LAHosken 🇺🇸👀

Neeva's shutting down. Neeva was a subscription-funded search company, in contrast to the usual free-with-ads search.

I used Neeva for a while; it cleared up something I was curious about, poked a hole in some received wisdom.

Back when I worked at Google, part of the company echo chamber chatter was that collecting user data was useful for personalized search, not just useful for ads. The usual example: if the user searches for [jaguar], it's n…

https://lahosken.san-francisco.ca.us/new/2023/05/20/neevas-shutting-down/

May 20, 2023 at 8:44pmWeb
Show threadChuck JordanMay 20, 2023
@lahosken probably best you don’t look it up, because once you’ve had your yams steamed by somebody who knows what they’re doing, you’re spoiled for anything less.
Show threadUltramundaneMay 20, 2023
@SasquatcherGeneral @lahosken I dunno, is that anything like a Rusty Venture?
Show threadegnorMay 24, 2023

@lahosken
Can confirm, personalized search is mostly bullshit afaict.

Geographical names are an exception-- for [steamed yams bay area], you probably mean the SF Bay Area; if you lived in Tampa it would mean something else; in either case you might not be aware you're being ambiguous. But you don't need fine grained interest targeting for that.

It's _possible_ talking to some AI chatbot where you know it remembers things about you would be helpful but that's not demonstrated yet...