2017, Sridhar Ramaswamy—the head of Google's $95 billion advertising arm—left the company after a scandal concerning advertisements for major corporations found on YouTube videos that put children in questionable situations. Ramaswamy told The New York Times that shortly after that incident, he decided that he needed to do something different in his life—because "an ad-supported model had limitations."

Ramaswamy's startup company, Neeva, is that "something different"—and though it, too, is a search engine, it seeks to sidestep some of Google's problems by avoiding the ads altogether. Ramaswamy says that the new engine won't show ads and won't collect or profit from user data—instead, it will charge its users a subscription fee.