Former Google boss Sridhar Ramaswamy is launching an advert-and-tracker-free search engine.
Neeva creator Ramaswamy – who worked at Google for 16 years and was in charge of the tech giant’s ad business – is rolling out his search engine to the UK, Germany and France following last year’s launch in the US.
The platform – which has raised $77.5m (R1.39bn) from investors – offers free-to-use search, while other features such as VPN service and password-manager access will be an option on a subscription basis.
Ramaswamy told BBC News: “We felt the traditional search engines had become about advertising and advertisers – and not really about serving users.
RelatedPosts
“Google has a dominant position in the marketplace – and the incentive for them to truly innovate, to truly create disruptive experiences, is not really there.
“And then also as a company they feel obligated to show more and more revenue and profit to their shareholders, so they just keep increasing the number of ads.”
