I will give it credit for working on firefox with javascript turned off.
I only get a blank page as well when changing to javascript.enabled = false
Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
231–240 of 477 posts
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they published the extension source that might be more reasonable. I assume the extension is so a lot of heavy lifting on hitting individual apps/ API's happens locally to alleviate costs or rate limiting
Working on it right now :) Extension changes your navbar setting. It's 33kB. All the heavy lifting happens on our servers so as to not slow browsers down for users.
FYI, 17kB of that is a PNG icon that will never be rendered above 128x128.
edit: actually, you have properly sized favicons additionally. Not sure what the 17kB one is for.
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#233I'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.
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 :)
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#234Here's a comparison between the main search engines: - https://you.com/search?q=python%20install%20requirements - https://www.google.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
The You.com one won't load for me. I guess they're getting pounded.
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 :)
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#235I 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.
Oops. I think its worse than NSFW. It seem to fetch some pics of questionable age :(
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.
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey. Yea. We struggle with the extension -> navbar search requirement also. We have found that if you're not the default engine that is easily accessible from the Navbar, you will not be able to break the Google monopoly. We also found that many people will just do a quick search for "asd" or "weather" and then leave because those searches aren't really differentiated (and just can't really be). Our extension is 33kB…
In my opinion, the fact that all your extension does is change the setting is worse, not better. It's purely a user-hostile choice.
yea.. why?
the truth is that most users have no other easily accessible way for them to switch away from a monopoly that sells them, their data and privacy to the highest bidder and requires all companies to pay a tax to exist in the online economy...
if you are an expert, you can change your settings manually and hence not require the extension.
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#237Hi 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 w…
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+re…
Wow, https://search.marginalia.nu is really cool. I just wasted a whole hour looking at sites it was suggesting with the random feature. Haha.
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
On Chrome desktop I just see a blocker message: "To see results and get the convenience of you.com, you’ll need to add the you.com Chrome extension"
Wow, you're right. Searching works fine in Safari (desktop) but requires a plugin when you visit the same page in Chrome. I want to like this, but this move seems like just another scummy "growth hack".
This feedback is so common in all the threads here that I can only wonder why someone would so gloriously sabotage their own product.
It's a bit needy. Maybe give people a chance to try it out on their own terms instead of forcing them to commit right off the bat?
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly second this. I immediately gave up on trying it out once I realized I had to download something. Your KPIs should be around how sticky your search features are, it seems like it is currently based on download counts.
Hey. Yea. We struggle with the extension -> navbar search requirement also. We have found that if you're not the default engine that is easily accessible from the Navbar, you will not be able to break the Google monopoly. We also found that many people will just do a quick search for "asd" or "weather" and then leave because those searches aren't really differentiated (and just can't really be). Our extension is 33kB…
I appreciate the reply and opportunity to open dialog. I think the flaw in that reasoning is that you're not talking specifically about people for whom search is a problem. Someone searching for the weather forecast, or something that strongly references a Wikipedia article, is already getting a good search experience. People like me, on the other hand, are power users of Google but consistently struggle to quickly find information.
I downloaded the extension so I could reciprocate with useful feedback. First let me say I appreciate the minimal design, although it would be nice if my re-ordering and configuration of the interface remained the same between searches (if I hit the arrows to push Stack Overflow results to the top, every subsequent search pushes it down to a random position). I ran some of my Google searches from earlier today - one was "typescript define class as type", since I didn't really know exactly how to describe the TS syntax I wanted. The second Google result was to a Stack Overflow answer that effectively resolved my query - this answer isn't in the SO results when I searched on You, and the overall search experience for that one isn't great. Obviously that is an edge case with imprecise wording, but it's the best example I could come up with for why it's hard to ditch Google (even though many of us want to).
I ran some other queries where You was actually a much better experience - I was searching for a specific JS library (Nunjucks) and entering queries like "nunjucks define a filter" - the Google results start with a link to the documentation, followed by endless low-quality blog posts. On You, I could easily scroll through and see that people are talking on Reddit about the library - right now I effectively do the same thing on Google by adding "site:news.ycombinator.com" before a query.
Again, appreciate the reply and look forward to following your progress. I am sure that even the naysayers here can agree that it would be nice to see an end to search monopolization :)
Edit: FYI, to add to the argument against the Chrome extension, the moment I navigated to google.com I got a prompt with "yes" as the default answer for switching back to Google as the default search. So I really don't think fighting the search monopoly in this way is going to be easy - to echo another commenter, DuckDuckGo has managed to build a successful business off great search results alone.
Re: Show HN: You.com, private search engine that summarizes the web – built for devs
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having the extension and letting people try it on the web seems like a more reasonable choice. People need to try it out. That said...there is a search textbox at the top of the page and it worked for me in Firefox and Chrome. Did people just miss it? If so, it should probably be in the middle with the big blue button.
it takes 5 seconds to install and uninstall an extension. we will open source it also so people can see how simple and benign it is. It feels like 5s to help move the internet away from a privacy invading monopoly isn't too bad? If you like privacy and agency of your information diet, or saving lots of time while coding, or Reddit results always accessible to browse for most queries, etc. Then the 5s install will be…
Maybe a compromise would be keeping the button to install the extension but add a link along the lines of "Don't want an extension?" that explains how you can use it without installing the extension and your reasons for the extension.