They also raised $10M at that time. I assume there were conditions to that deal and/or the launch didn't really turn the trajectory around and they saw the writing on the wall.
While I admittedly also haven't been using them for quite some time, it's sad to see them shutdown. For me they were the first ones that did web search in AI chat well enough to make AI actually into a useful daily tool.
Phind was the first AI search I used as well. But they seemed to be quickly outfoxed by Perplexity. I started using Perplexity after it was recommended to me as having fewer hallucinations - now it can integrate its tools with SOTA models like Opus.
That "launch" was when they introduced a feature that made their service unusable.
I wonder if they had stuck with the unintrusive UI if they would have made it.
From the outside it looks like they would have benefitted from having Bill Hicks on their staff to answer whatever project manager was riding the designers to keep justifying their paychecks by adding more and more noisy features.
Maybe they have come to hard conclusion that it is unsustainable without Google/Meta/Microsoft level funding. Model prices just keep increasing while old models are removed. Subscription is not enough?
While I admittedly also haven't been using them for quite some time, it's sad to see them shutdown. For me they were the first ones that did web search in AI chat well enough to make AI actually into a useful daily tool.