Neeva, the Private Search Engine, to Shut Down on June 2nd: What Went Wrong?

Neeva , the private alternative web search engine, has announced on the company's official blog that it is shutting down on June 2nd. Neeva was founded in 2019 by former Googlers and launched in 2021, just two years ago, as a paid, ad-free, private alternative to Google with more customization options.

However, despite its promise of a better search experience, the company failed to convince enough users to switch from Google. In its blog post, Neeva stated that it will focus on enterprise search and AI products moving forward.

For those who have a paid subscription to Neeva Premium, the company has announced that they will receive a refund for the unused portion of their subscription.

Neeva's closure comes as a blow to those who were looking for a more private and ad-free search experience. However, it also highlights the challenges that alternative search engines face when trying to compete with Google's dominant market position.

Our take: While there is certainly a demand for more private and customizable search engines, it seems that users are not willing to pay for them, as there are similar, more popular services available for free, such as DuckDuckGo , Startpage , or Brave Search .

This may have been one of the reasons why Neeva failed to attract a significant number of users over the last couple of years.