Google courtroom submitting reveals new enterprise particulars of DuckDuckGo and Neeva

A court filing within the U.S. Department of Justice’s case against Google over its alleged monopoly within the search market has revealed a couple of notable tidbits concerning the state of the search market competitors, together with the internal workings, income, and, in some instances, exit costs of would-be Google opponents, like DuckDuckGo and Neeva, the latter of which sold to Snowflake last year after pivoting to enterprise.

Google’s proposed “Findings of Fact” submitting paperwork the historical past of search competitors, together with Google’s personal beginnings, its improvements, the aggressive panorama, Google’s search adverts enterprise, distribution agreements, and extra.

Of specific curiosity to us have been the components that reference internet search startups, like DuckDuckGo and Neeva, and the developments of their enterprise.

The submitting reveals some particulars we already knew about DuckDuckGo — for instance, that it’s been worthwhile since 2014 and that its supply of operating revenue is currently search advertising, specifically search adverts offered by Microsoft within the U.S. Nevertheless, Google’s proposal additionally makes an attempt to color an image of a startup that didn’t put money into search innovation however as a substitute targeted on returning funding to its shareholders.

Because the submitting claims, DuckDuckGo raised $10 million in 2018, however the “majority of that money was distributed to DuckDuckGo’s shareholders,” quite than getting used to enhance its search engine. When DuckDuckGo once more raised funds in 2020 — a $100 million spherical — some proportion of that was once more returned to shareholders. (The precise proportion was redacted.) When shareholders offered inventory to varied VC companies, these funds weren’t used to enhance the search engine, the submitting argues. Nevertheless it contradicts this level, too, noting {that a} third of DuckDuckGo’s 50 staff in 2018 have been engaged on bettering the search engine, for instance.

Picture Credit: DuckDuckGo

Nonetheless, the doc factors out that, regardless of DuckDuckGo’s profitability, it hadn’t constructed its personal “comprehensive web index” for natural search outcomes — hardly some extent in Google’s favor. As well as, when Apple was requested if it will think about making DuckDuckGo a default within the Safari browser, Apple’s SVP of Providers Eddy Cue responded, “No, we did not . . . that is not a good choice for customers.” Ouch! 

Included is also the scope of DuckDuckGo’s enterprise. The submitting notes the startup estimated its search engine was being utilized by 100 million folks globally as of 2021. The search engine receives solely about 2.5% of basic search queries within the U.S., regardless of estimates that 10% of individuals within the U.S. declare to be customers. This, DuckDuckGo’s management had defined, is because of the truth that folks typically use its search engine for some, however not all of their search queries.

In Europe, DuckDuckGo obtained solely 0.6% of search queries on cellular units, as of August 2023, even after the introduction of the Android “choice screen,” the place it’s supplied as an choice. In complete, its proportion of search queries in Europe ranged from 0.5% to 2.5% in 2023, relying on the nation.

Picture Credit: DuckDuckGo

By presenting these findings, Google hopes to show that persons are selecting its search engine as a result of it’s higher and extra revolutionary, not due to its monopoly share.

It additionally dismisses DuckDuckGo’s method to privateness as one in every of its failures, claiming that the method results in “significant trade-offs to search quality,” by not using knowledge like search classes, a signed-in expertise, and extra. If something, although, these particulars and others the submitting consists of present how troublesome it’s for a competitor to construct a search enterprise to rival Google’s.

One other startup serving for instance of that downside is Neeva, the search engine based in 2019 by former Googlers Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan. Neeva had initially appeared to have promise, not solely because of its premise, but in addition due to its founding crew. CEO Ramaswamy labored at Google from 2003 to 2018 and held senior posts the place he reported to the CEO and managed Google’s adverts, commerce, search infrastructure, and privateness groups, the courtroom doc reminds us.

With the crew’s deep technical know-how and expertise, they devised a plan to supply shoppers an ad-free different to Google by producing income by way of subscriptions as a substitute. By 2022, Neeva mentioned it had amassed more than 600,000 users, however most weren’t paying clients at the moment.

Deprioritizing search outcomes. Picture Credit: Neeva

The courtroom submitting provides a couple of extra particulars about Neeva’s development, noting funding from prime VC companies like Sequoia Capital and Greylock Ventures, along with Ramaswamy’s personal private funding. The corporate believed it may compete efficiently on search high quality within the U.S. and choose different markets with only a 2.5% share of basic queries, Ramaswamy had testified through the trial.

The startup started by providing to serve outcomes by way of Microsoft’s Bing whereas it developed its personal search infrastructure. By 2022, it was utilizing its personal strategies for rating internet outcomes and believed itself to be similar to Google and higher than Bing because of its use of machine studying, pure language processing, and different strategies.

To develop and prepare its machine studying fashions, it licensed nameless data within the type of commercially accessible datasets. Google couldn’t declare Neeva was not innovating right here. The startup launched a generative AI function, Neeva AI, final 12 months, which has similarities to what Google is now testing with its Search Generative Expertise (SGE) in that it additionally solutions some queries instantly on the search outcome pages utilizing AI.

In consequence, Neeva was capable of appeal to some customers. The submitting notes that at its peak, it had “several million unique users per month,” Ramaswamy had mentioned. Sadly, its lack of ability to compete with free search ultimately noticed the startup shut its client enterprise, pivot to enterprise, and in the end exit to Snowflake, because it was unable to draw the mandatory enterprise capital funding to proceed to scale its enterprise.

“My co-founder, Vivek, and I came to the reluctant conclusion that we would not be able to build up a business fast enough to be able to continue raising capital to support the growth of the product and the team,” Ramaswamy testified. “So earlier this year, in May [2023] — we actually started potential acquisition conversations in March — but earlier this year, in May, we shut down the consumer search engine, refunded the money that customers had paid us, and got acquired by Snowflake, which is an enterprise data company,” he mentioned.

Neeva was producing lower than 1,000,000 {dollars} in subscription income on the time and was rising, however was nonetheless a small a part of the search market, the submitting additionally informs us.

The startup exited to Snowflake for about $184.4 million in money, greater than double the quantity that had been invested, the submitting states. That is barely larger than earlier reviews that had pegged the quantity at $150 million.

Although not a startup, the doc additionally touches on Yahoo’s (TechCrunch’s guardian firm) misplaced search enterprise, noting it stopped crawling the online after a 2009 take care of Microsoft for algorithmic search and paid search adverts. This partnership let Yahoo lower its search funding and concentrate on different extra widespread merchandise, like Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports activities, Yahoo Information, and Yahoo Mail. (A lot of the Yahoo part is redacted, we should always word.) It provides that Mozilla as soon as had a take care of Yahoo, too, however dropped it as a result of search high quality.

With few viable opponents in the marketplace within the search area, Google makes an attempt to argue that it competes with numerous different merchandise, like devoted cellular apps and web sites that supply some specialised sort of search, like Yelp, Airbnb, Amazon, Expedia, Reserving.com, Accommodations.com, and others. It additionally claims to compete with AI, like ChatGPT, and social media, like Fb, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok — the latter three, significantly amongst youthful customers.

For instance, Google vp of search Liz Reid mentioned in 2021 that “63% of daily TikTok users age 18 to 24 stated that they use[d] TikTok as a search engine in the last week.”

Whether or not or not the courtroom shall be swayed by Google’s argument that it’s not a monopoly in search and extra broadly in search promoting, which is a big a part of this case, stays to be seen. Google is clearly the winner within the search market, but it surely’s not for lack of opponents making an attempt to interrupt in, as these examples present. Nevertheless, the trial had already revealed that Google used its vital assets to keep up its place within the search market — for instance, by paying Apple $18 billion to be the default search on iPhones. In the meantime, Apple weighed buying Bing from Microsoft in 2020 and had additionally considered making DuckDuckGo the default engine in Safari, earlier than rejecting the thought to proceed cashing Google’s checks as a substitute.