Neeva Inc., a new startup led by the former head of Google LLC’s multibillion-dollar ad business, launched a subscription-based search engine today that aims to compete with Google Search.

The startup is backed by more than $77 million in funding from investors that include Sequoia and Greylock.

Neeva provides a search engine that resembles Google Search in many ways, except it doesn’t display ads above users’ search results. According to the startup, taking ads out of results will facilitate a better user experience by reducing the amount of time that consumers have to scroll before finding the answer to their question. 

“Neeva was built on the premise that search should focus on the consumer, and only the consumer, not advertisers,” said Neeva co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Sridhar Ramaswamy. “Search results should always prioritize finding the best answer to a consumer’s query — not on selling ads or tracking behavior online.”

Before launching Neeva, Ramaswamy spent more than a decade at Google, where he oversaw its core advertising business as vice president of ads and e-commerce. The Alphabet Inc. unit’s advertising business generated nearly $150 billion in revenue last year. Ramaswamy launched Neeva with co-founder Vivek Raghunathan, the onetime vice president of monetization at YouTube, which accounted for about $20 billion of Google’s revenue last year.

The two founders assembled a team that comprises a significant number of former employees from the search giant. Among them is Udi Manber, a prominent computer scientist who oversaw Google’s search products for a part of the previous decade. Manber reportedly spends two to three days a week working with Neeva’s research team.

Because Neeva doesn’t display ads and therefore can’t use them to generate revenue, the startup plans to make money by offering its search engine for a $4.95 monthly subscription. To persuade consumers to sign up, the startup is pitching not only an ad-free search experience but also a number of additional features that aren’t available in Google.

Neeva enables users to search their email inboxes, calendars and documents they store in cloud-based file storage platforms. The vision is to save time for consumers by enabling them to search the web and their files in one place. Likewise in the interest of saving time, Neeva makes it possible to sign up to email newsletters directly from the search results page.

Other highlights include the ability to prioritize search results from specific websites and a browser extension that Neeva says enables users to block the third-party tracking cookies used by advertisers to collect data on their interests.

Taking on Google represents a major challenge not only from a user acquisition standpoint but also at the technical level. Google has spent more than two decades refining its search engine and continues to improve the relevance of results by developing cutting-edge new algorithms. Providing search results of comparable relevance will require Neeva to invest significant resources in engineering.

Neeva’s search engine is initially available in the United States. Users who sign up receive free access to the search engine for three months to help them decide whether they wish to buy the $4.95 monthly subscription. 

Image: Neeva