Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

you.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 477 posts

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

#251

Post by didntknowya »

ulber wrote: post #124

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…

yea i'm not going to install an extension. but actually you CAN try it with the little text box at the top.

took me a second look to find it. the spammy design doesn't actually make it obvious. kinda like yahoo's clutter vs google's minimalist homepage all over again.

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

#252

Post by bloopernova »

richardsocher wrote: post #219
icelancer wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's fine, but all the issues being reported here are due to Chrome users seeing the same thing - inability to use You.com unless you install an even larger potential privacy killer in the form of an extension. Otherwise it refuses to let you search using the on page bar.

Not all extensions are the same. I understand healthy skepticism since there are a ton of sketchy extensions out there. We will open source it in the next few hours since 80% of comments here are just about this extension :D It's 33kB and a dead simple change in one setting.

People don't want to install an extension!!

Once installed, an extension can be updated to do bad things.

Open source or otherwise, people don't want extensions. Stand on the merit of your website rather than trying to force people to install an extension.

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

#253

Post by adventured »

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.

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

#254

Post by didntknowya »

richardsocher wrote: post #213
DennisP wrote: post #208

Earlier 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…

I get how useful it is for growth but a defensive answer like this does more PR harm than good. also misses the question.

i have tried your search engine and it is great. i can tell a lot of work has gone into it, but i had to think twice about giving it a second go after being put off by your first impression.

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

#255

Post by drusepth »

richardsocher wrote: post #245
smoldesu wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's indeed unfortunate, I hope you reconsider.

yea. we'll revisit it from time to time. most people who REALLY dont want to install our extension probably won't do it after 2 searches either? and sadly, the 2tr$ monopoly that is Google made this the only way for us to provide the convenience of a navbar search right now? hopefully we can be a default option at some point or we'll have to build our own browser :)

I'd wager most people wouldn't want to install your extension before 2 searches, to see if it's even worth using.

A handful of searches seems entirely reasonable to test out a service before downloading an extension that only exists to change your default settings to use it.

I'd definitely be more likely to download an extension for something I'm already using than I am to download an extension for something I've never even seen in use.

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

#257

Post by richardsocher »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #60

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 f…

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 :)

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

#258

Post by Aeolun »

richardsocher wrote: post #213
DennisP wrote: post #208

Earlier 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…

I think you are kind of missing the point. Regardless of the reasons, people do not want to install an extension from an unknown provider to test out a search engine (at least on HN), you’ll even get a very hostile response.

If you aim to make your search engine a success, regardless of your reasons for that. You’ll have to deal with that problem. Trying to convince people with some idealistic talk does not seem to be working from what I can see in this thread (and anyway, is not scalable).

Alternatively, you can try launching somewhere else, but I imagine the reception on Reddit will be just as hostile.

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

#259

Post by bloopernova »

richardsocher wrote: post #225
pedalpete wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment about being the default engine to break people free of google, but do you have evidence that the browser extension is the way to get people to do that? On the other side, you have a search bar on the page, so I'm not exactly sure what people are complaining about.

It is a 5 second install or uninstall. Tbh, the browser extension is the best method for now but it's clearly not where we want to stay. Even after you install it and make a search from the navbar, Google will encourage you to change it back to Google and make the default button change the setting back. We hope to eventually be an option in the default search engines list. Eventually, maybe antitrust will encourage b…

Time of install is not the issue. Provide a simple, fast web interface, then people will use it.

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

#260

Post by richardsocher »

somenewaccount1 wrote: post #135

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?

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.

Post reply on HN