The Neeva search engine just announced that it was officially launched in Europe with the support of three European countries, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.
Neeva is one of many startups μηχανές αναζήτησης, ανταγωνιστής της Google, η οποία προσφέρει ειλικρινή αποτελέσματα αναζήτησης, χωρίς καμία monitoring and absolutely no advertising or affiliate links.
It has just expanded to the UK, Germany and France, so users there will be able to see local results for weather, restaurants, stocks, etc. in addition to the international results in their searches. And of course, they'll be able to handle the Neeva in their language.
Founded by two ex-Googlers, Neeva is an effort to wean users around the world from Google's current search model, which is influenced by ads and tracking your habits.
Neeva not only promises an ad-free search environment, but also guarantees that users will not be tracked and that search results are not biased. Neeva search engine, like its rival Kagi, is available for free. Both fund search through premium accounts, which add functionality to the search experience.
The main idea behind both services is funding solely through users who pay to acquire the premium services. Currently, Neeva Premium is only offered in the United States, but the company has announced plans to launch the premium option in Europe in the future as well.
Premium users get first access to new search engine features and use a free VPN.
Neeva uses its own index as well as Bing to provide search results to users. The service supports image, video, news and map searches and search suggestions.
The search engine stores "a limited amount of information" about its users to "make the product better" for the individual user, according to the announcements in the FAQ. Information is deleted after 90 days by default.
In a world where Google search is almost monopoly (as long as "google it" has entered our vocabulary) it remains to be seen how ad-free search engines like Neeva or Kagi will fare in the coming months or years.
Funding is needed for unbiased and ad-free search results, but it is unclear how many internet users are willing to pay for this privilege.
For now, Neeva is expansion oriented and less focussed on creation revenue.