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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

#41

Post by richardsocher »

splch wrote: post #15

I 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.

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 manually in Chrome with "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.

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

#42

Post by richardsocher »

nepalvibes wrote: post #7

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.

Yea... Requiring the default was a tough choice.

You actually can try it out in incognito mode and any other non-Chromium 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 manually in Chrome with "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?

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

#43

Post by gremlinsinc »

richardsocher wrote: post #41
splch wrote: post #15

I 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.

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 manually in Chrome with " https://you.c…

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.

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

#44

Post by otrahuevada »

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.

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

#45

Post by BitwiseFool »

hmate9 wrote: post #6
gremlinsinc wrote: post #4

How much was that domain name? That's like prime real estate... that alone is like a billion dollar domain.

It's a little bit annoying because "y" or "yo" or "you" will always autocomplete to youtube for me.

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?

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

#46

Post by Eric_WVGG »

abetusk wrote: post #19

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 lin…

"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.

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

#47

Post by richardsocher »

stuhlmueller wrote: post #24

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?

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-8c871d6c99d84e02955fda772a...

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

#48

Post by skadamat »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #36
skadamat wrote: post #16

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.

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…

> 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?)

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

#49

Post by chrisMyzel »

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/ [2] https://medium.com/@get_sentinel/a-i-might-make-humans-happi...

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

#50

Post by boringg »

splch wrote: post #15

I 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.

You can try the search engine without installing it in Chrome. Use incognito mode and put it in the search bar at the top. Doesn't work when its not in incognito mode though(?)
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