Seva search engine harnessing technology for the poor

Seva is the first independent search engine on the Internet with charitable goals, as it will allocate its advertising revenues to fund non-governmental organizations that provide food to the needy in Africa, Asia and beyond.

"We wanted to create a way for Internet users to help others through technology without any effort," says Sean Kelly, who created this tool. He has designed, with two partners, the Sevasearch.com platform, which was launched this month on the basis of Microsoft’s Bing Engine for research and results. The proceeds from sales of the advertising space go to the World Food Program and the Project Health Children association.

"Siva is allowing people to have a positive influence just by what they do every day," says marketing strategist Sean Kelly, who left the Silicon Valley community a few years ago to live on the Thai island of Koh Pha Ngan. The owners of the site pledge to adopt full transparency in the management of funds.

And Kelly notes that this initiative has allowed so far to finance about 170,000 meals per week through charities, without collecting a huge amount of personal data for users of the website or the mobile application. The site’s founder says, "Unlike other search engines, we do not track user practices, what we care about is providing people with sustenance."

The digital advertising giants "Google" and "Facebook" rely on a profitable economic model based on tracking users and storing their personal data to sell to promoters on a large scale in files in which identities are not disclosed in the form of advertising space that is highly adapted to the needs.

As for the "SEVA" group, which was created by a small team whose members live in different parts of the world, it suffices with the key words in search or in the approximate geographical location to target targeted advertisements to users. Sean Kelly and his partner, Ron Piron, have been thinking about this project since the launch of the "Bookretreats.com" platform five years ago for those looking for excursions with yoga activities.

Kelly recalls, "The idea was on the table, but it remained a dead letter until the end of the epidemic crisis," noting that some of his friends in the region lost their work, while others called him to seek advice out of their desperation.

There is no doubt that this project, despite its intentions, will not have very wide echoes. Google, whose name has become synonymous with searching on the Internet, owns more than 90 percent of the global market, according to "StatCounter."

Bob O'Donnell, an analyst at Technical Research, notes that it is a project full of good intentions, but its scope appears to be limited in reality, adding, "The initiative may be successful, of course, but it is a big challenge."

The analyst notes that the search engine "DuckDuckGo", which is based on respect for private life, has not achieved any significant achievement.

Sean Kelly lived and studied in Berkeley, near Silicon Valley, and worked at Modria, a dispute resolution platform spun out of eBay and PayPal.