"It’s equally important to remember that Google became a meaningful, substantial and then dominant player not just on the back of having a great product, but because of a whole set of incredibly shrewd business moves that the company made- everything from powering search for Yahoo!, to their early deal with AOL (which brought a very influential community of users to Google) and smart deals with PC manufacturers such as the Dells and Compaqs of this world which made Google the default search engine for many users."

"nothing can prepare you. It’s just that someone trusts you can do it."

"search- as a product- was just going to continue to face more and more revenue pressure, forcing us to show more and more ads, and inevitably making the product worse over time."

"we can then layer personalisation on top meaning that with your permission and with full transparency, your personal data can be used to serve you a better product- and not for any other reason."

"If we don’t make you happy, we don’t make money, and that’s the very direct tie-in we have with the user."

"Advertising is about more volume tomorrow whereas subscription is about more value today."

"Google spends roughly the same amount of money on search as it did a decade ago but makes vastly more returns on that investment. Those returns however don’t’ come to you and me."

"As we get scale, we will either add more features to search, or lower the cost. All the economic innovation we take for granted- the computer, the microwave- all started off as things that only rich people could afford and got cheaper over time."

"some research shows that 20-30% of the population would be happy to try a different search engine."

"If we put a snippet from your site (for example, a great blog) into our search results because it creates a better user experience, we think it’s our duty to share a portion of revenue with you as a content creator"

"Long-term, we think of search as a different way of funding content."

"The most important lesson for anyone wanting to transition from a successful role in a company to a start-up is to remember that the things that made you successful in a large company may be hindrances in making a start-up succeed."

"To me, taking risk and understanding that you might not have any impact is a humbling experience that makes you grow."

"I feel very fortunate that I even have the opportunity to think this big about a foundational problem of humanity."

"There are no effective tools for sharing data in a controlled fashion: either to make it simple to anonymize a dataset or to generate a synthetic dataset with the distribution characteristics of the original data but with no sensitive data."

"With Gretel, developers are able to anonymize sensitive data so that it can be shared. They are also able to use the sensitive data to generate synthetic data—artificial data that closely matches the original data while guaranteeing privacy! Developers can use anonymized and synthetic data to build realistic test environments, train machine learning algorithms, and enable experimentation on anonymized data without manually redacting sensitive information."

"Neeva is search re-imagined. Vivek and I started Neeva to create a consumer first — and consumer only — search engine. Neeva focuses on getting the right answers and only the right answers for you."

"Looking for information is one of humanity’s most instinctive and fundamental needs. Think news, weather, stocks, or that sugar free cookie recipe, along with the many other questions that we all want answers to. But I came to realize that traditional search and social platforms have business models where commercial interests are often conflicting with what is best for the consumer."

"When we show you a result, our only goal is to get you the most relevant piece of information right where you look for it: at the top spot. We will never show an ad on Neeva."

"it became clear to me that an ad-supported search engine has limitations. The ads model has several unintended consequences, including ever-increasing ad-load, ads driven misinformation and harmful content, and practices that value profit over user privacy."

"Neeva is unique because it has taken a very familiar but important problem and provided a fresh new alternative for consumers."

"First, we have no ads and don’t track people across the internet. Unlike alternative search platforms, we are subscription based. Not only do we not show ads, but we never monetize user data. So all searches are 100% focused on serving the consumer’s interests."

"Second, we offer a much more personal experience for you, providing results that take into context the information you choose to connect to Neeva."

"If you type in the name of a friend, Neeva will paint a full picture of your relationship with that person: your recent emails, documents you have worked on together as well as important information from the public web, like their LinkedIn page or Twitter posts."

"While traditional search engines are so full of ads that you won’t see an unpaid result on the first page of your phone, Neeva surfaces a visually rich page that focuses on getting you the results you need"

"we do use your IP address to localize results to you. With your consent, we can use your phone’s location to serve better local search results for you."

"As a company, we have forsworn the use of location history tracking; we think this is a dangerous feature that most applications should never use."

"Especially in the context of search, which is primarily about consuming information, I felt that a model that put monetization before customer value needed an alternative."

"We believe the business grows as more people understand the value we offer in terms of no ads, privacy and access to both public and their personal information."

"After 15 years at Google, I felt that it was time for a change. My best memories of Google were with small teams creating new products, so I was pretty sure that I wanted to work with small teams and companies."

"We’re at a time when, for many people, trust in the internet has been broken. So how do we go about rebuilding that? I believe the time is now to rethink the ways we use data to create value for all the people who use it."

"“Relentless drive and a willingness to learn are the primary qualities a person needs to have. To me, all other problems can be solved with time.”"

"“I’ve learned how important it is for a leader to see potential in people. I’ve gotten a lot of jobs I initially did not think myself capable of doing. It was other people who saw potential in me and gave me the opportunity.”"

"Sridhar may have an illustrious command of data — he has published several papers on database systems and theory, and holds several patents — but he also has an insatiable curiosity about its future applications. He looks for entrepreneurs who share this passion."