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I've been working on a private, paid, ad-free and personally customizable search engine: Uruky [1]. To signup you don't provide any information (a randomly-gen
by BrunoBernardino 2mo ago
I've been working on a private, paid, ad-free and personally customizable search engine: Uruky [1].
To signup you don't provide any information (a randomly-generated account number is assigned to you), and you can run a proof-of-work captcha to get 2h for free. You can choose among many different search providers (for defaults and per query), including Uruky Site Search, powering our own index.
Last month we reached 250 monthly active accounts (we’re nearing 300 now), and launched support for XMR/Monero and BTC/Bitcoin payments via ProxyStore [2]!
The main differences between Uruky and Kagi, DuckDuckGo, SearXNG, etc. are visible in the footer (right side), but one huge difference is that with Uruky, after being a paying customer for 12 months, you get copy of the source code (licensed as BUSL, into AGPLv3 in 2 years — a suggestion made here in HN)!
Our main challenge continues to be discoverability and outreach because we want to do it ethically. Ideas are welcome! We’ve been sponsoring open source projects, open source maintainers, and indie, small-web, and privacy-related websites and applications/groups. This month was Cryptomator [3]!
Feature-wise, for August the most visible things that shipped already were our image search gallery mode and our new sponsorships page. We’re currently (slowly and sustainably) increasing our own index, focused on indie/small web, and plan to add a new search provider in the upcoming weeks.
Thank you for your kindness!
[NO-AI]: There is no generative AI product or service being offered, here.
[1]: https://uruky.com https://uruky.com
[2]: https://digitalgoods.proxysto.re/en/brand/uruky https://digitalgoods.proxysto.re/en/brand/uruky
[3]: https://cryptomator.org https://cryptomator.org
- Havoc 2mo agoBit of feedback on uruky - biggest gap I experienced was lack of calculator and currency converter rather than the quality of results. Stuff like "50 GBP in USD".
- BrunoBernardino 2mo agoThanks, that's perfectly fair! It's something we've felt has been best served by the OS at this point (macOS and Linux, at least), and adds significant complexity (we need to start tracking multiple currencies, their current exchange rates, parse different regex/ways of people doing that), so we've been reluctant to add it so far. I'd be curious to understand if you bypass those OS entry points (and why) and use search for those things.
- olpad 2mo agoI also find myself constantly using search engine conversions because it’s easier to type in plain text rather than scroll through a menu of [class of unit] and [specific unit]. Plus I have a browser open a lot of the time. I’m using kagi and my main complaint with their unit conversion is that you can’t modify the values in the results. If I type “in to mm” it defaults to 1 inch = 254mm, and I have to explicitly search for, say, “45 in to mm” each time. Being able to just search the first one and then type in my value on either side of the conversion is something that other engines do well
- BrunoBernardino 2mo agoI might look into some opt-in setting that enables some regex patterns to do things like that. I'm not so sure about currency rates unless we only sync that once per day, as a scheduled job, for example. That might work.
- BrunoBernardino 2mo agoHeads-up, we just shipped a small widget for calculator, unit conversion, and top 10 currency conversion, rates checked against the European Central Bank daily. It can be enabled in the settings.
- Nightbowl12 2mo agoRegarding discoverability, have you tried indexing in Bing Webmaster Tools? From what I understand ChatGPT's search runs on Bing's index.
- BrunoBernardino 2mo agoThanks! We did that initially (and to Google as well), and Uruky shows up there; I just mean more broadly speaking, to get the word out so people find Uruky when looking for or speaking about privacy-focused search.