As a Googler…way I see it, too big too quick too much google and wrong time. Launch a year later and you’re legit have some rocket fuel via LLMs to build something new.
I never used it till it shut down, and it looks like about 70% of google to me. That’s great, but you gotta avoid the xoogler trap of rebuilding the 20% of google you want to fix as a startup.
I agree - Neeva was just Google-that-you-pay-for, which might've worked as a niche... but then LLMs came out and afaik they didn't do anything to integrate with them.
From your statement, it seems reasonable to assume that the people and their experience are what Snowflake is actually acquiring. (Another comment here suspects a soft landing for investors as both companies are Sequoia backed.)
We're just free associating, only like 60 people know, I presume. And life just doesn't work like that, like, some of those 60 people will fervently believe one interpretation, another will believe in another. We'll know more in 5 years
I think I follow, but then does that mean their product was an inferior substitute-able service for Google? What was the innovation that made them stand out more? I understand that information retrieval space has entered a new realm of hype-vs-reality so one cannot discount as you say the LLM rocket fuel they missed. But why did they miss it? It is happening right now and even open-source models may be sufficient for a search startup (or use OpenAI or Bard as a default for now until specializing themselves).
