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?
Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
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Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#12I 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.
I was able to use it without installing anything.
I still get this unless I try it in incognito.
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#13If 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?
Are you new to the whole startup thing? They aren't making money, they're just burning VC cash.
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#14I 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.
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.
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#15I don't like requiring a chrome extension to search, and giving a 404 error on uninstall (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.
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#16If 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.
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a little bit annoying because "y" or "yo" or "you" will always autocomplete to youtube for me.
If ...tube is the first suggestion, you're still in a good position
Underrated comment. If You.com ever takes off, there are going to be many, many embarrassing accidental autocompletions to youporn.com.
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#18If 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?
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".
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#19You 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?
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#20I 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.