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Agence France-Presse

Sean Kelly left the Silicon Valley start-up world for a spiritual journey that led to a life filled with yoga on an island in Thailand.
But as the pandemic disrupted the global economy, Kelly and two others created a search engine with the goal of raising funds to feed the hungry in Africa, Asia and anywhere else there is need.
Launched this month, Seva bills itself as the world’s first independent, socially conscious search engine that lets people feed hungry children by browsing the internet.
“I think technology is one of the greatest enablers of both positive and negative forces,” says Kelly from Koh Pha Ngan, an island in southeast Thailand, during a video call.


The Seva team relies on Microsoft’s Bing to power searches behind the scenes at Sevasearch.org, or on mobile devices with its app.
Revenue from ads linked to the searches generate funds that go to the World Food Programme (the food-assistance branch of the United Nations) and non-profit organisation Project Healthy Children.

The site promises full transparency about its finances, and within a week had funded more than 169,000 meals for the charitable organisations.
“Unlike other search engines, we don’t track your searches. We’re really just here to feed people,” says Kelly.
Created as a US company with a remote team from all over the world, Seva doesn’t store search data or keep track of users, using minimal information such as query subjects and general locations to target ads, according to Kelly.

Kelly and co-founder Ron Piron had been mulling the idea of a search engine while running a Bookretreats.com platform launched five years ago for people seeking yoga getaways.
“We had it on a low burner for a while, then the pandemic hit,” Kelly says. “Myanmar people in my community lost their jobs, and friends started messaging me asking about where to beg on the streets.”
A hunger crisis loomed, and Bookretreats was sidelined as people stopped travelling because of virus risk.

“We wanted to create a way for people to engage in effortless charity,” Kelly says. “Seva is allowing people to make an impact with something they do every day: search the internet.”
As idealistic as Seva may be, it faces a challenge in an online search market dominated by Google, according to Technalysis Research chief analyst Bob O’Donnell.
Silicon Valley-based Google had more than 90 per cent of the global search market as of August, according to Statcounter.

“It strikes me as a well-intentioned effort that may not have a lot of realistic opportunity,” O’Donnell says of Seva.
“It could absolutely work, I just think it is more than a bit of a challenge.”
Among the obstacles is that Google has become so much of a habit for internet users the name of the company is used as a verb for online searching.
Even privacy-focused DuckDuckGo has not managed to gain significant traction in the search market, the analyst noted.
Kelly grew up in Berkeley in the US state of California, graduating from the state university there. He was an early employee at Modria, a dispute resolution platform spun out of eBay and PayPal.
“I ended up quitting my job at the tech start-up to pursue a spiritual journey and really dive deep into yoga,” says 33-year-old Kelly, who wrote a book on the subject and taught classes before launching Seva.
“It takes people who are really willing to use technology to try and spread wonderful things, otherwise all the other aspects of humanity kind of bring it down.”


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Search engine lets people feed hungry children with a single click

Seva bills itself as the world’s first independent, socially conscious search engine that lets people feed hungry children by browsing the internet. Photo: Seva

Handout image of Sean Kelly in Thailand, 2020. Kelly  left the Silicon Valley startup world for a spiritual journey that led to a life filled with yoga on an island in Thailand. But as a global pandemic disrupted the global economy, Kelly and two others created a search engine with the goal of raising funds to feed the hungry in Africa, Asia and anywhere else there is need.Launched this month, Seva bills itself as the worldÕs first independent, socially conscious search engine that lets people feed hungry children by browsing the internet.[17SEPTEMBER2020 FEATURES]CREDIT: SEAN KELLY / SEVA

Illustrative image of the new Microsoft 'bing' search engine website. (Photo by: Newscast/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES

Hey Siri, you are still behind Alexa and Google Assistant – Apple digital assistant is better in iOS 14, but it’s not there yet

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Siri. Shutterstock 374247169.

Handout image shows Apple's Siri [27MARCH2017 FEATURES]

FILE - In this Oct. 4, 2011, file photo, Apple's Phil Schiller talks about Siri during an announcement at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. Apple’s Siri made a big splash when the wisecracking digital assistant debuted in 2011. But as its competitors jockey to build intelligent “chat bots” and voice-controlled home systems capable of more challenging artificial-intelligence feats, Siri at times no longer seems cutting edge. On Monday, June 13, 2016, Apple is expected to demonstrate how much smarter Siri can get as it kicks off its annual software conference. It’s a potentially momentous time for the company; sales of its flagship iPhone are slowing, and AI is emerging as a key tech battleground. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

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Lifestyle

Gadgets

Health & Wellness

Ads linked to the searches on Seva generate funds that go to the World Food Programme and Project Healthy Children
The site promises full transparency about its finances, and within a week had funded more than 169,000 meals for the charitable organisations


Ads linked to the searches on Seva – powered by Microsoft’s Bing – generate funds that go to the World Food Programme and Project Healthy Children, but the search engine faces a huge challenge in industry leader Google.
