Big Technology Podcast - Why Ex-Google Ads Boss Sridhar Ramaswamy is Building An Ads-Free Search Engine

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

Sridhar Ramaswamy is CEO of Neeva, an ads-free search engine he helped found after running Google's ads and commerce business. Ramaswamy spent seventeen years inside Google, and eventually grew disillusioned with its business. Now he's trying to create the solution with $77.5 million in funding. In this conversation, we discuss his evolving view on advertising, what decoupling search from ads allows from a product standpoint, and how the current anti-trust environment is opening Google up to the competition.

Hello and welcome to the big technology podcast, a show for cool-headed nuance conversation of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is Sridar Ramoswamy, the former head of ads and commerce at Google, who is building a new ads-free search engine called Niva. Neva is one of the most interesting startups on the market today. It's raised $77.5 million and is going after a tech giant's bread and butter. That tech giant, of course, is Google. Svidar's former employee employer. Sridar is also someone I've wanted to speak with for quite some time. And I'm so glad he agreed to come on with us today.

Svidar, welcome to the show. I'm super excited to chat with you. Love your writing. Love your podcast. Glad to be here. Really appreciate it. You are running one of the most fascinating companies in Silicon Valley today. And of course, your background makes it all the more interesting.

So we'll just go through that. But before we get to Neva, I figure we start with the news. So this week, or over the past week or so, the tech giants have had almost all of them have had blowout earnings. I think Microsoft beat projections, but not by enough. So the stock went down, which just goes to show you how much Wall Street is expecting from these companies. And Google, where you used to work, or I guess they call it Alphabet now, it had $31.9 billion in search ad sales last quarter alone. And that's a jump up from 24.5 billion in Q1, 2020. YouTube had ad sales that were up 49% to $6 billion in Q1.

So my question for you is, how long can this keep up? So to me, that's one of the fascinating things today. At one level, the year-on-year comparisons are a bit wonky because last year-year clearly was a very tough year. And so, you know, the comparison is always easier now than what it was clearly last year. But I think that are also benefiting from the increased shift. to everything being online that we are collectively going through. So I think the growth rate doesn't surprise me. But in some sense, I think it also sets up sort of the next steps

in these trends. And we'll get into Neva a bit as we are talking about it. But to me, this kind of growth, this kind of impact, sets up some interesting dynamics, both in Washington and in beyond and in terms of opportunities. And that's really what we're hoping will be able to tap into. Yeah. But, okay, so you were the ads chief at Google. And you must know that advertising is generally a certain fixed percentage, total ad spend is a certain fixed percentage of GDP. And, you know, obviously online advertising has been spiking recently, because

advertisers said, hey, maybe I should stop putting all this money in magazines and start moving it to a format where I can target better and track better. Or TV. And that's what, or TV exactly. And that's why we've seen these jumps in digital. But eventually that's going to hit a ceiling, one would imagine, where we can't see leaps from, you know, $24 billion to $31 in over in a year. And of course, we factor in COVID. But this party can't keep going on forever. So, or maybe it can. So I guess, like, yeah, the core question I want to get to you is, how long is this going to last? Do you see this eventually, you know, coming to a ceiling in digital advertising?

And what are the implications of that? In one level, that's going to happen when digital advertising is a large, is like most of all of advertising. And I think from that perspective, we have not quite hit the. ceiling yet. We have hit ceilings in a number of areas, other areas, like smartphone sales. We know that year on year, it's not really growing significantly. And so there are other changes. I think it's just that the move to online advertising is part of the way there. So I would say there is some, you know, some more space over there. But all of these converts to the level of GDP growth, which all of us know is nowhere close to that.

Yeah, like eventually Facebook and Google, those numbers are going to have to slow it down. And then I wonder what they end up doing to try to keep finding growth, or do they just tell Wall Street that, hey, look, we are what we are, and we've gobbled up as much as we can get, enjoyed the margins.

There's definitely that, and margin always gives you enormous amount of power. I think this is actually a nice point, at which to talk about sort of NIVA and why NIVA. Yeah, I mean, you're going in the opposite direction. Well, so it's the largest untapped sort of consumer market. It's already $150 billion. And to your point, still growing, you know, digital marketing still growing at 20%.

That's driven by the fact that it has not caught up with like total ad spend. To me, what is super interesting is, that there has never been in the history of business a company that has commanded 90-plus market share in a market that's like a hundred plus billion dollars. Which Google's doing now. Yeah. These companies have always gotten into trouble, abused power in some way, or the clients want out, or consumers want choice. There's never been a company in the history of the world like this. And if you look at previous cases of what has disrupted them,

it is typically a subscription play. If you look back, what did HBO do to a Time Warner or what did Netflix do to add supported television? Or honestly, in one of the very few cases that there ever have been what Adobe did to itself in sort of moving to a SaaS model or what Amazon Prime did to what was like traditional e-commerce, which is one at a time kind of shopping.

The common theme in all of this is the subsidized. model. And back to my earlier point about how smartphone sales have kind of tapered off, Apple has actually not grown revenue significantly, but its subscription business and stock have grown because they have invested more and more into services, more and more into subscriptions. To me, at a business level, this is the big attraction of NEVA, and I'll walk through a set of sort of why NIVA and why now as we think about it. But part of what is exciting from a business perspective about NIVA is even if you were to get, call it 2% of market share,

it is going to command significantly more in terms of things like capitalization. If you are to look at comparable examples from the companies that I mentioned before, like a Netflix, like an Amazon, like HBO. So we think that, you know, this is a great point for NIVA. And there are a set of reasons for why, you know, why us? Yeah, and before we jump into that, let's just set the stage. So NIVA is a subscription-based search engine. That's right. That's right.

No ads? Yeah, Niva is informed by both product principles. and by business principles, and to a certain extent, in my mind, reflects a place in our cultural history. What I mean by that is the ads model has clearly worked for all of these companies, but the ads model has always gotten disrupted, and I know from both personal experience and the enormous amount of user studies and so on that we have done, that there is resentment about it.

So we wanted to create NEVA as a product that catered only to customers that was actually very, very strict and open about things like not having ads in it. It's a consequence of the business model, but to us, subscription search was the way to create a superior product and having really squeaky, clean business principles, not just around no ads, but also around things like no affiliate links ever, no data, getting packaged and sold ever, being privacy first, all of those are consequences of the model where we say we want to create the best product for you. So the idea is people will pay you a monthly fee and be able to search on your search engine and they won't get served ads,

they won't get their data collected, they won't end up, I guess going to links that will end up getting the search engine more money when it ends up, you know, being packaged in the search results. And that's going to be worth something to consumers. How much? I have two questions for you about that before we go deeper into this. How much do you think you can charge?

And also, do you think that this could be something that ends up going mass market? You know, for Netflix, like I end up, you know, paying what, $8 a month to get access to their content library. Google search works pretty well, and most people are cool with the ads. In fact, I think most people have a pretty favorable opinion of Google. So is your product going to be sort of a niche luxury product, privacy for the rich, or do you think that it can be something that will appeal to the masses? And if so, what makes you feel that? First, our aspiration is to be a product that everybody will want.

And, you know, to us being able to create a product that delivers clear value was very, very important, which is why we said both the fundamental model, as well as other product principles that came as a result of it. The counterpoint to your thoughts about ads on Google being okay is that, you know, our society, like on every other issue, is layered. There are some sort of people that just say, I'll scroll by. It's not a big deal. There are others that ask themselves, wait, why do I need this? Why do I not get the best results right on top

where I'm going to consume them? And for a lot of our users on our own data, for example, search is something that people do like a dozen times a day. There are not many things that people go back to time and time and time again. I picked search as the point at which to launch a new kind of service, And that's because both Vivek, my co-founder, and I thought that it is the ultimate aggregator of intent, whether it is you're just looking for a weather, or looking for the answer to a complicated financial problem in your life that you want to solve, or something, you know, something super personal and awkward like, you know, a friend of mine told me, I searched for how to be a good mom to a three-year-old because my three-year-old wouldn't stop crying.

She is like, Shriar, why would I ever want that to get packaged up and sold up for advertising? So we think of ourselves as creating a daily use product without any worries, without any gotchas. And we think it is a daily use product and people use it often enough. So we think that we will be able to price this at a point where lots of people will get value from it. We'll pay for it. And much of the early reviews that we get on the product, by the way, somewhat to our surprise, are things like, wow, this is such a relaxing, clutter-free experience. This, I actually feel good about the fact that ads are not chasing me at all,

that what I do is my business. So I think more people than we think are going to find the product desirable. Pretty much not a day goes by without someone telling me, You know, we are in the prepay payment phase. You don't pay for NEVA. You just get to try it while we make the product better. But pretty much every day, someone either wants to invest in my company, like without my asking, they send me an email saying,

I love your company. Can I invest in it? Or they're like, hey, can I pay for the product? So we feel pretty good about where we are. Yeah, I've tried it. I've enjoyed it. And it is interesting. I think that I switched my default in Chrome to NEVA.

And we can talk about that in a bit because that's sort of the source of antitrust. Let's put a pin in that for a moment. But yeah, it is interesting how when you switch your search engines, you start to see how often you search. And it is a real stark contrast when you're searching on a search engine without ads. Scott Galloway, who wrote the four and will be on the show in a couple of weeks, he compares Google to God. Like it used to be, you would ask God, I don't know if you heard this before, you'd ask God, when will my sick kid be healed? And now you type it into Google, you type in the symptoms and you look at the average. recovery time. And it's like, wait a second, why is an advertiser? Why is this data going to an

advertiser as well? I'm talking to God here, not to, I don't know, Kleenex. Actually, you raise an important point. You know something? The ad-supported model, even for queries like that, tends to favor high engagement sites that have figured out how to get your attention and how to cram a lot of ads. You know, in fact, I joke to people that any time I, I, do a medical query and go to a medical health site. Generally, my conclusion is, like, I have a serious problem and I'm dying. Oh, my God.

I went to WebMD a little while ago, and I was for scratchy throat. And WebMD is like, well, you may just have the common cold, or you might have Ebola. I'm like, wait a second, that's a heck of a range, guys. Do you know why? Why? It gets you to click.

It's the same as ClickPid. you put a bunch of these and by the way all of this happens without anyone designing it to be so you're like okay what is the highest likely click through after the cold thing there's an algorithm that sits there and says

if I put Ebola if I put something else that is super serious Alex is going to click on it and go and there's another chance to show one more ad in front of Alex it's the system that is working as it is designed and even on those queries the kind of features we think about are hey how to be surface government

website. How do we surface high authority websites and not the ones that are chasing after clicks? You know this better than me. You're running as a Google isn't the purpose of Google to sort of, you know, get you useful results so you just keep coming back. Because if you do, or, you know, do they want you to end up being some sort of roundabout cycle? Because you'll search and then you'll click and then, you know, maybe you'll come back if you didn't get the quite perfect answer. and you'll click again, and then maybe one day you'll click an ad. Well, so the answer depends on what kind of queries you're thinking about. When it comes to commercial queries, for example,

so the algorithm is now optimized towards showing your results in which you click on ads. And those are the ones that are taking up more and more off the space. Again, that's the model. If you optimize for revenue, you talked about 20% growth. You know, one of the ways in which you get that growth is by taking that extra line. And, you know, search ads over the years have gone from taking 3% of the result on the page to 10%, 20%. I joke to people if you search on a place like Yahoo.com, pretty much, even on a large screen, you only see ads. And so there is now this very strong incentive to show you results that are ads.

And ads in some sense, in a very strong sense, are a conflict of interest for the search engine. Should they show you an ad or should they show you the best result? And over time, you know, the answer is more and more ads. Right. It'll surprise you to know that one of the biggest feature asks that we have are things like, I want to control what retailers I see. I do not want to see big retailers when I search for stuff.

I want smaller retailers. If I'm looking for clothing, I only want to be shown stores that make a commitment to ethically sourcing their material. So those kinds of features, not showing the top retailer in the country is not an option for an ad-driven search engine. For us, it's a feature we must build because that's what keeps you as a customer. Right, because that top retailer is going to be a top advertiser for Google. So Google doesn't have the ability to tell somebody who's using Google, hey, maybe you don't want to show this. retailer. But you do because you're not beholden to these companies. That's correct. That's right. That's right. That's right. One of the interesting things I saw when I started using the

product was that you allow people to also tailor the news results they want to see. So I was like, so it's draft weekend for the NFL. And I'm searching, all right, who are the Jets picking and all that stuff? And I put it into Neva. And now I'm getting to decide, well, do I want someone like the fan blogs to be the items that show up when I'm searching, or do I want ESPN? And that immediately struck me as sort of a really cool feature is that I now have some more control in terms of what I'm seeing when I search. And who gets to be part of that? Is that intentional? That's 100% intentional. Giving you agency over the search results is one of the things that we focus on a lot. The other features we have built around personalization, being able to

bring your personal data into a safe environment where you can search. Lots of us have multiple email accounts, multiple drive-like accounts. I was talking to someone, I think, that had nine email accounts that they connected to their NIVA account because they're like, yeah, how am I going to search through all of them? So things like personalization giving you agency is very much a core part of the product. And in some ways, you know, you're impatient about the tech that we have to build because we want to be able to support things like this. more and more and more.

And especially with news, by the way, we also realize that this is, you know, we worry about things like filter bubbles. We have ideas for how we present different perspectives. So in this particular case, for example, in a couple of months, I want to be able to come back to you and say, hey, Alex, would you actually, you know, you're a public personality.

Would you be open to having your news preferences be available to any NIVA user so they can see the world the way you see it. Wow. Oh, that's interesting. It's just a bunch of preferences. Yeah. And so we are like, I often have diametrically opposite viewpoints on my screen. I like looking at CNN on one side and Fox News on the other side and going, this is the same country.

This is my country. Let's see what's here. And to be able to do things like that. But it sort of goes back to this thing of you have choice and we should make it possible for you to exercise choice in different ways. Yeah, I was going to ask you the filter bubble question, but you sort of preempted me. But yeah, if that's such an interesting point about being able to give people control over their search experiences. Because you can, of course, you know, the most fundamental or basic layer of this is pick your retailers you want to see or pick your news or news sites. But then, yeah, one level deeper than that is...

starting to pick, you know, viewpoints or, you know, do you want the, you know, 360 view, or do you just want the left or the right view? Or do you want a particular person's view? We relate to people. We don't relate to abstract concepts. So you want to see the world that Alex does or are David Brooks? To me, that's like super cool. Yeah.

And again, you know, we are assigned in product. We are a subscription product. I know, I'm not ashamed of either of these. I believe sort of capitalism should enable great products at scale. I don't think of ourselves as creating somehow this elitist premium product. It's a great product. Of course, you pay for it. But that makes the product better.

That allows us to serve you better. And along the way, we want to be able to build the features that make the product your own. Totally. And none of this stuff could happen, well, ostensibly. Well, you were there. So I'll just ask you. Could any of this stuff happen at Google?

Because, you know, I imagine Google, like allowing people to customize their, the publishers, that they get are, you know, making decisions about what type of publications to show. Obviously, we just went over which type of commerce vendors. That's a little bit more tricky than if you don't have advertisers. Google can do anything. You know, it's an enormously powerful, enormously successful company. Yeah. But when people ask me, why did you not want to do this within Google?

The answer is that sometimes principles have to be thought over. from the ground up, and a successful company is necessarily and correctly hesitant about what it sees as heretical ideas. And so this is the reason why I felt it was really important that I pressed the reset button in my life, and Vivek, and I press the reset button when it came to how did we want to imagine search as being. As you point out, some things are easy, but will Google ever really want to create like, you know, a completely ads-free product in which you can customize everything, I said they can do

everything. But at this point, in their history with all the antitrust stuff, it is also going to look, you know, very odd if they were to do that right now. But I think this is one of those classic cases where success hinges on a set of parameters that are going to become hard to change, especially after you achieve what, $120 billion of success. That's a lot of dollars speaking here. Yeah. And when you talk about heretical ideas, that's what you're doing. It would be heretical to bring this up inside a Google. It's just hard. It's hard. I've done many of these things before. Even the move that we made to have desktop and mobile advertising be a single concept. You know, we call this enhanced campaigns. This was like 2013, 2014. Inside Google,

yeah. Inside Google. And this is just so hard to pull off because you have people that are wed it to one way of doing things. I was also the exec that was in charge of making all of the shopping property into a paid property. So I've gone through these changes, but some changes are extra super hard. Yeah. Okay. I do want to hear a little bit more about your personal story.

And I'm especially intrigued how the guy who runs ads in commerce at Google all of a sudden decides that he, you know, after helping build this business. decides that he wants to build the exact opposite or something heretical. Let's do that after the break. I feel like that's a good cliffhanger for us. We'll hear from our sponsors and come back right after this. Hey, everyone. Let me tell you about The Hustle Daily Show,

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And we're back here for the second half of the big technology podcast. We have a great guest, Sarita Ramoswamy, who is here, ran the Google Ads business, Google Commerce business, and is now building an ads-free, privacy-focused, something you can tailor search engine called NEVA. So let's get to your personal story here because it, you know, it is common or increasingly common to hear some people who disagree with the direction that their companies have taken to, like, write a book and go on some media tour and become like a dial-a-quote person in Silicon Valley.

There are plenty of those people when it comes to Facebook, but that's not you. You decided that, you know, having seen the way that the ad business inside Google was functioning, you were going to actually go build the solution to some of the problems you were seeing. So how did that happen? Do you one day wake up and say, wait a second, all this ad stuff we've been building inside Google has all the wrong incentives. I've got to get out of here and find a way to solve this. Did you bring it up internally? What happened?

So I've been at Google for close to 15 years, and let's face it, you know, achieved more success in my career than I ever thought possible. I'm very grateful to sort of an incredible number of people, you know, talked about some of them, Jeff Huber, Eric Schmidt, or even, you know, Bill Campbell, who all spent more time and gave me more opportunities than I certainly, I thought, I deserved at the time. And so it was a great career, but coming upon 15 years at Google, there was a part of me I just wanted out.

I was just like, it's a very busy, very stressful job. I just wanted to start over. I like small teams. I like creating things. You know, I'm a reform. I'm an academic. I used to work at Bell Labs out on the East Coast. To me, principles are important.

I did not like where the ads ecosystem had brought us. You know, their, you know, big companies were tracking everything that we were doing, doing remarketing ads. It's like a relentlessness about how they work that I did not like. So I knew I didn't want to work on ads as it was getting to the end of my career. But Neva really came after I left

and then lots of conversations with my co-founder Vivek about what it is that we wanted to do. And we came to the conclusion that we loved the problem, but we wanted a very different way of thinking about it. So, you know, Neva, the search engine, is a back-to-basics look in so many different levels at this problem of search.

We are like, search is a very deeply personal utility. It's something that you and I do a dozen times a day without thinking about it. It drives everything from our need for information to stuff that we want to know that's going on outside in the world to sort of our deepest fears. And so we wanted to create truly a product that served you as a customer. That's when the subscription business model came about. And this abowing of ads is sort of more a reaction to what I saw as a lot of companies essentially saying they wanted no limits whatsoever to the number of products that they created are the ways in which they decided they needed to make money.

So a lot of the, you're completely ads free, we will not show affiliate links. We will never sell your data or an exercise in self-restraint. You're like, we can create a great company that focuses on creating a single product that's going to work great for you. I'm not an anti-ads person. I think ads as a supporter of monetization especially is a fine concept. But when you're talking about a search engine that literally puts ads before you can get to the results that you want, you just don't think that that's a model that works well in the long term. And that's sort of how Niva was informed. And again, I have nothing against the people that, you know, either the company or the people that I have worked with.

But I do think when it comes to really important problems like search, it's fine for there to be alternate views. And it's also fine for someone like me to change my mind about this kind of a model and say, you know, there is a better model, that is a better way to do innovation, that is a better way to create value for a lot of people. No doubt. And no penalties here, Big Technology Podcast. We like to hear alternative views for sure.

In terms of your personal journey, though, you know, we, you know, we, you know, we, talked a little bit about how ads have started to fill up more and more of the Google page. This happened under, you know, the group you were running. So what was the moment, was there a moment? Did you, was it, did it happen slowly where you started to say, maybe this isn't the right way to do search or did it kind of happen all at once? You know, my own personal journey to Neva happened over several phases. As you correctly point out, and certainly I'm not disavowing that part. I was the exec in charge of many of the increases in ad load.

There was an expectation of a certain amount of growth. There were a set of techniques that were available for how you increased growth. You're always very thoughtful about the trade-offs implied by growth. And there came a certain point in time where when it came to the overall ad ecosystem, I said, I didn't want to be working on that anymore. I'm an accidental ads person. I had nothing to do with ads before I joined Google. I joke to people, my first boss found the word database in my resume and sent me to work on the ad system.

That was like the reason why I worked on ads for 15 years. And so I'm like, hey, I'm a computer scientist. I'm a tinketer. I just want to. I'm going to start over. But this idea of Neva sort of came later. You're like, we love the problem with a different model. It can be a powerful differentiator.

And along the way, I actually learn more and more. What's the part of a subscription business? I started the subscription business initially as this is the best way to provide alignment between you, the customer, and us the provider. But then you learn all of these other qualities that they bring. Everything from 100% of your team is focused on creating the product. If you look at the math of how Google works, a vanishing fraction of people work on Google Search. And you would think, like, how can that be? But that's the reality.

the size of the Google Ads team and the Google Ads product team dwarfs that of the search team. The ads team is bigger than the search team? 100%. Wild. And if you take the ads business team and the ads product and engineering teams,

they're way larger than the search team. And so you have all of these dynamics that play over the course of 10 years. And this is part of the reason why I said, hey, a product in which 100% of the people in your team can focus on the core value that you want to deliver. That's like, oh, that's a good deal. And we are lucky.

You know, first of all, I'm lucky to have Vivek work with me. He ran YouTube ads, the one that you mentioned earlier, made over $6 billion a quarter. Yeah. He ran the team. And his last name? Vivek Ragnatyn. Yeah. And so he was the exec in charge of that team.

And we are also first. to have a number of other amazing computer scientists and thinkers that are part of her team, everybody from Udi, Manber, who used to run search at Google. Bill Codran also ran search. He's on our board. And Darren Fisher, who was one of the early architects of Chrome. So we have an amazing team that are all driven by this passion to create a truly better search product. What does it say about Google that all these people sort of foundational to its business

and its search algorithm are now, have now gone rogue and her trying to build the antidote to the problems. And so we think of us as a counterpoint to ad-driven search. It's not a sort of, you know, it's not any kind of duel. Just like nobody talks, I don't think. It's a duel in some ways for sure. We think there's plenty of space for both the companies to exist. Sorry?

The market is large. I mean, what's your sense of the market? Well, you said it's $150 billion. It's $150 billion in ads alone. And then if you add a subscription, maybe you get a chunk of that, capture a chunk of that. And it's driving trillions of dollars of commerce underneath. Yeah. And I know you say it's not a duel, but what goes through your head before you say, hey, okay, we're going to go do this?

You know, obviously people are going to look at it as competitive to your old employer. Did you worry about relationships there or, you know, how it might be received and what has Does the feedback been from your former colleagues? You know, I obviously do worry about it. I have a lot of close relationships with a lot of people at Google. And I would roughly say that feedback falls into two buckets, one set of people that go like, yeah, we understand why you're doing this and why you didn't think you could do this within Google.

And a different set that kind of goes, you know, we wish you really you had done this within Google because if anyone could have changed what Google was, it should have been you. You know, both are reasonable points of view, and there are some people that, you know, kind of don't just don't want to deal with it. This is all too much for them.

And I respect those points of view, but at some level, one has to be driven by what one sees is the right long-term outcome. I personally do not think of ad-supported free products as being good for consumers. good for our country in the long term because it is very hard for them to stay true to what you and I want as users and as customers of these products. That conflict of interest is just really, really unavoidable.

And the fact of the matter, Alex, is that while at one level the products are free, all the benefits of scale for products like this, they go to the creator of the product. They don't come to you and me. When it comes to Neva, for example, I talk about charging a subscription of like $5 to $10 at most per month. And as the game scale, I expect that product to actually get cheaper over time. You know what? When you start with a free product, the product does not get any freer for you. All the benefits of scale go to the creator of the product. So in many ways, I actually see these as not even working with like the same principles of capitalism that's worked so well for us as a country and honestly as a globe for the last 100, 200 years.

And so we think a back to basics of you're the customer, you pay for the product in the long term is going to give us better products than free products that basically they all charge the advertiser. And you know, like who then turns and gives you and me a higher price it's that they're the retailer they're the merchant um and in e-commerce by the way it's kind of well known that um a marketplace can squeeze out between 15 to 20 percent of GMV which as the ad tax it's an enormous amount of money g you and i will pay it uh the gross merchandise value if you run a marketplace yeah um and you're you know you have like a billion dollars of revenue of like you're selling goods worth a billion dollars, you can extract between 15 and 20% of that as an

ads tax just by showing ads on top of that marketplace. But it comes from the users, the customers of that marketplace, you and me. So this whole fallacy that ad-supported products are good for the world because they give everything to us for free is just what that is. It is a fallacy. You and I are paying just indirectly and not knowingly. Yeah. Now, one of the things that's been left unsaid through this whole conversation is, I guess we talked a little bit about how subscription has replaced free or bitten into freeze market power in the beginning. We talk about things like Netflix and Amazon Prime.

The interesting thing about search ads is they were designed to be these elegant, least invasive type of ads. And I know we talked a little bit about how, like, we're talking in our health problems. But generally, instead of having to follow you behaviorally through the Internet and look at every search you, every website you visit and build a profile of you and say this person is, you know, someone in the market for a car or diet pills or whatever. With search, you just type in your intent. You don't really need to be tracked. And the ads are something that the advertiser goes in and tries to match to your interest, the stuff you type in in the keyword. And then bam, there's a match. They don't really have to know who you are.

In fact, a lot of people would say that Google search ads are the least invasive and least tracking of all ads online. So, yeah, why don't you seize on that a little bit and talk about whether you think that that's off base because out of all the online ads to solve, all the problems with the online ads to solve like the tracking and stuff like that doesn't seem to be the first issue, although we have touched on the fact that it can bias search in some ways. or give you less control? Yeah, I mean, first of all, there's no limit to how many ads can be shown to you. By the way, it is perfectly legal under current interpretations of antitrust for the entirety of a search result page

to only have ads. It's perfectly alleged. And what used to be 3% of a search result page being covered by ads 10 plus years ago now gets closer to like 90 plus percent on some queries. And the fact that so much of your attention is taken by these ads and you have to make a conscious effort to get past them is a subtle and indirect tax. You've read about things like dark patterns. All of us are more susceptible to having our choices influence than honestly any of us wants to admit.

And so how a choice is presented to you, how a choice is presented to you has a huge influence. And so the fact that you have to go through reams and reams of these affects you, even if you think it doesn't affect you. I tell people, I eat what I keep on the surface on my kitchen. I think I'm full of self-control, but honestly, I just eat what's out there, like, over the long term. So I think there is that effect.

And the other thing to keep in mind is that tracking. keeping track of conversions, wherever they happen on the internet, having all of the data come back to a Google, come back to a Facebook, is the core part of ads technology. And it is then very difficult to then say that this information is not going to be used to serve ads in other places. So again, to give you a concrete example, your searches can be used to show you ads on YouTube.

It can be used to show you ads on Gmail. And so there is really no limit to how information gets used. And this is part of the reason why we're so adamant about having these core principles for NIVA. Your data is yours. We are not going to profit off of the data other than in creating the service that works for you. So these hardline principles really matter because over the long term, this need for constant expansion drives every system as straight. Yeah. There was this move that Google made, right? There used to be a firewall between what you searched in the search engine and the search ads you were shown and then the rest of the business, Gmail and the display stuff and YouTube, and that eventually was broken down. How did that happen?

It is a very long and very complicated topic. Give us the cliff notes. The cliff notes is roughly that whenever you are signed in across different Google properties, it was always okay for that information to get moved around to show you ads. That was always part of the equation. There were boundaries that were kept between what happened outside Google and what happened inside Google. But information always flowed into Google via the various conversion tracking pixels that there were.

Okay, interesting. So that stuff was always connected. Last thing that I think we should talk about, given the current climate, is the fact that Google is under some antitrust scrutiny right now because of the way that it's iced out other businesses like yours. The number one thing that the Department of Justice is looking at Google right now is the way that it's found ways to be the default search engine. you know, across a number of properties. Of course, it's built its way into that with stuff like Chrome, but it's paying Apple billions of dollars a year to be the default on the iPhone, an iOS when you search. It's going to be Google search,

and that's because Google's paying Apple to be in that position. So you were there, and now you're on the outside trying to compete for that space again. So I'm curious, is it something? something that's, you know, intimidating to you to try to go up against Google now knowing the tactics? And do you think the current antitrust moment is going to open a door for a company like Neva to actually occupy some of that space that's been traditionally held by Google, the default search engine on iOS, for instance? Yeah, we think choice is important. Search is the gateway to information for tons and tons of

people and to have single companies be in charge of this, well, you saw what happened in Australia for a company to essentially threaten a sovereign nation to turn off its water. That was kind of my, you know, what was going on? And that's when Facebook said no more news if you're going to make us pay. But Google paid. No, no, but before that, there was a period of time where they said, oh, we'll just like pull up. Shut it off. And Google has shut stuff off in countries before when me trying to regulate it. Yeah. And to me, I think that kind of concentration of essential functions is very problematic.

And it's also very clear the current interpretations of antitrust law, which have, you know, to me, I've been this, I've become a student of the topic. To me, antitrust has as much to do with politics as economics. And I think we have gone through a period of 30, 40, 50 years where we have applied very narrow economic principles to how to think about antitrust and ways that I don't think are great for the country. And the final point that I'll make just as background on this is that it is very hard, even for large companies, to understand that behavior that would be condoned when they were a small player is in fact illegal once you become a monopoly. Companies like, especially people

that have been in the same company for 15 years, at some level I'm never going to get it. And so this is part of what surprises me about zero day, like always day zero. It's like, you know what? When you're a monopoly with a two trillion dollar market cap, for you to pretend that it is day zero is A, not the truth, B, positively stupid. And so when it comes to, you know, when it comes to Google and search, yes, I worry about just getting in front of users. You know, we understand that we have a lot more to build, whether it's in terms of personalization or the 1,000 features that people have, but I can tell you with a straight face that there is also an amount of joy that people get when they use NEVA, that feeling of relaxation, oh wow, I'm like not getting

stressed out by lots of stuff, is also very real. So I worry about having that chance to get in front of you, to get in front of 100 other people like you, and say like, hey, give us a chance. If you think it's worthwhile, pay it. If not, that's also fine. To me, that is the important part, and the DOJ case at least gets to the heart of it, which is how does a monopoly not prevent others from even being able to compete? It is a fair chance that I want for Neva. Yeah, I mean, it is interesting.

We talked about this a little bit on the Land of the Giants series that I was just done with Recode going into the Google history. But, like, you know, we asked, is this company a survivalist or is it a monopolist? Because, and oftentimes those two sides, plural, You talk about like these companies feeling like, you know, it's zero day or Amazon always day one, Facebook 1% done. Every tech giant has their version of this. And they have faced like Google has faced challenges when it came to like being default when they were a website or then a toolbar that relied entirely on Microsoft to get to people.

But yeah, at a certain point. It's terrifying for us to do that today when Chrome keeps popping up warnings such as, hey, do you want to change your default back? Oh, is that what happens? Okay, so for listeners, I set up NIVA today. And very interestingly, part of the setup is make NIVA your default search engine. So I did. And now I'm like typing into the address bar searches in Chrome, and they're going, they're popping up as Niva searches. So, but the thing is, Google owns Chrome.

Very wisely, they built a browser because I think they had a feeling that this was going to become an important. place directly in the Chrome quote-unquote, which is, you know, the stuff that's not the browsing window on your browser, which is why they named it Chrome. That's where the fun happens for search. So is that what happens now? If I search for a while, they're going to send me a pop-up asking to make the default Google again. That pop-up shows up randomly.

Yeah. Dang. And you can't do anything about it. It's not your product. It's not under our business. It's not under our control. Yeah. The fact of the math, I mean, and, you know, it's just like when you have discussions, they say there are lots of people that are trying to take over search that are unscrupulous, and that's why we pop up the warning.

But the thing about this attitude is, gosh, are you also ensuring that there can, in fact, be no legitimate search providers anyway because they're all going to be driven out by the same pop-up? So it's a self-fulfilling kind of situation. So those are the things that I worry about of essentially getting our private. in front of people that are quite willing to say, I will try a different experience. Yeah, so the DOJ is taking on Google in terms of its search deals. I haven't heard much about Chrome and Android being, well, Android, I guess, a little bit,

being used to iced out other search engines. Where do you think this all leads? Because eventually, you know, I guess these hearings could go on forever, the cases could go on forever, but do you as a business owner that could really use a little bit of help in this area anticipate that it's ever going to show up? Just the scrutiny helps. I think it heightens awareness that these are real issues.

As I said, I think it increases the likelihood that we will get a fair chance. And I will sort of repeat my basic viewpoint that alternates are important, complementary products actually strengthen the overall ecosystem and create more trust. I think tech in general has a big problem in that we are sort of becoming like take your pick, the oil balance, the banks of yesterday year. I think it's important to understand that this kind of a day one compete at all cost mentality does not fly when companies are as dominant as they are. So I think all of this increased attention scrutiny, yes, gives us a better chance. Do I expect an actual outcome in these? No, not, not anytime soon, but the scrutiny

helps. It gives us that little bit of a chance. Yeah, I felt that as I signed up for Neva, I was like the fact that the scrutiny had been going on. Of course, I watch it closely given my job, but having read about all this stuff, it immediately hit me. Okay, this is different and there's a compelling reason to use it. Or at least give it a shot. Yeah. So I'm on it. Thanks for letting me. And you guys are on a close beta now.

Is that what's going on? We are closed, meaning you can sign up for the product right away, but we're actually hoping to be in GA in a couple of months. In the meanwhile, you can go to neva.com and sign up for a wait list. We are getting folks onboarded onto the product very quickly. And yeah, sometime in June, we hope to get to a point where anyone that wants the product can sign up for it, check us up. Yeah, GA general availability.

In the U.S. Yeah, anyone that wants it. Absolutely. So this stuff's coming. Well, I think that what you're doing is interesting. I agree with you. Good to have alternatives. And I'm really fascinated by especially what you've brought up in terms of being able

to customize the retailers that you see in shopping results. And then in particular, this idea that maybe you can start to see the news search, with the filter that, you know, people that you follow have put on and see the news through their viewpoint. That's cool. Are people that you don't agree with? To me, how to, like, you know, actually have that viewpoint is a skill that we seem to have lost as a country, how to disagree without being disagreeable. So I think there's lots of chance. Yeah. I like it. All right. So it's niva.com. If you go sign up, maybe you get in in a couple

months. Or maybe Sridar will let you in early. Sooner than that. Tell them you heard about it on big time. technology podcast. All right. Well, thank you so much, Street Art. It's great having you on. I was really looking forward to this conversation and it delivered. So I appreciate you joining. Thank you, Alex. Great to chat. We'll be in touch. Awesome. And thank you everybody for listening. Thanks always to Nick Gawatney for editing the podcast. We'll give them a little bit of leeway on this one a couple days early. So Nate, have at it. And then thank you to the folks at Red Circle for hosting the podcast and selling ads. If you want to advertise, there should be a way for you to get in touch with them.

If not, just email me, big technology podcast at gmail.com. We'll get you the right place. If you like the show, you're here. We're almost an hour in. If you give us a rating, that would be awesome. If you're for the first time and we want to subscribe, we do this every Wednesday, a conversation with tech insiders or outside agitators. I think for the second week in a row, we have someone who's kind of both a tech insider

and an outside agitator at the same time. That's kind of cool. Join us next week. We will have Bradstone, the author of the new book, Amazon, bound. I'm halfway through the book, quite enjoying it. And we'll have a conversation about what's going on with Amazon in the future of all that. All right, folks, that's going to do it for us this week. It's been a pleasure having you, as always. And we look forward to seeing you next week. Take care. Have a nice next couple of days. Sorry, folks, I'm trying to still work through this.

Sign off. Anyway, we'll see you next time. It's been a pleasure, as always. Thank you. You know, Thank you.