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Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs

• Gatsky 5y ago
  Is there a reason everyone is losing their shit over a chrome extension? Lot of uncivil and condescending feedback here. Anyway I tried it on mobile, works quite well. The UI is better than google at a glance.
• karmakaze 5y ago
  Until I can give it an 'improper' try from a web page (rather than installing an extension), no. Funny to say "it's built for devs" then go on to say that an extension is required because normal users...
  • swethmandava 5y ago
    We heard you - we no longer require an extension! Hope you give it a try, would love your feedback! :)
    • karmakaze 5y ago
      Came back and tried it. My reason for entering any random text and not coming back would be because the search results are presented like Pintrest or Digg rather than an easily scannable list format--search engines use formats for reasons. Great UX--if I wanted to pass time scrolling about programming instead of Instagram. My suggestion would be to have all your developers use your search engine exclusively. Use their feedback, you may have already come up with many of the suggestions being presented here.
      • swethmandava 5y ago
        Thank you, we'll continue iterating on these apps based on feedback :) I'm an engineer myself and quite like the stackoverflow app - anything particular that you find distracting?
        • karmakaze 5y ago
          I wasn't speaking of the apps, though I presume they have the same layout as the no install demo. I want search results in a dense text list, not a sparse-with-too-much-whitespace multicolumn 'cards' that seem so popular with UX-style-rather-than-ergonomic-focused startups.
          • swethmandava 5y ago
            gotcha - thank you! We'll make a note :)
• askonomm 5y ago
  A lot of hate here, but I for one love it! I'm quite tired of having almost the entire first page of search results be ads, and then having to also scan passed a ton of undesirable SEO-hacked results to get what I want and this is perfect for not having that. Keep up the good work!
• shanghaikid 5y ago
  Nice domain. !!!
• paxys 5y ago
  The front page has multiple calls to action to install their Chrome extension but fails to describe what the extension does or why I need it to do a web search.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    It sets you.com as your default search engine. ... we thought this was obvious but you're right. We should be more explicit and clear about that! Thanks for the feedback.
    • paxys 5y ago
      So why can't I do a simple search without setting it as my default engine?
      • richardsocher 5y ago
        Yea. We listened, and adjusted and you now can do a search in all browsers and settings and without the extension :)
• jccalhoun 5y ago
  if they are pushing an extension then they are probably trying to monetize by putting their affiliate code on the url when you go to places that have affiliate programs like Amazon.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    You are right to be skeptical of extensions. There are a lot of sketchy ones out there but... Nope. We aren't doing that and not planning to. All the extension does is change one setting. If you set your search engine default to http://you.com http://you.com manually in Chrome with "https://you.com/search?q=%s https://you.com/search?q=%s" you will not need the extension... but for most people convenience wins and well... It's tough to go up against a monopoly that controls the browser too?
    • dmitriid 5y ago
      > We aren't doing that and not planning to. Yes. Yes you are. You've spent unspecified amounts of money (likely millions if not tens of millions) on acquiring the you.com domain. Investors will be very interested to get that money back.
      • davidatbu 5y ago
        Just so you know, they got the domain name from an investor/friend.
        • dmitriid 5y ago
          Yes, they got it from Salesforce CEO. And he gave it to them out of the goodness of his heart and expects nothing in return.
• ArchitSasta 5y ago
  Richard, would it be possible to merge the private mode and personal mode? Right now, it's tagged as incognito and it's not on by default, this should seriously be considered. This thread has seriously become toxic, You.com is just in the beginning stage. We can use DuckDuckGo-like model by not tracking users, but instead allow users to set their own country and give search results based on that. Because most normal people will automatically not switch to and use private mode by default and that simply makes you.com non-private. This is a concern almost everyone here and anyone who is serious about privacy would have. I hope to get answers from you soon in-regards to this. Again in-terms of the experience, you.com is unique, but it's potential shouldn't be limited by having privacy is an optional mode, this WILL push people away. Thank you!
• FinanceAnon 5y ago
  Why do I have to install a Chrome extension to search, while I don't need one on Mozilla?
• richardsocher 5y ago
  Hello All, My name is Richard Socher, and I'm the founder of you.com, the world's first open search engine platform that summarizes the web for you. We launched our public beta today, and are excited to share it with you. If you're a developer, we have several "search-apps" such as StackOverflow (with code snippets), W3Schools, MDN, Copilot-like Code Completion, json checkers, and more. All of them geared to help you code faster. Let us know if you have other app ideas for how to make your coding life better. We believe in superior privacy choices without losing convenience. Our private mode is the most private experience - we don't store your queries or track your clicks or share IP, etc. And even in our personalized experience, we'll never sell your data or follow you around the web and we'll never offer privacy-invading targeted ads. We wanted to create a search engine that delivers relevant content, not ads or SEO'd pages, and do it in a whole new interface that puts you in control through personalized preferences. We hope you'll be able to search less and do more. Looking forward to your feedback and will be here to answer any questions. Thanks! -RS
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• gremlinsinc 5y ago
  How much was that domain name? That's like prime real estate... that alone is like a billion dollar domain.
  • hmate9 5y ago
    It's a little bit annoying because "y" or "yo" or "you" will always autocomplete to youtube for me.
    • elliekelly 5y ago
      For some reason whenever I try to go to the New York Times site from my phone the browser autocompletes to the HN URL. So it’s really Safari’s fault that I’m here so often...
    • marban 5y ago
      If ...tube is the first suggestion, you're still in a good position
      • Invictus0 5y ago
        Underrated comment. If You.com ever takes off, there are going to be many, many embarrassing accidental autocompletions to youporn.com.
    • BitwiseFool 5y ago
      Does anyone know how browsers decide which to auto-suggest first? Is it merely a function of which domain you've visited the most often?
      • akaij 5y ago
        Firefox uses Frecency: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Places.frecency.%28visit_type%29VisitBonus http://kb.mozillazine.org/Places.frecency.%28visit_type%29Vi...
        • deleted 5y ago
• nepalvibes 5y ago
  I heard about "you" from one of my friends and wanted to give it a try and it forced me to install chrome plugin. This is a lot of friction for me to try a new search engine. Not sure why you'd force your user to install something just to give it a try.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • hundchenkatze 5y ago
    I was able to use it without installing anything.
    • nepalvibes 5y ago
      I still get this unless I try it in incognito.
    • icelancer 5y ago
      I am not. I get the blocking message after performing the search. Not a great first impression for the Hacker News crowd.
  • mthoms 5y ago
    You don't have to use the plugin, just search at the top of the page. The text around the plugin is misleading. Strike 1 IMHO.
    • crummy 5y ago
      When I click the search bar at the top of the page it takes me to the plugin install page.
      • nabakin 5y ago
        On mobile I'm able to search no problem. I guess that makes sense though because Chrome extensions on mobile aren't a thing.
• marban 5y ago
  You should strip the ?ref= from indexed Urls [for multiple reasons].
  • kreeben 5y ago
    Why? Please enlighten me. Also, what else should be stripped out?
• jasonpeacock 5y ago
  If it's free for users, then that usually means you're selling user data to create income. How is You making money without Ads and without selling user data?
  • RattleyCooper 5y ago
    Brave browser seems to have figured out a way to make money on ads without sacrificing user data/privacy. If you opt in to their ads they basically sync ad campaigns to your browser and then use local browsing profiles that don't get sent to any servers to decide which ads to show you. It all happens on your computer and it doesn't send your profile to anybody, so the only user data involved is "user looked at an ad, but we have no idea who actually looked at it".
    • freediver 5y ago
      How do you know it is not sacrificing user data/privacy? It sends a lot of requests 'home' to their servers with your private information like IP address in them. At best you should be wary of that. If privacy is your concern you should look for a zero-telemetry browser, and even better if ads are not their primary business model.
      • RattleyCooper 5y ago
        It's REALLY easy to check what the browser is doing and multiple people have. There was an article floating around claiming it phones home but many people very quickly pointed out that the author was mistaken, at best (they thought some CSS or something completely normal being loaded in the background was brave "phoning home").
        • freediver 5y ago
          The question is not what the browser is doing (which is easily verifiable with a network proxy, even without the browser being open source), but the question is what the server is doing with the data that is being sent to it by the browser, and that data includes PII like the IP address. The best way to remove this question is for browsers to be zero-telemetry which is what I was advocating for.
• splch 5y ago
  I don't like requiring a chrome extension to search, and giving a 404 error on uninstall (https://you.com/chrome_uninstall_survey https://you.com/chrome_uninstall_survey) is suspicious. If the developers aren't checking links and testing their product, then I don't want to use it.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Yea... Requiring the default was a tough choice. You actually can try it out in incognito mode and any other browser. But we found that without the convenience of a navbar search, most people won't give it a proper try either way. I hope we can drop this requirement even in Chrome when we become one of the default options. If you set your search engine default to http://you.com http://you.com manually in Chrome with "https://you.com/search?q=%s https://you.com/search?q=%s" you will not need the extension... but for most people convenience wins and well... It's tough to go up against a monopoly that controls the browser too? Regarding the uninstall error. We are waiting to get approval from the Chrome store to update the extension.
    • gremlinsinc 5y ago
      Personally, I think 'know your market' might come into play, at least having the options easily there to do it manually. Many of us tech types would much rather configure chrome to add the search engine, than rely on another extension.. I already have too many, and sometimes I think they mess things up, so less is better imho.
      • swethmandava 5y ago
        Thank you, we are updating the page based on your feedback :) In the mean time, we have more details on alternatives for you over here https://www.notion.so/youdotcom/Setting-You-com-as-your-default-manually-on-Chrome-0c6fb51849274747a28cf96d52239c82 https://www.notion.so/youdotcom/Setting-You-com-as-your-defa...
    • Tyriar 5y ago
      Present the extension as an option then, not a requirement, with instructions on how to add the search manually. It looks promising but if you block access without the extension, a portion of users like me are just not going to give it a chance. Not just because it's inconvenient but I rarely install extensions because it opens up the browser more to potential bad actors when I want it as secure as possible. I also don't want to change my browser settings before trying and the fact you require an extension is just a bad signal of what's to come.
• skadamat 5y ago
  If I could pay $5 or $10 (or heck $25) a month for a programmable search engine, then I'm ready. But competing with Google 90% on "their terms" seems super tough. Yes the design is a little different and that's awesome that You.com is experimenting, but I just wish I could pay for this.
  • gremlinsinc 5y ago
    How would that look like exactly? Looking for side projects that could change the world, and this looks like a good way to disrupt search. If I could marry true copilot with google with maybe some sort of memory garden priority setting for things I come back to often (code, packages, docs, etc)....that'd be kinda nice... gpt3(like ) + search could be interesting but extremely costly for compute, though might actually be a decent reason to build something on blockchain (all users add compute, get paid for the storage, and gpu usage, one big botnet just to handle search). Just thinking aloud about how one would presumably pull this off. Ideally a mind/brain search interface would be nice someday, but the privacy concerns is cringy, but maybe something like alexa that listens while I talk to myself and looks at what I'm typing and gleans from that what I might need in terms of looking up stuff when I'm stuck on a coding problem, or if I were writing a novel, or some other creative endeavor. Or imagine an ai that continually just monitors the screen, and when I'm having trouble w/ a tool like learning Unity3d or some graphics tool, it can glean from the screen I'm on what help I need and suggest things... I really wish we did have new cool search tools like these in 2021... maybe by 2030 we will.
    • skadamat 5y ago
      > How would that look like exactly? You pay for the search product but you're able to do a ton of cool things that Google will likely never be incentivized to do. Basically turn the open web into a platform that works for you: - Setup highly custom alerts when a webpage changes content (e.g. ___ is now on sale) - Broaden search to include things like my contacts, docs, Wikipedia, etc. Ideally this is all done in a small little local index - Automatic visualization of the content graph (e.g. who reported on __ first and who is just regurgitating primary sources?)
  • 5y ago
• stuhlmueller 5y ago
  For web search, are you using the Bing API? If so, do you have thoughts from the private beta on how it compares to Google - where it does similarly/better, where it does worse?
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Great question: We are first ranking apps and then within apps we have some of our own ranking but e.g. web results come from Bing. We have found that when non-web-result-apps trigger in the top 2, we are often as good or better than Google. Web results by themselves are a mixed bag, which is why we built out lots of custom apps for developers, e.g. StackOverflow (with code snippets), W3Schools, MDN, Copilot-like Code Completion, json checkers. You can find the list of apps in our FAQ: https://youdotcom.notion.site/FAQ-8c871d6c99d84e02955fda772a1da8d4 https://youdotcom.notion.site/FAQ-8c871d6c99d84e02955fda772a...
    • JimDabell 5y ago
      Whenever the subject of personalising search results comes up in technical communities, the most common thing I hear are people saying they wish they could remove W3Schools from their search results automatically. Specifically that particular site. It’s got a terrible reputation. People have even built browser extensions to do it: https://www.google.com/search?q=remove+w3schools+from+search+results https://www.google.com/search?q=remove+w3schools+from+search... In that context, it seems strange you consider this a selling point when so many people regard the inclusion of this site in their search results to be a failure. Perhaps pick a different site to keep mentioning? It doesn’t give the best impression when you proudly say “Hey, you know that site you hate? We give it special priority!” Is it possible to remove this site from your results entirely? Also, it’s not clear what “JSON checkers” means in the context of a search engine.
      • aembleton 5y ago
        Or just let a user remove a domain from results.
      • 5y ago
• abetusk 5y ago
  You say that you don't store any information to ensure privacy but this is essentially asking users to trust you. Why not build trust into the technology from the outset? Or have I missed something and that is what you've done? Barring that, what actions do you intend to take to ensure data is kept private (external audit, etc)? You also say this is open source. I didn't look all that hard but could you provide a link to the associated repositories and mention what license it's under? Also, when you say "open source", do you mean the code only or are you providing data to the community as well? Also, I'm not sure the claim "world's first open source engine platform" is really accurate. I don't claim to have any big insight into what the various "tiers" of search engine there are (code, data, aggregation?) but I see at least one list that looks to have many FOSS alternatives to Google search [0]. Could you go into what's novel about You.com compared to other FOSS alternatives? [0] https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle#web-based-products https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle#web-based-products
  • Eric_WVGG 5y ago
    "You say that you don't store any information to ensure privacy but this is essentially asking users to trust you. Why not build trust into the technology from the outset?" I am also working on a project where users can optionally self-store their data (at the cost of making what I hope are useful algorithms dumber). I'm sort of banking on the hope that 90% of users won't care, and the ten percent that do care will appreciate that option and become enthusiasts. I'm curious what Richard's answer to the trust question is, but also what you (@abetusk) mean by "build trust into the technology by the outset"? Even when open sourcing everything, there is the question of, "are you actually using that branch on the servers?" I don't know how to answer that.
    • abetusk 5y ago
      > I'm curious what ... you ... mean by "build trust into the technology by the outset"? I'm not sure I could come up with a checklist that would take all the considerations in mind, so it's an ill defined question in some sense. For folks who market their product as "secure" and "privacy conscious", I would hope they would have thought about these questions and come up with a solution. At the very least, I would hope they would be able to list out their assumptions and limitations of whatever solution they came up with. To try and actually answer the question, though, I would think something along the lines of queries that are Tor enabled or have an option to allow for Tor connections (without the need for Javascript). Maybe something that uses distributed data/queries for decentralization and resiliency against snooping or attacks on a central location? It looks like You.com uses a chrome extension, so they should have more control over what form the queries take. Connection to the Tor network is presumably not out of the question. I agree that knowing what code is running where is a hard problem in general but besides being able to audit code that's open source, the other leg of that is to be able to stand up your own instance. There could be a way to provide incentives for people to return "good" results by random verification and/or user (transparent/frictionless/micro) payments. There are fancier systems like homomorphic encryption but I'm not sure those are really ready for everyday use yet. The amount of data is massive and any search service is going to be competing with a corporation that has 20+ years of domain knowledge and a compute infrastructure that is many orders of magnitude larger than anything that's really available, so I'm not sure there are any easy answers, which is why I'm asking. Maybe You.com is focusing on a more AI centric search service, which is how they're trying to compete or differentiate themselves? If so, then making that data available (under a libre/free license) along with the code would go a long way towards building good will and cold lead to a path for a "trustless" community built search engine.
• RattleyCooper 5y ago
  I like the concept but the desktop version makes me scroll horizontally to look through results. I'd rather scroll vertically on desktop, and come to think of it I'd probably prefer vertical on mobile. Scrolling sideways like that is really annoying.
  • CamperBob2 5y ago
    Scrolling sideways like that is really annoying. Yes, and it seems to be spreading faster than COVID. If only we could quarantine and vaccinate web developers who come up with ideas like this.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• languagehacker 5y ago
  Wow, looks real cuil
• srhngpr 5y ago
  If your search engine requires an extension to work and display the results, it's a total non-starter. Cannot suggest this to any non-HN crowd. Good luck.
  • ImportOllie 5y ago
    I'm confused by this, In firefox it worked out of the box, no default needed. Personally I like it! Going to try it for a bit.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Yea... Requiring the default was a tough choice. You actually can try it out in incognito mode and any other browser. But we found that without the convenience of a navbar search, most people won't give it a proper try either way. I hope we can drop this requirement even in Chrome when we become one of the default options. If you set your search engine default to http://you.com http://you.com manually in Chrome with "https://you.com/search?q=%s https://you.com/search?q=%s" you will not need the extension... but for most people convenience wins and well... It's tough to go up against a monopoly that controls the browser too?
    • DevX101 5y ago
      What's the unofficial requirements to become a default search engine in the major browsers?
      • richardsocher 5y ago
        We don't even know. It's not made public anywhere :( Hence our extension requirement for the time being. At least Chromium-based browsers have 5 second extension install/uninstall options whereas in Safari it's several minutes and so many clicks, we didn't even bother trying to build the extension.
      • dmitriid 5y ago
        You contact the company and offer to pay them hundreds of millions of dollars a year (see Google and Safari and Firefox). Smaller browsers (if they at all exist) will default to Google because that's what users expect. Except Edge. Edge will stick to Bing.
• soheil 5y ago
  I get one experience in Incognito mode, a completely different one in normal mode. They tell you to install a Chrome ext to use it when you can just do so without it in incognito mode. Removing the ext also takes you to a 404 page that seems suspect. Already playing tricks on users at launch, at least it took Google a decade to remove their "don't be evil."
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Hi Soheil. Yea... Requiring the default was a tough choice. You actually can try it out in incognito mode and any other browser. We didn't want to mess with privacy in incognito mode but just found that without the convenience of a navbar search it's hard to break many years of a monopoly dominating search. I hope we can drop this requirement even in Chrome when we become one of the default options. But as you found out, installing and uninstalling takes only a few seconds. Regarding the uninstall bug... not sure why you think that bug is an "evil" "trick" :) We are just in beta and still have to iron things out. We are waiting to get approval from the Chrome store and will fix that bug soon.
• thomasfromcdnjs 5y ago
  I gave it a go and actually kinda liked it. Will play around more...
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• dgut 5y ago
  Shameless plug: https://okeano.com https://okeano.com is a search engine that respects your privacy, doesn't require an extension and aims to spend 80% of profits to purchase river interceptors and deploy them to the most polluting rivers in the world. We have !waves (similar to !bangs) and support natively domain blocklisting.
  • onychomys 5y ago
    https://www.ecosia.org https://www.ecosia.org is a similar project if you're a landlubber, they spend the money planting trees.
• jccalhoun 5y ago
  I will give it credit for working on firefox with javascript turned off.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Thanks. Trying to be as accessible and simple as possible and still provide a cool new experience :)
  • lunch 5y ago
    I get a blank page in Firefox with JavaScript turned off :( Content Security Policy: The page’s settings blocked the loading of a resource at inline (“script-src”). Loading failed for the <script> with source “https://you.com/cdn-cgi/scripts/7d0fa10a/cloudflare-static/rocket-loader.min.js”.
    • jccalhoun 5y ago
      I swear it worked for me earlier but now it doesn't. weird.
  • kickling 5y ago
    I only get a blank page as well when changing to javascript.enabled = false
    • jccalhoun 5y ago
      I swear it worked for me earlier. Now it is a blank page.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• otrahuevada 5y ago
  Looks pretty! And seems to understand my use of operators pretty well too, which is great. What does the extension even do tho? Site functionality seems just fine as an unlogged, incognito user. If it really just sets my default search engine, I'd personally much prefer some cute explanation about how to set it on my browser myself than install a thing that will run code on my own laptop to do it? idk if that's actually common or not but this is a personal preference of mine.
  • swethmandava 5y ago
    Hi - yes, it's setting your default engine. Feel free to follow the steps here to do the same: https://youdotcom.notion.site/Make-You-com-your-default-search-f87c10bbfe7e4e34ae89aeba7e77f474 https://youdotcom.notion.site/Make-You-com-your-default-sear...
• chrisMyzel 5y ago
  Hi Richard, lucky coincidence - we're launching something similar in that regard today [1][2], in general we say "meeh" to search engines (you did not hear me saying that) but I love to keep watching your project from today on. We're launching Sentinel, an A.I.based data aggregation tool that does the searching for you and brings you back just results (instead of websites). You could call it a "semantic web enabler with a large language model instead of xml" at it's core – but it's too hard to digest for all people off HN. Chris [1] https://get-sentinel.io/ https://get-sentinel.io/ [2] https://medium.com/@get_sentinel/a-i-might-make-humans-happier-and-more-productive-79aeff03f9ad https://medium.com/@get_sentinel/a-i-might-make-humans-happi...
  • VRay 5y ago
    Well, I tried to find a pancake recipe on "stovetop.app", "you(dot)com", and "get-sentinel" and so far I'm 0/3 on recipes and 3/3 on irritation for Nov. 9th HackerNews search engines ..holey moley, I just found something that works! I bookmarked a super weird search engine someone linked here a while back, and it actually returned useful search results immediately: https://search.marginalia.nu/search?query=pancake+recipe&profile=yolo&js=default https://search.marginalia.nu/search?query=pancake+recipe&pro... that led straight to: http://online-cookbook.com/goto/cook/rpage/000DDF http://online-cookbook.com/goto/cook/rpage/000DDF , which is possibly the best recipe site I've ever seen in my life. It's just an ingredient list and a paragraph of text below it!
    • chrisMyzel 5y ago
      You'll be able to get 100s of recipes sorted by whatever you like to sort them after signing up for the waitlist at our website (and wait a little :))…without clicking through websites that is.
    • marginalia_nu 5y ago
      We shouldn't be too hard on these new search engines. My search engine spent a fairly long time returning comically irrelevant search results. Building a search engine is easy enough. Getting it to return good results is the 10% of the work that takes 90% of the time.
• slipperlobster 5y ago
  I pulled up your main page on Firefox and just did a search for "asd" - testing it out. Scrolling down a bit to images shows me some definitely NSFW images. If the goal is to be used in the workplace since you mention developer-focused "search-apps" then this is a nonstarter for me. Just a heads up.
  • option_greek 5y ago
    Oops. I think its worse than NSFW. It seem to fetch some pics of questionable age :(
    • richardsocher 5y ago
      I'll report it to the Bing image search team.
    • slipperlobster 5y ago
      Well shit. I didn't even think of that. I (luckily) browsed on my personal machine so I just saw it and commented, but that's terrible.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Oh shit! That's bad. That picture seems to have gotten through all the SafeSearch:strict filters. Sadly, the image search app comes from Bing, so every other non-Google search engine has the same problem with that same single image, e.g. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=asd&t=h_&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=asd&t=h_&iax=images&ia=images https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=asd&form=HDRSC2&first=1&tsc=ImageBasicHover https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=asd&form=HDRSC2&first=1... Even in the SafeSearch:strict mode. I will report it them and I hope they'll fix it soon.
• option_greek 5y ago
  I did a few quick searches on differing topics and I must say the relevancy is almost on par with Google. DDG doesn't even come close: especially for typeahead suggestions. Only weird thing is that it doesn't feel fast - may be due to whole HN doing a stress test right now. It will be nice to default to Web based on previous searches. the default all tab takes forever to load results probably due to images and videos hogging the same page. It is mentioned as open search engine: what does that mean ? is it open index/api is open or fake open like openai ? >> we'll never sell your data or follow you around the web and we'll never offer privacy-invading targeted ads. I don't think the above will age well in search
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Thanks. Glad you like the relevancy. We've been working on that for a while. You're right. Especially today on our launch day, we're a slower than usual. Growing pains of launching a search engine :| We'll improve speed for sure in the coming weeks. We will open up the platform so people can contribute their own apps in the future. We're also open in the sense that users can actually select their preferences and change their search results. We will continue to work on opening up more of the stack in the future. Stay tuned :)
• DeathArrow 5y ago
  Do you use GPT-3 to summarize?
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    We use it to generate code in the code completion app. But sadly, with our values of trust facts and kindness, we cannot rely on large language models to completely generate the results as they often make up facts.
• open-paren 5y ago
  I've used the you.com beta for about a month, and I've switched back to DuckDuckGo because the results were too slow to show up and the elements on the results page jumped around too much. Superficial, I know, but I just didn't want to wait for all the extra answers to pop up.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Yea. We've had some speed regression last month as we've crammed in a bunch of features. We'll work more on speed, reducing extra apps that might not be needed and you can try again in a few weeks, if you want :)
• BitwiseFool 5y ago
  I'd like to know more about the "built for devs" concept you are presenting to us. What does that mean to you? For me personally, I rarely perform site:github.com or site:stackoverflow.com searches in my browser's default search engine. I typically just enter a few keywords and try to make sense of what I find. When I personally think of a search engine built for devs, I think of one that parses queries differently from the natural language processing that seems to be all the rage these days. For instance, when I search "?. C#" I want to know what this operator actually is. Instead, the algorithm omits the ?. and just returns the most generic results relating to C#. https://you.com/search?q=%3F.%20C%23&fromSearchBar=true https://you.com/search?q=%3F.%20C%23&fromSearchBar=true This is true even when I put the "?." in quotes. One of the results is titled "Null coalescing operator" from Wikipedia, but this is actually misleading since ?. is actually the null-conditional operator. The information is there but it is not easy to find. The other item on my wishlist for a dev-centric search engine is to be able to persist the main language(s) I am trying to search about. Its mildly tedious to type C3 and then my keywords (..... dammit, C#, this happens ALL the time), in each query to narrow things down and not get javascript results.
  • the_jeremy 5y ago
    SymbolHound (http://symbolhound.com/ http://symbolhound.com/) is the only one I've found that doesn't ignore special characters.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Hey. Sorry for the slow reply. We will open up the platform so people can contribute their own apps to the platform. You can also prefer certain sources and hence have real agency over your results. We'll look into the ?.C# query and what can be done better for queries like it. Thanks for your feedback :)
  • vin047 5y ago
    > I rarely perform site:github.com or site:stackoverflow.com searches in my browser's default search engine Built-in site:reddit.com searches would be handy.
• j0e1 5y ago
  Congratulations on the beta launch! I am all for privacy-friendly search engines. My 2-cents is default to the familiar list view for search results. The current card-view makes it cumbersome to navigate (horizontal and vertical scroll) and scanning screen-width end-to-end. And with my penchant to serially browse results, it can result in me over-spending time to find what I need. Also, it would force you to have a tighter ranking of results. The current view could still be an option.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Yea. We debated this one for a while. There's a "regression to the mean" type of thing going on where every other search engine in the last 20 years just looks like a Google knockoff. We found that many different types of users love the new layout. It allows you zoom into one dimension of your search, e.g. lots of Reddit results or Medium articles and then also quickly skip to the next. It will work well on mobile too (though we're focused on desktop for now) where many users are used to scrolling left/right and up/down in e.g. Instagram. Depending on your input device, it can be more or less intuitive: Worst case is folks with a single scroll wheel mouse. There you need to use shift+scroll wheel to move horizontally (that actually works in every app and OS). With trackpads and touch screens it's a lot easier. For some the layout is busy but especially developers told us they like the higher information density a lot and can avoid opening 20 different tabs to find what they're looking for. That being said, I understand that it will take some time to adjust to something new and a less-Google-y future.
    • Fauntleroy 5y ago
      The problem is that the majority of users will likely bounce right off of such a foreign interface and never come back. Personally, I won't even consider this search engine until there's a less chaotic way to view the results.
    • techbio 5y ago
      I understand the concept, but there have been several search engines that return a richer UI, the name "Clusty" comes to mind among others, and Google did not invent the relevance-sorted list, just [famously] improved relevancy.
• usui 5y ago
  Hi Richard, how does your organization achieve carbon neutrality? What metrics are available, or how do you know it's accurate? As a software engineer, this has never been a requirement of me, but I want to start conscientiously working for a company that prioritizes it. I have toyed with the idea of Raspberry Pis, Starlink, and solar panels to host a carbon-neutral Kubernetes cluster. (P.S. I submitted an application, but regardless will be interested to follow You.com for the upcoming years)
• sam0x17 5y ago
  > the world's first open search engine platform Where can I find and download the source code?
• gergi 5y ago
  Beyond what others have mentioned about requiring the Chrome extension, I would strongly recommend altering the language in FAQ - "How do I make You.com my default search engine?" It vaguely references "the monopoly" in ominous tones. This comes across as petulant and distracting. Just focus on the instructions to set it as the default and how to respond to questions that try to change it back.
  • tata71 5y ago
    PETULANT!, now I have! to check this shit out.
• jimkleiber 5y ago
  After just seeing a post for a new service called Gallery and thinking of how annoyed I was at Facebook taking over the word meta and Trump taking over the verb to trump, part of me doesn't want this platform to succeed only because of its name. Someone below typed "I heard about 'you'" and it just made me realize how frustrated I am that so many tech companies seem to be repurposing more and more core words into their brand names. I guess Apple and Amazon have been doing it for a while. Anyone know why this is happening, also feel annoyed by this, and know if there's any end in sight?
• helloguillecl 5y ago
  I generally don't like when technology gets itself in the way to solve a problem. Why would you need the user to make your search engine the default one before even trying it? This is red flag at least for me, far from convenient and I doubt that installing an extension can be justified by privacy. If your search has better value to me than say, Google, why don't let me make the decision of putting it as my default? You're asking me upfront to grant you privileges (access to Chrome API's that are otherwise not available to you) by installing an extension? That is a no-go for many security minded people. Also: Opening an extension link after clicking on the "search" input field looks pretty much like a dark pattern to me. This is something to avoid when it comes to a friendly UX.
  • spiderice 5y ago
    I'm really not sure what you are talking about. Go to you.com and type a search query. No need to make anything the default. No need to install an extension. Edit: Ah, now I see. It's because I'm a Safari user. If you go to you.com in Safari it works fine. However, if you go to it in Chrome it does indeed work as you described, asking you to install the extension and whatnot. My mistake.
    • cabalamat 5y ago
      It says on the front page "Add you.com to Chrome to get started" which to my mind implies that in order to get started you have to be using Chrome and add the extension to it. You don't have to, you can just use it as a web page, the text is misleading and should be changed.
      • jayknight 5y ago
        I think that's only if you're using Chrome. I'm in firefox and just did some searches like you'd do on any other search engine. That's a really weird design choice regardless.
    • asaq 5y ago
      I get "To see results and get the convenience of you.com, you’ll need to add the you.com Chrome extension"
• vdddv 5y ago
  "summarizes the web"?
• vdddv 5y ago
  "Some web, image, video, or news results are powered by Microsoft" So the same as Ecosia, Duckduckgo and any alternative search engines?
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    No, the difference here is that for us that's only a small percentage. If you're a developer, we have several "search-apps" such as StackOverflow (with code snippets), W3Schools, MDN, Copilot-like Code Completion, json checkers, and more.
• LittlePeter 5y ago
  It is a terrible name... It takes several scans of a sentence to determine if you refers to me or the search engine...
• LouisSayers 5y ago
  Wow, it's like a blast from the past on mobile - like some old school search engine with loads of stuff on the screen, it's hard to know where to look. On the homepage I see some ex-salesforce big shot founded this... I worked at a company for a month with an ex-bigshot Sales force person who was basically a sociopath. Maybe it's not fair to compare, but this gives me those same vibes.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    o_O Lol. Thanks...
• marginalia_nu 5y ago
  Congratulations. I like the layout. Although the page loads extremely slowly, I'm on a modern Ryzen 3, on a 100 mbit connection and my computer is really struggling to load the page. Like it takes nearly 5 seconds and I can't imagine what is taking so long to present the search bar with no search results.
  • swethmandava 5y ago
    Thanks for the feedback - hope to improve speed in the coming weeks. stay tuned! :)
• axpy906 5y ago
  Had no idea that Socher left SF.
• noduerme 5y ago
  Question about a key UX decision: Why do all the search results open in a new tab with target="_blank"? This is the only search engine I can think of that has this behavior. I find it pesky from a user's point of view. If I want new tabs I can command-click the link. As it is, the UI doesn't provide the user any way to navigate away from You.com when opening a search result. I've always viewed new-tab links to be a kind of "sneaky" way to inflate engagement metrics, but I think it's particularly negative for usability on a search engine. [edit] Even odder, clicking the You logo in the upper-left corner of the search results page opens the You.com homepage in a new tab. What is the purpose of that?
  • rfxap 5y ago
    I can see it both ways. From what I've learned, Google does open results in a new tab by default in some countries, and they recently added the option to choose the new tab behavior. Adding that as an option could be a way to solve it.
• toastercat 5y ago
  A search engine that requires JavaScript to use is an automatic no-go for me. Still, I commend the effort here.
• simonebrunozzi 5y ago
  Great. I tried to build an open-source search engine back in 2007. I utterly failed, but it was a great experience. I also tried to launch a Chrome extension to summarize interesting web pages [0]. I wish you luck! Ping me if you'd like to chat ($HN_Username at gmail) [0]: https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN/tree/master/Weekly-Summaries https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN/tree/master/Weekly-Su...
  • swethmandava 5y ago
    this is pretty cool! Thanks for sharing :)
• howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
  Hard pass. Not installing a CE to test this out. Not changing my default search engine straight away. Not convinced based on what I see there is value added here. Fix those things and I will give it whirl.
  • swethmandava 5y ago
    thanks for your feedback! Requiring the default was a tough choice for us. Totally hear you on your distrust of extensions. If you still want to try out our product, we have more details on alternatives for you over here https://www.notion.so/youdotcom/Setting-You-com-as-your-default-manually-on-Chrome-0c6fb51849274747a28cf96d52239c82 https://www.notion.so/youdotcom/Setting-You-com-as-your-defa...
• kmarc 5y ago
  If I recall correctly, Google was very successful at the beginning because of their instant results coming back in a dead simple list of links and some details. When I searched on you.com, I got these ugly pulsating placeholders, and then could smell the oily engines in my device whirring up to send that damn heavy AJAX query to let me wait another 2 seconds to get something displayed. I like the idea, and wish a lot of luck to this project, but the UX is just bad, sorry.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Thanks for your feedback. I agree. Our first beta, especially with massive traffic right now, is too slow. We'll work on speed. Better, better, never done.
• nozepas 5y ago
  It does strike me as odd that is private but I need to install a chrome extension to use it and there is a prominent 'Sign up' button on the top right corner. I am also struggling to understand why the need to install a chrome extension to see search results. Feels like a lot of users will get lost on this first funnel step.
  • bogwog 5y ago
    You don't need the extension or sign up to use the search engine, just type into the search bar on the top of the page. What is raising red flags for me is this part of the FAQ: > How does You.com make money? > We are currently focused on building the best possible search experience. We will explore monetization ideas in the future and look forward to your feedback in that process. So they don't have a monetization strategy yet, and they expect you to sign up and install a browser extension? That's a recipe for disaster right there. This looks promising, but until the monetization situation is figured out, I'm going to avoid giving them any access to my information.
    • brrrrrm 5y ago
      > You don't need the extension or sign up to use the search engine, just type into the search bar on the top of the page. I'm not sure this is true when you're using Chrome. I use safari and thought the same thing at first.
• flowerbreeze 5y ago
  Congratulations on the launch! I think am getting better results than on any other engine I've tried using experimentally. Nice and sneaky job ad too in the console. As for some downsides I felt that: 1. The page is too heavy for my everyday use. On my phone initial load is 10 seconds, searches are 15 seconds. During that time the screen is just blank, so at first try I thought it doesn't work on mobile. It almost seems like it loads all the results at once, summary, image, video etc? 2. On desktop it's snappier, but still 3-4 seconds despite having good connection/system. 3. Skeletal loaders are everywhere. I know they are popular these days, but for me searching multiple times in a row to narrow down results started to feel a bit dizzying with them popping up each time and swirling. Same thing bothers me on Qwant search engine for example and is the main (although shallow) reason I don't use it.
• dang 5y ago
  Related ongoing thread: Is there any point in launching a search engine in 2021? Marc Benioff thinks so - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29161545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29161545 - Nov 2021 (18 comments)
• ulber 5y ago
  I found your pitch really interesting, I'd love to try it. I, however, refuse to install an extension and change my default search engine just to be allowed to type in a search query. I'm sure you have some "growth hacking" reason for this that is compelling to you. Maybe you hope that the slight annoyance of switching back will outweigh the inevitable annoyances with a new product like this. It does come off as user hostile though - you're trying to badger me to switch rather than selling me on the merits of you.com.
  • jamestanderson 5y ago
    I might install an extension. I have the DuckDuckGo Privacy extension for instance, and use DDG as my primary search engine. But I use Firefox, and it doesn't seem like this company provides a Firefox addon. It's an interesting choice to launch a search engine, give reasons for using it instead of Google, but also play into the Google quasi-monopoly by not providing a Firefox addon. Hopefully it's coming soon.
    • richardsocher 5y ago
      Yea, we'll definitely support more platforms, including mobile soon. It's on the roadmap :)
      • richardsocher 5y ago
        PS: You can easily change your settings in Firefox manually also: https://youdotcom.notion.site/Make-You-com-your-default-search-f87c10bbfe7e4e34ae89aeba7e77f474 https://youdotcom.notion.site/Make-You-com-your-default-sear...
  • somenewaccount1 5y ago
    yeah, i installed the extension and it immediately mucked with my chrome profiles. thanks, but no thanks. glad i'm not the only one that felt this way.
    • richardsocher 5y ago
• marc1 5y ago
  Why is a first and last name required to sign up? It is an odd choice for a company that prides itself "superior privacy choices"
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Agreed. We'll implement new more anonymous sign up options in the future. It's just our first public beta release... maybe too soon for hackernews?
• ozcancikmaz 5y ago
  I can move up some certain websites so I see their results on top. Also the ability to swipe the results is a great convenience vs scrolling down. thank you
• butz 5y ago
  They really tried to make search results look different from competition. While I'm all for experimentation, horizontal scroll and huge overload of cards doesn't work for me.
• abalaji 5y ago
  Here's a comparison between the main search engines: - https://you.com/search?q=python%20install%20requirements https://you.com/search?q=python%20install%20requirements - https://www.google.com/search?q=python+install+requirements https://www.google.com/search?q=python+install+requirements - https://www.bing.com/search?q=python+install+requirements https://www.bing.com/search?q=python+install+requirements Code complete seems like it could be a killer feature, but doesn't seem to work in the above case, whereas it does work in the OpenAI Codex model: - https://i.imgur.com/0xXdip3.png https://i.imgur.com/0xXdip3.png
  • aetherspawn 5y ago
    The You.com one won't load for me. I guess they're getting pounded.
    • richardsocher 5y ago
      yea. today was our first massive spike in queries and some apps gave up. growing pains of a new search engine i guess :| we will harden all the apps and infra moving forward to improve on speed and app reliability and rankin :)
• somenewaccount1 5y ago
  I installed the plugin and it instantly mucked up my chrome profiles. It felt very disconcerting and I instantly removed it. I imagine most users might not have multiple chrome profiles and so wouldn't notice, but for me it was an instant stop. What are you doing with profiles? Why does it need to be installed as a plugin?
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    That's a Chrome setting. We dont change anything in your profile. I guess folks here have a lot of reasonable doubts about extensions. I get it. I hate them also because many follow you around to all the sites you visit, etc. Surprisingly nobody mentioned all day that the ONLY permission this app has is to change your navbar setting. Chrome says that so clearly when you install it :) The reason to install it is to have the convenience of a navbar search. Without it you will try a search or two and depending on what you searched for disappear because it's just not convenient enough to have to load another page every time you want to search.
    • enw 5y ago
      > Chrome says that so clearly when you install it :) Sorry to be off-topic, but you should really learn how to better communicate with your potential customers. The little smiley face and saying it's shown "so clearly" has an extremely patronizing tone that is no way to build trust. Be more humble.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • lolinder 5y ago
      Requiring people to set you as the default search engine (much less install an extension!) to even try the thing is setting up a barrier to entry large enough to cause most people to nope out. I'd be surprised if your usage stats will improve by shutting down the top of the funnel so completely.
    • MartinMcGirk 5y ago
      Not to flog a dead horse here, but your argument is that without the extension people will try it a couple of times and then forget about you.com, and go back to default. But your target demographic is here telling you that with the extension requirement, they will try it zero times, because they don't want to change their default to a service they haven't tried yet. A better idea would be to unblock search, show results to everyone regardless of browser defaults, and push hard for the extension install on the search results page once people can see the value prop you're offering.
• throw8383833jj 5y ago
  I for one am just glad there are more competitors entering this space. Google search has been getting worse over the last several years to the point where I can't find what I'm looking for with non-technical searches. Google always tries to figure out my intent, and in doing so, fails miserably 1/2 the time.
• skinkestek 5y ago
  While this is a thing I'd very much like to try I make a point out of not using Chrome && badgering everyone who tries to force me to use it. Had to use it the other day to verify if a particular bug at a customer system was Firefox-specific (as usual it wasn't) but it meant a four months streak or so was wasted :-/ So no, while this is really interesting it still has to be even more interesting for me to allow that piece of modern spyware to run on my machine. (Some might think I'm to harsh here but my understanding is Chrome is almost as much spyware as much as the famous Bonzibuddy that we struggled with earlier this millenium, only somewhat less buggy ;-)
  • ManBlanket 5y ago
    At least Bonzai Buddy was cute. Also I thought I was the only weirdo who sorta kept track of my not-using-chrome streak. If we met for lunch I'm sure everyone else at the table would find themselves staring off into space as our conversation became increasingly difficult to relate to.
    • eitland 5y ago
      If anyone else here has a not-using-chrome streak and work in Oslo, Norway feel free to message me to get a free lunch so we can try :-) (Offer valid for the first three to answer ;-)
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Hey there, Yea... You'd actually get rid of the biggest spyware - Google ;) Our extension is 33kB and has not other function than changing your default (and checking if the extension itself is installed). You actually can try it out in incognito mode and any other browser. But we found that without the convenience of a navbar search, most people won't give it a proper try either way. I hope we can drop this requirement even in Chrome when we become one of the default options. We will implement an a/b test and see if we can get rid of the requirement even earlier. If you set your search engine default to https://you.com https://you.com manually in Chrome with "https://you.com/search?q=%s https://you.com/search?q=%s" you will not need the extension... but for most people convenience wins and well... It's tough to go up against a monopoly that controls the browser too? You can find more details for every browser setup here: https://youdotcom.notion.site/Make-You-com-your-default-search-f87c10bbfe7e4e34ae89aeba7e77f474 https://youdotcom.notion.site/Make-You-com-your-default-sear...
• pkamb 5y ago
  I've always wanted a search engine that searched mainly (only?) Stack Overflow, Reddit, and a handful of other authentic sites. One note: You.com seems to include Stack Overflow scrapers in the results. Would be better with those removed. These two results go the same content, one on SO and one scraped from it: https://i.imgur.com/TwvDIiC.png https://i.imgur.com/TwvDIiC.png
  • Aulig 5y ago
    I agree, I had that experience too. SO duplicates are bad but official documentation pages of libraries would be very good, so I guess it'll be a bit difficult to determine which pages should be allowed as there will be quite a few domains.
  • stopagephobia 5y ago
    Google got the same problem, probably they use blackhat SEO so its hard to keep up.
  • freediver 5y ago
    Kagi Search will let you do that by allowing you to create "lenses" like "programming" etc. https://kagi.com https://kagi.com
• alangibson 5y ago
  I searched for 'Pouchdb full text search', saw the horizontal scrolling cards then immediately switched back to Startpage.com. I can't see how sorting through info with horizontal scroll could ever be an improvement. It's bad enough on desktop, but most searches happen in mobile where it's even more annoying.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Don't ever try Instagram. You'll hate it :)
    • 0des 5y ago
      You're getting lots of good feedback and these are your types of responses. I don't understand it.
    • presentation 5y ago
      A search engine isn't Instagram... When I tried searching, it was just totally overwhelming to me, since you get a full screen wall of text, not one easy to digest image at a time as with Instagram. The design looks amateurish/inconsistent, the information was overwhelming, and I felt compelled to leave. You really ought to think more before dismissing your clientele.
• random478101 5y ago
  Some feedback: - the rounded corners remind me of the 2000s, and they kind of hurt my eyes; they take attention away from the text - I search for some niche CS topics; all the links I see I've seen on other search engines as well ... - ... which kind of makes this "google with a different layout" and some "categories", not terrible, but also not that different Now here's a challenge: Do some smart on-the-fly abstractive multi-document summarization and display a fluent mix of text, images and videos on a topic. Like a report. That would be a game changer, I'd think. If someone can pull this off, that might be you, Richard :)
• radicalriddler 5y ago
  Just from a webdev perspective, please add titles to your links and icons. I should be able to hover over those up and down arrows and know they're for voting. I should be able to hover links and see the full link text even it's clipped in the card. These are basic accessibility things that any good web developer should be adding in by default.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Great feedback. We'll add those. THanks :)
• alvatar 5y ago
  Very cool! I'm gonna give it a chance for sometime as a default instead of DuckDuckGo
• zestyping 5y ago
  Just wondering, why did you choose a name that cannot be used as a verb and is hard to pronounce unambiguously?
• nickstinemates 5y ago
  NSFW results seem blocked. Don't have an account, maybe that is a requirement? Either way, bad.
• 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
  > we'll never sell your data or follow you around the web and we'll never offer privacy-invading targeted ads. What about non-privacy-invading targeted ads? I'm sure google and facebook would both say that they don't "sell your data or... offer privacy-invading targeted ads" so It seems like a pretty weak promise.
• dan-robertson 5y ago
  I had a go for a ‘dev’ related search. I just tried one trivial thing. I searched for ‘jq modify value’ as it’s something I previously found hard to find skimming the enormous man page. I got: 1. A stack overflow question which implicitly answered the question but was actually about someone wanting to modify a file in-place. 2. A blog post from Monsanto. I clicked on it and I was greeted with a big model box that I didn’t read. 3. Something from w3 schools (which unlike stack overflow seems to get first class treatment in the results) about css and jquery. 4. Some “generated code” that was totally crazy looking python full of comments in Chinese. 5. A video that looked like it might contain the answer 6. A box asking me to sign into GitHub. I clicked the G icon for Google and the first result was a stack overflow question about how to modify a field with jq. The top answer was sane but there were some weird comments on it (the answer to the question in the You.com results had good constructive comments). I didn’t look at the later results which is unfair as the first result from You.com also contained the answer. It seems to me that it must be extremely hard to break into this space. Microsoft tried (including building entirely their own indexes and suchlike) and, roughly speaking, failed despite often producing high quality results that bettered Google. Any bad results from an upstart send people back to Google. Bad results from Google send them back to the search box to try again. I can’t blame them for wanting people to set the app as a chrome default with extra extension-powered abilities. Personally I also find it weird to be connecting ‘private’ search with other accounts. I guess it is private+personalised but I’m not sure I really want personalised. Maybe things would be different for other queries.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Glad you got some relevant and useful apps. You're right. When people dont find sth on Google, they blame themselves for "being bad at Googling". You can be in private mode without being logged in though nothing gets saved either way on our side when you're in private mode. We talk about the privacy and convenience trade-off here: https://youdotcom.notion.site/Privacy-and-Data-Protection-at-you-com-a45fe125e329439e8a45b2807845c8ce https://youdotcom.notion.site/Privacy-and-Data-Protection-at...
• not2b 5y ago
  Nope. Not if there's no way to even try it out without installing an extension.
  • prawn 5y ago
    I assumed people were exaggerating about the extension being pushed too strongly, but I couldn't even test a simple search to check the results or see how it looked. Incredible.
    • swethmandava 5y ago
      We heard you, the extension requirement is now gone. Looking forward to your feedback once you get a chance to try it :)
• rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
  Requiring a plugin to use a search engine is the dumbest thing I have seen in a while. It is insane. How did anyone think this was a good idea? How was this funded? This creepy and weird! I was frustrated when this popup appeared and will never use this. Its left negative feelings, I will strongly resist you dot com forever.
• nothrowaways 5y ago
  Looks interesting! The interface is intuitive with diverse and useful results! Well done guys.
• pid-1 5y ago
  > But may have private ads I the future So, in the long run, how is your app not becoming Google? Anyone who makes money with ads has rational incentives to not respect your user's time and privacy. That's even worse for search engines. I would gladly pay for search engines that have community curated content, I want business that have incentives aligned with me as a customer, free stuff with ads is horse shit.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Thanks for your feedback. That's helpful. Private ads worked for DDG to some degree but we think it's not the most creative idea. We've just launched our MVP version this week and haven't implemented these other more creative monetization ideas. We care deeply about trust, privacy and choice so we want to be careful: We don't want to implement these things or tell our competition about our plans before making progress and getting feedback from our users on them.
    • 0des 5y ago
      > We care deeply about trust, privacy and choice so we want to be careful Then disable your third party tracking, it's even enabled in private mode, it should not be present in any mode. > getting feedback from our users on them You've proven yourself to be hostile to feedback, as evidenced in your thread.
• throwaway81523 5y ago
  If it's built for devs then I expect it to have an API. Does it have one?
  • swethmandava 5y ago
    We don't, we are concentrating on improving the user experience on the search engine at the moment.
• numair 5y ago
  Hi Richard! I think competition against Google is a good thing, so I will give you and whoever else is tackling this area the strategic advice I would give myself if I was in this problem space. If you read the comments, including your own, you’ll come to the same conclusion people did 30 years ago, while witnessing Netscape accidentally hand Yahoo the keys to the kingdom: if you want to control the search engine, control the web browser. And if you want to control the web browser... Make a web browser. That’s not a particularly profound thought, obviously. Having a great index only took Google so far — it was obvious to them that their fate was in the hands of the browsers, and that they’d have to either own the browsers or pay the people who owned them. They did both. They’re still doing both, and that very simple equation drives a very significant portion of their entire empire. At this point, you’re (You is? Hmm...) doing neither of these things. You’ve got a browser extension and a website that is easy to visit and then forget about. But the world of 2021 requires you to solve that browser problem if you’re going to get anywhere. Since you’ve got access to the largest pool of capital in the world, why don’t you do it? Go back to Benioff and your other investors and tell them they’ve under-funded the mission for what you’ve got to do to make a dent in this problem space: you need to create a really great search engine and a really great web browser, and have the two tightly integrated and coupled in a way that DoJ-wary Google could never do in 2021. Yes, it’s a mission that requires a zero added to that $20m war chest, but it’s also big and weird and exciting enough to get a lot of really smart people to come out of retirement and under-employment to see what’s possible. There’s still a very high chance of failure with this strategy, but there’s also a very high chance of something interesting and weird and different coming out of it, such that those who are involved as both employees and users would say, “that didn’t work, and I would have been financially better off just parking my savings in GOOG, but the work we did was truly different and special.” The best people in Silicon Valley are always chasing this sort of romance. You know, like, “come make a ‘dent in the universe’ at my failing computer company that acquired my other failing computer company, even though you’ll be underpaid and get stock options that are likely to be worthless, because we could maybe possibly redefine the future of computing.” Benioff once knew a guy like that.
• dzink 5y ago
  Google factors in duration of stay on a page when ranking domains, not just the keywords. That allows for higher quality sites to surface at expense of SEO keyword gamified ones. Searching for Online Wishlist surfaces a bunch of “Wishlist%” starting domains that offer junk services. The private quality ones with high duration of stay are not showing, even after a lot of scrolling. Same with other queries. Something to keep in mind. The highest quality search comes from a lot of context, not just about the user.
• newbie789 5y ago
  1. Who are the folks behind this? 2. How is this funded? 3. The You.com domain must have been an incredibly expensive purchase. The folks that wrote the check for that were cool with never selling user data at any point down the road? 3a. Did the people that wrote the check for you.com make the money they put into it from investing in companies that do sell user data? 4. I’m actually supposed to believe that they don’t have a revenue model at all aside from affiliate links? 5. Most importantly, what is the current valuation of this business?
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Hey 1 It's me, Richard Socher and my cofounder Bryan MacCann. Stanford, MetaMind startup, then Salesforce. Plus a bunch of other incredible and wonderful humans :) 2 We raised a 20m seed from Marc Benioff, Jim Breyer and a few others. 3 the you.com has never been for sales. 4 yea. we haven't really thought about it too much but have some creative ideas we want to explore together with our community. in private mode, we may need to have private ads like DuckDuckGo since that mode is hard to monetize any other way. Whatever we'll explore, will align with our values (trust->privacy, facts and kindness). 5 Not sure how that's the most important one? :D we're not sharing that right now but if you know venture investing and know we raised 20m... you'll get in the ball park?
    • newbie789 5y ago
      5 is the most important because without a reasonable revenue model, selling to a larger company and washing your hands of your privacy promises is the clearest way to make money later. Edit: you guys didn’t buy you.com from anybody? The domain “you.com” was up for grabs and you guys bought it for $10 on godaddy? Edit 2: Thanks for answering 3a in the affirmative :). Yes, this is funded by folks that have made millions from investing in businesses that sell user data.
      • vanshg 5y ago
        He got it from Marc Benioff, who purchased in 1996. I'm assuming as a favor or private transaction, given that Richard and Marc know each other (from Salesforce) and the seed round. https://www.protocol.com/you-dot-com-benioff https://www.protocol.com/you-dot-com-benioff
• yusufnb 5y ago
  Few things I have always wanted in a search engine - - Filter out news/SEO'd sites. Better if by default. - Specialized categories - software dev, real estates, travel, garden, finance, .... - More weight on verifiable authors. Eg. blogs, publications, good quality social media posts (quora, reddit, linkedin), etc. - Geo-temporal-social context in search. Able to navigate results by time and space easily. Also, might be good to have search engine interface be like an app than a website. The secret search features should be upfront and interact-able.
• adventured 5y ago
  I typed in George Washington at You.com A few quick points of feedback on a desktop browser. - The first big data blob at the top being Wikipedia is blatant cheating. It isn't complimentary of your product that you rely on that approach. Devs already know they can find a lot of information about George Washington on Wikipedia, which means you have to figure out a substantial way to add value beyond that. - The Web Results section is a two row blob mash by default. It's disorienting in terms of deciding which results are most relevant and or have greater authority. I'd suggest defaulting it to one row. - The Quick Facts section is very underwhelming. Essentially useless. This should be an easy topic to provide quick facts for, relatively speaking, if You.com is going to be useful. - There is a "Shortcuts" section below Web results. It's not clear initially what that does. For example, are those shortcuts that jump you to external sites (Reddit, Wikipedia icons are shown). Mousing over the shortcuts doesn't reveal anything. Some of the shortcuts jump you around on-page, but the Google shortcut jumps you to Google.com as an external link, without making that clear. This is bad UX. It appears there is some attempt to clarify by the labeling of "You Apps" - nobody knows what that is. I clicked on the Walmart and Weather shortcuts, both said N app is loading; what? No app loaded, but beyond that, why is there a Walmart or Weather shortcut 'app' on the George Washington topic page. I suppose first you might need to figure out what George Washington entity I'm interested in to narrow the relevant shortcuts. - The Reddit section is ok. Another cheat section, leaning heavy on Reddit as with Wikipedia. Devs don't need a source like this to give them content from Reddit. There isn't much that's special about doing that. There isn't anything impressive about an aggregator that mashes a couple of prominent sources together for topics. You need to add a lot of value on top with what you're doing in utilizing Reddit, something nobody else has that is super useful. - The news section doesn't understand the topic. That means you get news about an electrical pole being down on George Washington Highway, or news about George Washington University men's college basketball. Users won't come back for this imo, it's too alpha of a product.
  • swethmandava 5y ago
    Thank you so much for your feedback, we'll make a note and improve the experience (especially regarding the shortcuts section) in the coming weeks. :) I want to add though that personally, I like seeing wikipedia/reddit results when relevant. same goes with all the other sources we have. I think the novelty is in ranking all the sources we have, and we hope to continue getting better at it.
• nubela 5y ago
  Hi, how are you building your index? Do you have your own spiders? Particularly on hard sites that seem to hate anything but Google/Bing, such as LinkedIn which I note that you have a great index of.
• nepalvibes 5y ago
  Is it just me who keeps getting Cloudflare "Always Online" error when trying to search?
• f2000 5y ago
  Installing an extension. ha ha lol. good luck.
  • swethmandava 5y ago
    The extension requirement is now gone. Check it out :)
• f2000 5y ago
  Install an extension? ha ha lol. good luck.
  • swethmandava 5y ago
    We no longer require an extension! Hope you give it a shot :)
• bigwavedave 5y ago
  Just to be sure we're on the same page here: * You're pitching this search engine specifically "for devs". * You're pitching it on HN, a community which (correct me if I'm wrong, @dang) is largely composed of your target audience. * When given feedback, you're responding very defensively in almost 100% of your comments with something akin to "an extension takes 5s to install and uninstall, just do it, no one cares, we don't want to prevent ordinary folk whom we consider morons from using our search engine so everybody has to use our middleware to even give it a try". Buddy, in case you can't see why that's inane, let me help you: you're marketing this as a search engine for devs and devs are telling you why they won't use it. If you can't even get your target audience to give it a try, why on earth do you think the average person (who sadly doesn't give a fig about "the big bad monopoly boogeymen") will spare a glance for your product _if they even hear about it in the first place_? You're defending a user-hostile practice with shallow nonsense logic. It's been my experience that founders who are seeking to "disrupt a monopoly" by ignoring feedback from their target audience don't end up disrupting anything (unless you count disrupting their employees' lives when the VC money runs out and everyone gets laid off), they just end up alienating anyone who'd ordinarily care enough to give the product a try. Best of luck, though.
  • bryans 5y ago
    Spot on! The OP appears to be so obsessed with taking down a monopoly that he forgot to make a good product, or a good onboarding experience, or to just be a respectable human when interacting with others. He came here to convince the startup and dev community that he's our savior against Google, and then repeatedly told us we're just too stupid to understand what he's trying to accomplish. I find it disgusting.
    • bigwavedave 5y ago
      > [snip] or to just be a respectable human when interacting with others. He came here to convince the startup and dev community that he's our savior against Google, and then repeatedly told us we're just too stupid to understand what he's trying to accomplish. I find it disgusting. 100% agree. Considering how poorly he handles feedback, user concerns, and basic human interaction, I'm very glad I don't work with him. With the quality of his comments and behavior all day, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he was bragging about not having a PR person, either.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29169583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29169583
• tvvocold 5y ago
  Please, if you Do respect the user's privacy and experience, remove the extension requirement.
  • swethmandava 5y ago
    We heard you, the extension requirement is now gone. Let us know what you think!
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• 16bytes 5y ago
  Hi Richard, This is neat work. Regarding the extension requirement, you state that you believe that it's impossible to compete without the convenience of navbar search, aka against Google/Chrome. You may be right, but this thread should demonstrate how highly polarizing that choice is for your users. Two notes: * Your competition space is much bigger than just Google. As a privacy browser, you compete against DDG. They actively remove friction. Right now they are a better product. There are more competitors still. * If your focus is on general search your product isn't as good as Google right now. It sounds like there are some neat ideas here with summarization and "apps" targeted towards niches like developers, but it's simply not a drop in replacement people are going to use as their daily driver. It's OK to moon-shot and becoming the next big general search engine certainly qualifies. If I were on your board, I'd tell you to compete against products, not the market positions. I'd tell you not to alienate potential users. Don't draw a box around yourself and say "I want to break the Google monopoly", innovate and you won't have to. Or focus on your niche, land it and expand.
• Ycros 5y ago
  I stared at the landing page for a while and couldn't figure out what it does. It wants me to install an extension to find out, no thanks.
  • swethmandava 5y ago
    The extension requirement is now gone. Looking forward to your feedback once you get a chance to try it :)
• ccvannorman 5y ago
  Like many others here, you lost me at "install the extension". Hope you will come out with a real search engine instead of an install.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    It's the only way to be a real search engine right now with a monopoly that blocks you from the navbar of your browser. Without that convenience, would you really try it for a few days and go back every time until you're convinced?
    • detaro 5y ago
      With that "convenience" being required, I'll never try it. Your guess what's more effective.
    • afandian 5y ago
      IMHO. You're getting a lot of consistent feedback from lots of people that this way of explaining things doesn't land the way you think it will. The feedback is all well meaning, and signifies (I think) that people want an alternative to Google, and want to engage with you. That should be a signal that you should listen to them. The stuff about monopolies may be your personal truth, it may be your motivation. It might even be technically correct. But the people in this thread are real, and have a spectrum of experiences and perspectives which are different to yours. They may therefore may say things and react in ways that diverge with what you think they'll say and do. That's a great learning opportunity. Taking feedback is a challenge sometimes, but how well you meet that challenge may well determine the success of your business! (All my opinion, but it's frustrating that you returned to this thread the next day without seeming to have have accepted the feedback you came here for. I came to the above realization a few years back and it really helped, so I'm paying it forward!)
• knicholes 5y ago
  Isn't Richard Socher the NLP genius professor from the Stanford class?
• DangitBobby 5y ago
  I got decent results with a simple test query. I'll give a shot and see how it goes.
• freediver 5y ago
  I know you had a bad day today Richard Socher. I am sorry for that. Reading through these comments must have hurt, and in some strange "The Egg" [1] way hurt me too. I felt as everyone that left a bad comment, and I felt as you, receiving all this. And all that after finally releasing the beta of your product, having worked very hard for that. I am impressed by your stoic attitude and not caving in under all this pressure (this was probably as far as 'blood baths' on HN go). Truly remarkable, even though you obviously made a product marketing mistake here. I encourage you to keep going and carefully read all the advice you got here today, for free. This time, let it all in. The cause is still good, the execution is clearly suboptimal. It's on you to get there. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Thanks a bunch. We had so much positivity on all other platforms but things here did get very toxic and personal - which was a first for me :( We still listen to our users and dropped the extension requirement. Folks assume a lot of bad intent from us even though Chrome clearly states that the extension only has write access to one field and no other permissions. We'll improve and learn from this. We're a super small team and are just launching our v1 beta. Better, better, never done :)
    • jjulius 5y ago
      >Folks assume a lot of bad intent from us even though Chrome clearly states that the extension only has write access to one field and no other permissions. No, it's that we see similarities to that which has burned us before. The insistence on an extension is one example, sure, but there's also the lack of clear answers to questions people have posed about how you intend to handle monetization/selling of user data in the future (and the wording you've used so far regarding it), questions around data currently being sent to third-parties while using You's "private mode", and that you essentially tried gaslighting a community of people that would know better[1]. I'm not saying your intent is bad, I'm saying you came to a community that is inherently less trusting about this kind of tech and while they may have shot from the hip (albeit with valid questions/concerns), you haven't done much to assuage those concerns. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29169565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29169565
• gbourne 5y ago
  I tried it out and not bad. I like there are no cluttering ads like some search engines. The side scrolling is a little tough to quickly see the results. And as most said, the forced extension needs to go. It is basically saying if you use Chrome go away.
  • swethmandava 5y ago
    The extension requirement is now gone. Check it out :) Let me know if you have any issues
• pcmaffey 5y ago
  lol this guy sounds like he fought the hard fight against vcs, raised his 20m, and now is so exhausted he can’t bear the weight of actually talking to *customers*. In truth, we've all been there right? We haven’t spent 7 figures on a domain name, but we’ve thought we’ve crossed all the t’s dotted all the i’s etc. It’s just everything changes (your expectations) the moment the boat hits the water… Happy sailing.
• farseer 5y ago
  If there aren't any "privacy-invading targeted ads", then how would you make money?
• bananabat 5y ago
  The landing page seems...busy. Is this what results will look like after a search? I'm not being facetious. And I'm certainly not a dev-dev (filthy casual, some might call me) so maybe I'm just not seeing what the advantages are, apart from the much-touted privacy thing. Also, I moused around and the search bar which I initially thought would give me a chance to try things out, is actually a tricksy button. Even your average, somewhat-privacy-conscious user is gonna be annoyed by that, at the very least.
• Arcsech 5y ago
  What makes it "for devs"? I tried searching some programming queries that I'd typically make during a workday and the results were... fine, I guess, but it was basically just web results? Sometimes there were a few enhanced results, but they weren't very good or useful, like when I searched for `java string split` and got back enhanced results showing me how to split a string in Python and Javascript. There's a bar of "search apps" along the bottom of the page that doesn't do anything if I click on any of them, so I dunno, maybe it would be better if I made an account and added some apps... or I could keep using DuckDuckGo and just type `!so java string split` when I forget trivial method signatures and want to search StackOverflow instead of figuring out what a "search app" is. Also, this is really, really pushy about being your default search engine. That's a big step! It's like someone talking about moving in with you on the first date. Maybe convince me first? I don't get it.
• vagsmith 5y ago
  Looks like Kosmix 2.0. And that company's business model devolved into SEM-SEO arbitrage...
• iansinnott 5y ago
  The site no longer requires installing an extension, so it seems they have indeed been responsive to feedback. (Please excuse the redundancy if this has already been noted)
  • klintcho 5y ago
    They still do though, just checked.
    • swethmandava 5y ago
      The extension requirement is now gone. Check it out :) Let me know if you have any issues
• 2fast4you 5y ago
  Tried searching for a problem I had earlier today. Got only one web result, a “quick fact”, a YouTube video, and the final result just asked me to sign into GitHub. Definitely not coming back, seems pretty useless
• baryphonic 5y ago
  A few things: 0) Brave lets me run searches w/out the extension 0:0) Chrome & Chromium do not 0:1) I find it irritating that I am not told to download the extension before the search. This is irritating because I've already expended the mental effort to produce a search query, and something tells me that the extension won't remember that query five minutes later after I've installed it, so I'm going to have to copy-paste or do some other out-of-band nonsense to tack down my current mental context. 0:2) I get the anti-big-tech sentiment. (Hell, I run Brave and set my default engine to DDG.) But I also know how frustrating it is when I have to interrupt some flow of thought I have just to perform some boilerplate ritual for the sake of the computer/developer. Tell me I have to install the extension before I run a search. Convince me that the extension isn't low-quality trash like most browser extensions are, that it's not mining Ethereum in the background and that it's not going to grind my CPU to a halt when I'm running full dev. 1) I wanted to dislike the "for devs" branding, but e.g. `v3d linux registers` actually returned relevant results, including relevant files in the Linux source 2) If you want an "in" for an installed based, make an editor extension, probably VS code; Emacs if you want hacker cred 2:0) This will reduce the friction when I as a dev have to learn some aspect of a library/protocol/RFC/spec on the fly, but only for implementation purposes, not to truly grok. 2:1) An editor extension also frees me from certain limitations of the web (even w/ browser extension). A search engine that could parse and present and even make executable certain portion of the IETF RFCs, for instance, could be quite useful 3) The search results are a little "busy," and I'm not sure what these "shortcut" buttons are for. They seem to do nothing for me (on Brave, no extension). 4) Most code search features are awful. GitHub's search, for instance, has so much noise and so little signal that searching Google or DuckDuckGo w/ site:github.com is more likely to find a relevant result. 4:0) This is particularly frustrating because I often want to search private repos that aren't indexed by Google (hint, hint, editor extension) 4:1) I end up using something like The Silver Searcher (`ag`) on the command line in order to find what I'm looking for, esp. in a large codebase. That UX has all of the warmth and simplicity of a wet blanket. 4:2) If you could build local code search that is integrated into global search results per user, and you convincingly proved that ABSOLUTELY NO private local code left the confines of the computer the data was stored on, then you would have a winner. But you'd need absolute credibility (hint, hint, talk to your lawyers). 4:3) While on the subject of lawyers, this engineer would personally love it if privacy policy and TOS were "versioned" so that I could actually trust them to remain stable over time. Today, TOS is always treated as forced upgrade without my consent. 5) How expensive was the domain `you.com`?
• wruza 5y ago
  Some feedback: 1. One time it didn’t complete the search input: I typed “math.ran”, tapped math.random in a popup, input didn’t update and remained as is (but results seemed fine). Couldn’t reproduce again, probably a race bug. 2. When I tap into the search input, the page zooms in a little (as it does by default for small inputs on iphone), which is annoying. iPhone SE 2020, portrait, recent iOS.
• JCWasmx86 5y ago
  Just some random thoughts with subjective opinions: - Too much whitespace in my opinion. - Rows instead of columns feel a bit alien and are uncomfortable to use. - Missing tooltips (E.g. the buttons with the arrows: Are this upvote/downvote buttons or buttons to change the order of the sections, this is not clear without clicking) - Doesn't have a automatic dark mode (Well, it's a beta product, so I wouldn't expect it) - Some images look wrong (Firefox 94, Fedora): https://imgur.com/a/bKdTYPj The news selections is at least for events in germany not that good: A lot of at least for me unknown newspapers, no Spiegel, Zeit, Süddeutsche, ... (Searchterm: "3g bayern")
• enw 5y ago
  I haven’t seen a more tone-deaf, smug, and patronizing CEO for a long while. User-hostile UX, a baffling inability to process feedback and seemingly no interest in potential customers. You should really think things through.
  • rawoke083600 5y ago
    Right !? Imagine he is your boss, and you have a legitimate complaint or good idea. Good luck getting that through !
  • enw 5y ago
    Can’t edit anymore. Just wanted to say sorry if that came off too negative. I really want to like a potential Google competitor. UX things that I wish were improved: - scrolling vertically and horizontally to find results is quite confusing and a lot of effort - low DPI icons make the page look unpolished - too many “things”, the results page doesn’t fit on an iPhone 12 mini’s screen without horizontal scrolling - fonts change style after they appear making it look jittery and unpolished - upvoting/liking seems like a good idea; would reconsider value downvote brings. It seems to convey results are user controlled and prone to vote wars The results are pretty good, but the UX is poor. Wishing you and the team the best.
• dcx 5y ago
  For goodness' sake, there's a middle ground for making your product sticky that doesn't need people to commit to stop using Google Search without trying your product once! Let me repeat that - you're asking me to give up Google Search, one of the seven wonders of the online world! Yes, I know, you can still go to google.com. But based on your messaging you clearly understand that a search engine that isn't in the search bar is one that doesn't exist. And maybe you know beyond a doubt that your product is better, but you sure haven't earned that trust with the rest of us yet! Here is the middle ground: Ask users to add you to their chrome://settings/searchEngines with a one-letter shortcut, so they can search with You by typing "y <searchterm>". You're targeting technical users; we know how to work with hacks like that. There may even be a way to set this up programmatically. I already have custom search engines set up for language study and Wolfram Alpha, and use them all the time. The evidence that this is effective is that Google seems to have intentionally crippled the keywords for competing search engines in its defaults, despite the known antitrust risks. This is an easy trial option, and if users start using your engine more, you can occasionally nudge them about making you their default. I've just added you to my one-letter list, because a nice user shared a GET request that showed me your search results, and they seem interesting. And also monopolies are bad for the end user. But the very fact that you're making demands like this implies such a strange thinking about your relationship with users that I've got one foot out the door already. (Edit: Okay, despite the above, after more tests via one letter shortcut your ideas about search actually do seem very decent. I guess this means Google really does have it too easy at the moment. If this is what ends up fixing your onboarding, remember me when you IPO, please and thank you)
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Hey. Good ideas! Thanks a bunch. Happy to hear and we listened to you and have now dropped the requirement for the extension entirely. Excited to hear more of your feedback.
• armed10 5y ago
  Did they change the site? Every comment is about having to download an extension before trying out the search engine, but the site works and I've not even been prompted to install anything.
• wenbin 5y ago
  I feel that search engine is hot again :) A recent well-executed one: neeva.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27675408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27675408 Then you.com today. For anyone who wants to build a search engine, just look at DuckDuckGo's traffic growth: https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://duckduckgo.com/traffic It takes time to grow. Be patient. Don't give up too soon :)
• shanghaikid 5y ago
  What a domain.
• TekMol 5y ago
  This makes a really bad impression. Built for devs? It looks like the exact opposite to me. The layout has a focus on flashy design and no focus on content. Devs like content. They talk about "superior privacy" but when you open the network tab you see their serps send queries all over the place. Just on my first serp, I see queries to serpapi.com which is owned by "SerpApi, LLC", to bing.com which is owned by Microsoft, to scdn.co (Spotify?) and to other hosts. As a dev, my impression is that they make no effort at all to keep their users data private. What I see is the complete opposite. The approach to force the user to install software. Devs know that there is no technical reason for it. And how dangerous and privacy violating this is. Then the reasoning in the replies here. They say it was a "tough choice" to force software down users throats, but it is a good way to gain market share and helps competing with Google. So their values are growth first, users second. As a dev, my reply is: Leave me alone already! And it gets worse. The founder here on HN gets the top comment spot fixed with no way to reply? How did they socialize their way into HN to get this special treatment? This is offensive to devs. Devs like to see competition on features. Not on social trickery.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Interesting you feel like with all this content, there's not enough. Usually we hear there's too much content. Can you elaborate? What's too flashy? Yap, we have to use some APIs but the searches come from our servers... Which search engine doesn't call any APIs and has great privacy? We dropped the extension requirement. The extension has no read access. No social trickery, I just posted?
    • TekMol 5y ago
      Which search engine doesn't call any APIs and has great privacy? This question seems strange to me and makes me think you don't know the difference between API calls on the backend and sending http requests from the users browser? Go to https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/ and open your network tab. You will never see any requests to non-DDG owned websites. Your site sends requests to all kind of companies. Which exposes data about your users (IP, UserAgent, that they use you.com ...) to those companies. Maybe you should talk to your devs about it.
• omnicognate 5y ago
  I assume the site has been changed in response to the things people are saying here as the search box works and I was able to start trying queries immediately. First thing I tried was a dev-related query I was getting annoyed with Google about yesterday: GeneratorExecutionContext. This is a type used in C# source generators and is documented in the Microsoft .NET docs. With Google, none of the first page results contain the string "GeneratorExecutionContext" or even relate to C# source generators. With you.com the desired ms docs result is the first listed and all the others are relevant. I can get similar results on Google by enclosing the search term in quotes, but this doesn't absolve Google. GeneratorExecutionContext isn't an plausible typo for Thread.ExecutionContext or scala.concurrent.ExecutionContext or any of the other things Google listed. It's a verbatim match to something that exists in MS docs. I find this kind of over-interpretation-by-dedault behaviour exceptionally annoying. Sure, if you think some leftfield interpretations of my input might be of interest, go ahead and add them into the results, but don't just assume I'm incapable of saying what I mean. I don't know how you.com is actually working here, but frankly even if it's just a verbatim text search that includes common sources of programming info I'm interested. It certainly won on this single sample search.
• quickthrower2 5y ago
  My thoughts: Freaking cool domain you secured. I think I prefer things going in the less cluttered direction to win my use over G. Good luck!
• richardsocher 5y ago
  Hey all. We heard you today. The Chrome extension requirement is gone and we are fully open in all browsers now. Thanks for your feedback. Keep it coming :)
• corobo 5y ago
  Gave it an actual go rather than a cant-use-because-extension go as the requirement has been removed Sideways scrolling is always a horrible experience and the page is just a mess of information. I'm not sure I can see myself using this, extension or no. The results are too busy. Also private mode should be default. Saying you don't set cookies and then I find 3 cookies - one of which seems to identify me with a uuid - is a bit daft. Why isn't this default?
• edotrajan 5y ago
  I really love the extensions and the layout I'm a designer, learning to code and even if I'm not using it for search regarding dev stuff I really like the vision and thought process Big Kudos to the entire team working on this stuff. I have no issues with installing extension, I have 100's already and I only a dozen of them frequently It'd be great if you could integrate some functionality similar to spotlight like, keyboard shortcut to invoke the search that also searches past sites and info on them Also, it'd be great if it could suggest websites and news based on my search history potential features could be like pinning and grouping sites like toby Also, love the domain
  • swethmandava 5y ago
    Wow thanks for all your feedback :) We'll make a note of them!
• p3rls 5y ago
  I love testing out new search engines because it's clear to everyone that the current situation is awful. For instance, my team built a custom webapp that is objectively the best in the niche and we get steamrolled by SEOed-to-hell wordpresses in google, which is bad enough, but with search engines like duckduckgo and bing, there are sites that just literally copied our HTML and pictures and are doing better than us on rankings. You.com seems to at least follow google's general rankings, which is an improvement on that at least. Good luck.
• aembleton 5y ago
  Interesting idea. I thought I'd just try searching for something that I might be looking up - 'java convert int[] to Integer array' DDG gives me an example from SO in the results which is one of the main reasons I continue to use it. No one else manages to do this and it seems that you.com can't either. However, it does give me Code Complete which is interesting but doesn't cover Java and for some reason is below images. I just tried with a python query - 'size of array python'. That worked much better. Got an example at the top. I might try this search out when I'm not working with Java.
• davidatbu 5y ago
  Hi Richard, Please feel free to respond to as many questions as you have time for. 1. I'm a huge fan of your ML work while you were at Stanford. If I may steal a minute or two from you, I'd like to ask, why do you think recursive neural networks have lost out to other architectures (basically transformers) when it comes to NLP, where intuition would suggest the composionality of language would favor recursive NNs? Do you think recursive NNs will make a come-back sometime? 2. Also, you say on HN that you.com is "the world's first open search engine platform that summarizes the web for you". Do you mean this in the sense of summarization in the NLP sense, or some other interpretation? I did a couple of searches on you.com, and I didn't notice anything that "summarized" (in the NLP sense). 3. From the business side, what's to stop Google from straight up copying your features if you gain traction? They can certainly afford to pay for talent, and are not known to be sloths when it comes to new tech.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Great deep questions :) 1. The driving force behind neural net architecture choice right now is hardware architecture. The model that can be trained with more data and more parameters, will win over any other model. Parallelization is amazing. I do think they'll make a comeback when people try to do more high level reasoning and try to learn that. 2. I do mean it in several senses. We looked into neural net algos for summarization but they often produce outputs that sound good but might not be factual. The other problem is that when you search for "best thai restaurants near me" you don't want a nnet lm - generated text. Most ppl would prefer a list of tiles with restaurants and important facts about them. So the models will need to be multimodal. Lastly, each app is essentially one dimension of looking at a query/topic. You can always "zoom" into each dimension more by swiping left/right or choose a different way of looking at this query by swiping up/down. 3. They do have all the talent but it's hard to copy privacy features for Google because they make too much money "selling" it to advertisers (ie making it accessible to hyper target people everywhere online/on the phone/etc). It'll also be hard to copy our entire design and apps and give people agency because they hyper optimized their design for maximizing ad revenue. They also won't open up their platform to let anybody contribute or people decide the order of their results. Etc.... So... I'm just a little worried, not too much :)
• lesolorzanova 5y ago
  You know what would be great? to add the date in which the source became available, or the date of the "accepted answer", or the date of the last edit. Many SO answers and answers in forums are more than a decade old. I signed up and will try t out, I am doing all my searches in you.com now
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    That's a great suggestion! It's very high on our feature backlog and we'll add it soon :)
• mwambua 5y ago
  Thanks for removing the extension requirement! Here's some feedback now that I can use the site: - The summaries can be pretty nice when the thing I'm looking for is hidden in a body of text... but not so much when I'm just trying to find a product, or a specific website. - I like the favicons... maybe also make the url a little more prominent? (I tend to scan for reputable looking urls when I'm sifting through search results) - Products from Amazon etc would be great with images. - Maybe I just need to get used to it, but I feel like I've already been conditioned to scroll vertically through results. Scrolling horizontally also requires more effort... so you'll have to work really hard to keep the most relevant results on the left, because no one is going to keep looking to the right. - you autocompletes to youtube.com ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ All, in all... it's a neat product and brings nice and new things to the table. I hope that you can try and focus on improving the quality of the search experience rather than taking marketshare and overturning a monopoly.
  • richardsocher 5y ago
    Thanks so much for your feedback. Those are some great suggestions that we will take to heart and work on. Yes, content quality is the main goal.
• INGSOCIALITE 5y ago
  Google became a household name without any extensions and even without navbar searching. They offered a superior search engine with good results, and everyone visited google.com to search. That is how “google it” became a household term and they achieved their 2 trillion dollar magnitude. Duckduckgo worked the same way. Everyone visited DuckDuckGo.com to search, enjoyed good search results with their privacy factor. There were no extensions or scripts to start, it was landing page driven. You are trying to circumvent the “hard work” aspect of creating a competitive search engine. You need to offer good search results from your landing page. Your domain is simple to type and shouldn’t be hard to remember for anyone on earth. Stop trying to skip the important steps of having a search engine and trying to fly directly to the top. Also, your api calls are ludicrous. Duckduckgo touts privacy and works without JavaScript enabled. Again, you need to stop trying to be google right out of the gate. Just offer a good product and allow people to use it as they will.
• brrrrrm 5y ago
  Even in "private mode" (not enabled by default), if I search "squid game mask" it hits maps.googleapis.com with my entire user agent string. How is this private? Perhaps a bug?
  • swethmandava 5y ago
    Wow it indeed was a bug that effected one of our apps. It should be fixed now and will be prevented in all future apps. Appreciate your feedback, truly :)
• moritzwarhier 5y ago
  Unsurprisingly, the "code generation" output is completely off the rails. Not even comparable to Copilot or a GPT with a helpful prompt. Maybe they included it so prominently because of how hilarious it is, growth hack and all that.
• planetsprite 5y ago
  How much did that url cost?
• Scea91 5y ago
  I tried you.com about a month ago in beta. Even made it a default browser for 2 days. I like the concept but for me it is too early. It's also complicated because as a citizen of non-English speaking European country I need to be able to search in my native language. Understandably, the search quality is much worse in my native language than in English. Also, as with DDG before, I realised how much of a feature the personalisation of Google results is. Alternative engines often sell lack of personalisation as an advantage, and I see the point, but it also means less relevant results.