A former head of Google’s advertising business has created Neeva, a new ad-free search engine, which he claims preserves your privacy and doesn’t track you. But there are reasons you shouldn’t use it…
What Is the Neeva Search Engine?
Neeva is a search engine, designed by Sridhar Ramaswamy, a veteran Google employee, who was also vice president of advertising and commerce at the company between 2013 and 2018. If anyone in the world knows the ins and outs of tracking users for advertising purposes, it’s Ramaswamy.
The premise of Neeva is simple: it’s a search engine which is funded by subscriptions rather than advertisements. This should mean it doesn’t track users, and aims to preserve privacy above all else.
It sounds great, right? Search engines traditionally make money by tracking users and providing “relevant” adverts. By going with a subscription model, Neeva doesn’t need to engage in shady behavior, and you can be reassured that your search history stays private.
Neeva launched in the US with a waiting list in 2021, and in late 2022, rolled out to the UK, France, and Germany.
We spent some time using Neeva, as well as reading through its privacy policy and terms and conditions. While using Neeva seems a worthy idea, you should think twice before committing.
1. Dark Patterns on the Signup Page
A dark pattern is a type of user interface designed to trick you into doing something you didn’t intend to do. It’s never a good sign, and can be an indication that a company is not entirely on the level.
If you’re new to the concept of online privacy, and have decided to sign up to Neeva, you may take the privacy claims at face value and be eager to find out more.
After entering your email address using the gray on gray (or black, depending on your browser theme) signup form, you’ll notice a checkbox with the words, “Send me product and privacy tips”. And who doesn’t want free privacy tips delivered to their mailbox? We have yet to receive either product tips or privacy tips via email, but bundling both of these things together in hard-to-read small print seems wrong. What if you want privacy tips without product recommendations, and how is a recommendation different from an ad anyway?
If this isn’t a consciously added dark pattern, it’s certainly a poor choice in terms of wording, intent, and design.
2.Neeva Pushes You Into Creating an Account
Yes, we’re aware that most people have a Google account, linking their search history, browsing history, real world location, and more. Privacy conscious people—such as those in Neeva’s target market—tend not to like this idea. An account links your identity to searches you make. You may want to be wary of this, especially if you turn on Neeva’s personalization features.
There is a functional (no account required) search bar on Neeva’s homepage, but it’s hidden in clutter, and gives the impression that it’s a demo screenshot or an image. While this may not be intentional, it’s another possible example of a dark pattern—in this case, to get you to create an account.
While account-free search is currently available, there doesn’t seem to be any reference to it in the Neeva Terms of service, to the extent that you only actually agree to the TOS if you create an account.
Searching without an account seems to be an afterthought, or a temporary measure, at best, and if you’re enjoying Neeva, but haven’t yet created an account, you shouldn’t expect your tracker- and account-free idyll to last. In the meantime, you can go wild. Make sure that you continue checking the TOS page regularly though: Neeva doesn’t commit to notifying you to changes by any other way—even if you do have an account.
3. Neeva Will Hand Over Your Data if They Think It’s “Appropriate”.
All online services operating in the US can be compelled to cooperate with law enforcement, and will either hand over details when presented with a valid court order, or will shut down in protest. A quick scan through Neeva’s privacy policy shows that the company will hand over any data they hold on you if:
What you need to know is that, while some companies would go to the wall to protect user privacy, Neeva will give it up even if they aren’t required to.
4. Neeva Is a Data Silo
Neeva makes it easy for you to sign up for its service by using Single Sign On from Google, Apple, or Microsoft. There’s also a handy “Apps” tab on the right side of every search results page in which you can connect Google, Microsoft, and Dropbox accounts.
If you connect accounts they will import your data “to increase the comprehensiveness of your search results.” Additionally, Neeva says, “We may collect information about your contacts from the accounts you choose to connect to our Services”.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and is potentially very useful for Neeva users. But it certainly isn’t a good thing from a security point of view. And even if you’re fine with it, do your friends and colleagues really want yet another company sucking up their details?
5. Neeva Wants Your Credit Card
It’s no secret that Neeva will eventually become a paid service, and the putative cost of two cups of coffee per month (anywhere between $2 and $20 depending on your order) seems like a reasonable proposition.
The specifics of how you pay for your subscription aren’t yet clear, but another dive into the privacy policy points to, “the credit or debit card information you provide as part of the Account Data”.
There’s no mention of Bitcoin, PayPal, or any other way of making payments. Neeva will likely have your payment details on file. Added to the collected data listed above, Neeva is starting to look like a very tempting target for cybercriminals, and a possible candidate for data breach.
6. Neeva Forces Arbitration and Severely Limits Awards
Let’s say that something happens which causes you to have a serious disagreement with Neeva. There are multiple possible grounds for a dispute. You may decide to take the company to court for the damage and hurt they might’ve caused you.
You can’t sue Neeva—even if they thought it “appropriate” to hand over your data to Texas law enforcement for suspected illegal activity.
Section 17a of the Neeva terms and conditions, the “Mandatory Arbitration of Disputes”, stipulates that you are “waiving the right to a trial by jury or to participate in a class action”.
In the event you’re successful in arbitration, you’ve agreed that Neeva’s liable to a maximum of $100 (or an amount paid for Services).
The exception to this rule is that Neeva can take you to court, seek injunctive, or other equitable relief if it deems that you’ve infringed or misappropriated its intellectual property rights.
7. Neeva SafeSearch Is Good, but Not Perfect
It’s always fun to test out the SafeSearch filter on a new search engine, and no matter what filth we typed into Neeva’s search box, the images were all safe for work.
But that doesn’t mean that all results will be safe—or even necessarily what you were looking for. Similar to Brave search, Neeva has a prominent “discussion” section if your search term has a lot of community discourse on forums.
A quick search for a school uniform suggested, recommended, and highlighted very NSFW subreddits in the discussions section. We expected that to happen, so maybe the Neeva developers should have too. In the image, you can see the way one specific subreddit was brought to our attention. While many users might appreciate the prompt to “see what the community r/girlsinschooluniform is saying”, it’s not what you need when picking out a new skirt with your eight-year-old.
A Simpler Way to Preserve Your Privacy
All the complaints we have about Neeva can be applied to Google (except for the arbitration stipulations), and from an overall privacy perspective, using Neeva is a lot better than using the default browser on your Chromebook. But to us, Neeva seems like an unnecessary service that involves allowing yet another venture capital backed tech company to store your data.
If you don’t want to be tracked by Google, it’s easier to set DuckDuckGo as your default search provider and use an incognito Brave or Firefox window when you want to conduct a new search. DuckDuckGo doesn’t track users, and adverts are contextual rather than tracking-based. When you close the window, all cookies will be flushed. If you’re extra paranoid about your search terms, VPN subscriptions are pretty cheap.
