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Autocomplete your life with Greplin (YC W10)
- c00p3r 16y agoyeah, if something is closed from Google, just enter passwords and open it. btw, Google should create a similar service - like enter all your passwords and we will add your personal search results in a some frame. ^_^ It is remarkable that such simple idea got funding and that YC provided so much support for a young guy.
- lukesandberg 16y agosounds pretty cool, when i was working on a mac i couldn't live without spotlight. i also like the little info box at the bottom where it says that greplin was founded in September 2010. :P
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- pg 16y agoLittle known fact: Hipmunk founder Adam Goldstein came up with the name Greplin, the day before the March 2010 Demo Day.
- mrduncan 16y agoHow common is it for companies to not have names until that late?
- pg 16y agoCompanies often change their names well after that, as their ideas change. OhLife only became OhLife 2 years after their Demo Day. Before that they were MeetingMix, and on Demo Day they were IDidWork.
- 10ren 16y agoThe name has a cool sound, but I think "grep" is only meaningful to people like us, not the mainstream that it targets. Still, create something useful, and the name doesn't matter as long as it's memorable and distinctive, as this is on all counts.
- danielha 16y agoLittle inside nods is what makes names like this particularly fun. For everyone else, it's just a catchy name.
- pg 16y agoWe knew this was safe because it worked for YC.
- 10ren 16y agoDoesn't YC target people like us, as opposed to the mainstream?
- statictype 16y agoI think he meant the name 'Y Combinator' is also similar. It has significant meaning to those who know what a Y-Combinator is. For others, it's just a cool name.
- j_baker 16y agoI think that even for programmers, Y Combinator (the fixed point combinator not the company) is somewhat obscure.
- diN0bot 16y agoi originally misread it as "gremlin", those little devils that do annoying things when no one is looking.
- mhartl 16y ago
- heed 16y agoSomething I'd really like is the ability to search through my social news comments/submissions. Will websites like Hacker News and reddit be added to the list of indexes?
- danicgross 16y agoyes! better yet - as a developer you can write your own indexers for greplin! (little known fact: we were going to launch with a hn module but we hit the site too hard and paul banned greplin)
- mrduncan 16y agoLots of "little known facts" in this thread! Have you talked to the guys who run http://searchyc.com http://searchyc.com about working with their data?
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago>Something I'd really like is the ability to search through my social news comments/submissions. I use comment feeds to archive my own submissions into a feed folder on Thunderbird, makes it quicker when I can't remember a link or resource properly but know I've commented on it before. Also I have a vague idea that it might be interesting to look back on. It means I usually try to quote or make it clear what the context of a comment is to make it a more readable resource if anyone should ever want to do that.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- gfunk911 16y agoSometimes you sign up for something and wonder how you ever lived without it. I'm getting that feeling already, and I haven't even used it yet. I signed up before finishing the article, it's indexing my data now. Assuming it works as advertised, this sounds like a brilliant concept. Any timeline on when I can actually start using it?
- jackowayed 16y agoGiving them my entire life (a lot of what Google has + a lot of what Facebook has + a lot of what Twitter has + a lot of my files if I decide to do Dropbox) raises serious privacy concerns. But it looks so awesome that I don't give a damn. EDIT: But I am refraining from doing GMail, Google Voice, or Dropbox for now at least. I try not to do any communication that I truly care about staying private via Facebook or Twitter, so those don't concern me as much.
- immad 16y agoLooks really awesome, can't wait till my life is fully indexed. Congrats Daniel and Robby
- troymc 16y agoMy first thought was, "Doesn't Backupify already offer this?" Backupify already backs up all your cloud data, so I figured it would be easy for them to index it and provide search. Digging through the Backupify website, it seems they have a strong privacy policy. From their FAQ: "We don't do anything with your data once it is backed up. We don't look at it, we don't sell it, we don't analyze it, we don't modify it." I guess it's too late for Backupify to change their privacy policy so they can offer search. Or maybe not. Facebook changed theirs...
- Lewisham 16y agoOne of my concerns about Backupify is that they didn't use APIs (at least when I tried it) so I couldn't revoke access later. I'm pleased Greplin does.
- Splines 16y agoGreat work, but I don't personally see much value in this. Gmail already has great search, and Facebook and Twitter have good-enough search. I'm also a little leery of handing out credentials to a third party. I would imagine that adding in support for web-services to desktop search engines (Google or Windows) would provide better value.
- axomhacker 16y agoAgreed Gmail/FB/Twitter all have good enough searches, but wouldn't a simple (spotlight-like) search box for all that be game-changing? From the article: "Greplin only uses OAuth and other APIs for authorization, so they never see your third party site credentials".
- Splines 16y agoCalling it game-changing is (to me) a little hyperbolic. It looks to be convenient and time-saving, but my search problems extend primarily to Gmail, which already has great search. To each their own, but I very infrequently use FB/Twitter search. I actually sort of distrust FB/Twitter search (e.g., search is not finding something I'm positive is in there), and adding an abstraction layer doesn't alleviate any of that distrust. To be completely honest, if Greplin were acquired by Google or MS, I'd be more willing to try their service out. I understand that they're using authentication mechanisms that don't require credential caching, but my content is on there somewhere. This is more of a touchy-feely paranoia thing, and not exactly backed up by any technical facts (i.e., for all I know, the smartphone in my hand has malware on it that is broadcasting my every keystroke to some teenager in Russia, so worrying about greplin may not make a lot of sense. But I can choose to use/not use greplin, whereas I'm sort of stuck with my phone). Again, this is the value-proposition to me. I don't generate/consume enough content that I need cross-site search at my fingertips. I would imagine that others who are more involved with social sites would appreciate a tool like greplin.
- moe 16y agoThis is more of a touchy-feely paranoia thing I find it funny how feeling wary about giving out all your passwords to some startup company is considered "paranoia" nowadays.
- oziumjinx 16y agoAny plans for a desktop app like Spotlight? Or a browser plugin that added another search box into the browser for my cloud data searching?
- oziumjinx 16y agoWould be slick to integrate Disqus, Backtype,and the other commenting systems as well.
- bkudria 16y agoI signed up and it indexed my data but now I only see: "Thanks for registering for Greplin. We're in beta. We'll email you once the system's ready for you." Bummer.
- danicgross 16y agosorry! we're scaling out as quickly as we can!
- proexploit 16y agoI had the same feeling as these guys and the difference for me was that the beta notification came after you started loading some of my data. If I don't have an account, why are you getting the data from the services? I think it's really important that you modify that process. I don't feel entitled to an account in any way but if I'm going to try and sign up and trust the service, it needs to logically make sense. No account = no need for my data yet esp. when you prove right in front of my eyes it's a 30 second task...
- Mistone 16y agojust signed up and had the same experience, would have much preferred being told that the system is not ready before I logged into one of my social accounts.
- fraXis 16y agoYeah that kind of irritated me a bit because authorized them to access my Facebook and then I was told that I would be e-mailed once they are ready for me. I didn't even get a welcome letter or anything in my e-mail. I at least would of felt better if I had some type of acknowledgment that I signed up for the service, and a status screen where I could check on the indexing process. It was almost like: "Thanks for letting us use your Facebook data to build out/test our service. We will be in touch." I wouldn't of signed up if I knew the sign up process was going to be like that.
- danicgross 16y ago
- k7d 16y agoone little criticism - frontpage looks a bit too similar to Evernote: http://www.greplin.com/ http://www.greplin.com/ http://www.evernote.com/ http://www.evernote.com/ Maybe it would also make sense to emphasize data security since in essence you give the service access to every private bit of information you have online. It's not mentioned anywhere in frontpage and I'm hesitating to signup without some reassurance that data will be safe. Other than that, good stuff.
- troyk 16y agoVery cool product, if it indexed google apps and integrated with spotlight it would be part of my daily routine. Great work Daniel, your future looks bright!
- Sukotto 16y agoWhy should I trust these guys with my data? It's bad enough that Google knows so much about me... but at least they have some checks and balances built in. What sort of safety does "greplin" have to offer adopters?
- danicgross 16y agoIf you get uncomfortable, you can delete your account at any time. We'll delete your data. Not in 14 days, a week or tomorrow. That moment. We're convinced that you'll find enough value with Greplin to overcome that issue - the same way many did with mint.com. We're also working with a) encrypted indexes b) only writing the index to disk rather then any content. this shuts down a lot of neat features (generating snippets etc.) - but users that are willing to forgo features for added security might find it useful.
- jamesshamenski 16y agothat's not true. I can not delete my account at this very moment. You have sucked in 6 of my accounts and have not showed me an ounce of value. That was a terrible decision.
- mkramlich 16y agothat was the risk you took when being a very early adopter
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- whatusername 16y agoSo you don't have any backups then? (And I mean actual backups - replication is not a backup)
- danicgross 16y agowe're going to offer that.
- arashf 16y agoI should probably already know this (and we'll email you about it), but I was wondering how you're currently keeping your dropbox index up to date. our existing APIs don't make it all that easy (or efficient :).
- sesqu 16y agoAnd the TOS forbids anything else (I just signed up): You agree not to do any of the following while using the Site, Content, Files or Services: * Attempt to access or search the Site, Content, Files or Services with any engine, software, tool, agent, device or mechanism other than the software and/or search agents provided by Dropbox or other generally available third-party web browsers (such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox), including but not limited to browser automation tools
- arnabdotorg 16y agoWhere's the autocomplete? I only see find-as-you-type -- there are no Google-suggest like suggestions, per se. Also, I am very curious to see back-of-the-envelope calculations on resource usage -- e.g. what is the expected billing per user (in dollars)? ("Doesn't matter" is an acceptable answer for now, but I'm worried that this type of service is unreasonably expensive to provide and cannot be offset by ads/freemium models)
- amac 16y agoWe'll see the real value of this service I believe when more and more desktop applications move online. Can you imagine how useful this sort of service would be in the enterprise? Looking forward to Greplin launching more indexes and developing further.
- Timothee 16y agoBased on the services put under the Pro accounts (Salesforce, Google Voice, Basecamp, Box.net and Evernote), $5/month for premium access sounds very low to me. Granted, I haven't been able to try it at this point. But I can see the value in it, and it looks very well done. So, I feel that people who will want to use the premium features are people who strive for efficiency and will be ready to pay more than $5. (Salesforce, for example, is not cheap)
- SoftwareMaven 16y agoI would agree with this. In fact, I bet you could differentiate services for different amounts: Evernote integration is probably not worth nearly as much as Salesforce integration. You could also consider buffet-style pricing, where you get X services for N dollars, X+Y services for N+M dollars, etc. As you get more services, that may enable you to keep the value/data ration reasonable. It doesn't make sense with 12 services available; with 144 services, it might. I know I don't want to pay extra because you support 130 services I'll never use.
- minalecs 16y agojust wondering .. in general what are people searching for on linkedin and facebook, that greplin does better than just going to these sites directly ?
- adamsmith 16y agoevents are a GREAT example. long term, services like greplin will also make it easier for people to switch / move around across service providers for various cloud functions. for example, the more greplin gets used the easier it will be for folks to switch to using event webapps other than facebook.
- inrev 16y agoFor the Facebook search, can you also index of my friends' wall posts, as sometimes they post relevant information there?
- elasticdog 16y agoI absolutely love the idea of an extensible framework that you could write plugins for to connect up to various sources of data, but I'd much prefer the same functionality in a desktop application rather than a hosted web-app. That way you wouldn't have to be paranoid about what is being done with all of your personal information...
- bruceboughton 16y agoInteresting product. I may be missing a trick here, but is it possible to link to your Google Apps mail/calendar? If I login to Google with my apps username and password, it just tries to connect my @gmail.com account. This could be because my apps email is a secondary email on my @gmail.com account ... Google seriously suck at accounts!
- kilian 16y agoToo cool, I signed up and will be waiting for my 'go-ahead' mail. Also signed up for the api, I have a nice little command-line tool in mind that I'd like to build. When can we expect API access? :)
- endtime 16y agoThis is one of those ideas that's obvious as soon as you read it - congrats, Dan. However, it really needs to support multiple accounts from the same service.
- almost 16y agoThis is an awesome idea. Any plans top allow custom indexing plugins? I'd like to be able to index different services and also to deal with special file formats. I'd also like to be able to search from Emacs, I've signed up for the API so I'll see if I can make that one happen myself :)
- almost 16y agoThis is an awesome idea. Any plans top allow custom indexing plugins? I'd like to be able to index different services and also to deal with special file formats. I'd also like to be able to search from Emacs, I've signed up for the API so I'll see if I can make that one happen myself :)
- Mistone 16y agovery cool to have the pro feature ready from the start, rather than the someday we will figure out how to make money approach. lots of value for the business user there.
- edanm 16y agoThere was a story recently (don't remember which) that sparked a discussion about indexing all the sites I've ever visited. In other words, provide me with a browser history search that didn't suck, in that if I remember looking at some article a few months ago, I should be able to find it pretty easily. I bring this up because I think this is a great concept, and would be a great tie-in service to (what I understand of) Greplin. That would make it "search for anything you're supposed to know, we'll find it", which to me sounds really cool. Edit: So your tagline is "the search bar for your life", which fits what I was talking about above even better. A note from a quick look at your site: the text under the second column ("Greplin works with nearly every computer, browser and mobile device in the market.") is badly aligned, and seems to "crash into" the text on the last column. Looks really bad and makes it hard to read, so you might want to fix it (I'm using Chrome). Secondly, congrats! Always happy to hear about other Israelis succeeding. Is there any way I can get in touch with you? I'm applying to YC, and would appreciate any advice you have about dealing with visas/etc.
- vark 16y agoAre you thinking about infoaxe.com ?
- Splines 16y agoMSR had a prototype application called "Stuff I've Seen" [1]. It was pretty neat - it would index your browser history (along with other stuff). I don't know what happened to it, but I'm guessing that it eventually ended up being part of Windows Desktop Search. I liked the idea that if I remember seeing something earlier, that this tool would find it. [1] http://news.cnet.com/2100-1012-997350.html http://news.cnet.com/2100-1012-997350.html
- Sephr 16y agoWhen attempting to log on after logging off, I get an invalid password error (I know it's valid). It also seems that the "forgot your password?" link doesn't work at all. Would you happen to be storing passwords in plaintext in ASCII or anything similar? I can't think of any other reason that my password wouldn't work (it's a random UTF-8 blob).
- ciupicri 16y ago> The original inspiration for Greplin? Says Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham: “He was on his way to a party, and he didn’t remember where the address was stored. Was it a Facebook event, or in an email, or in his calendar? It was a pain to try searching all these things from his phone.” So he built the solution. If you can't memorize the address you write it in your phone's organizer/reminder. This sounds a bit like over-engineering.
- Tichy 16y agoNitpick: why do I have to register when Greplin oAuths to a number of other services? oAuth should be sufficient.
- fauigerzigerk 16y agoThat's a great thing, but I really think it should be a desktop app or maybe a desktop option as an alternative to the online service. I know the drawbacks and they are real but I'm just not ready to trust _anyone_ with all my data from all services. I know I can delete the account at any time but then I cannot use it any longer.
- messel 16y agoIt's tools like Greplin that make being senile at 36 ok
- resdirector 16y ago(Looks very good. I can see this becoming as big/successful as DropBox.) Question: Does it do anything more than search? E.g., can you sort your indexed data into folders? Tags? Or are these concepts now redundant?