Ex-Google ads boss builds a rival search engine

Google’s former head of advertising is building a rival search product that will allow users to look for information without ads. Founded by Sridhar Ramaswamy, the executive who was in-charge of Google’s $115 billion advertising division, and Vivek Raghunath, ex-VP of monetisation at YouTube, Neeva is designed to keep user behaviour tracking at bay. “A lack of competition in the search space is bad for innovation and bad for users,” Sridhar Ramaswamy wrote in a blog post. “We need more search engines, offering different kinds of experiences and preferences, to fit people’s individual needs.” Beyond web searches, Neeva can also be set up as a personal search tool that will look for a user’s email or calendar entry when they do a search.