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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

#81

Post by globalise83 »

richardsocher wrote: post #42
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 "…

It seems to me like becoming a default search option is something you.com should work on (and should be much easier) once you are already really successful, but blocking instant try-out of search on the most popular browser is going to prevent you.com from achieving the user numbers needed to achieve that. I have literally never installed a Chrome extension and never will, so I guess I will never find out what improvements to the search results you can offer compared to other search engines.

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

#82

Post by richardsocher »

paxys wrote: post #26

The front page has multiple calls to action to install their Chrome extension but fails to describe what the extension does or why I need it to do a web search.

It sets you.com as your default search engine. ... we thought this was obvious but you're right. We should be more explicit and clear about that! Thanks for the feedback.

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

#83

Post by helloguillecl »

I generally don't like when technology gets itself in the way to solve a problem. Why would you need the user to make your search engine the default one before even trying it?

This is red flag at least for me, far from convenient and I doubt that installing an extension can be justified by privacy.

If your search has better value to me than say, Google, why don't let me make the decision of putting it as my default?

You're asking me upfront to grant you privileges (access to Chrome API's that are otherwise not available to you) by installing an extension? That is a no-go for many security minded people.

Also: Opening an extension link after clicking on the "search" input field looks pretty much like a dark pattern to me. This is something to avoid when it comes to a friendly UX.

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

#84

Post by tata71 »

gergi wrote: post #76

Beyond what others have mentioned about requiring the Chrome extension, I would strongly recommend altering the language in FAQ - "How do I make You.com my default search engine?" It vaguely references "the monopoly" in ominous tones. This comes across as petulant and distracting. Just focus on the instructions to set it as the default and how to respond to questions that try to change it back.

PETULANT!, now I have! to check this shit out.

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

#85

Post by globalise83 »

mthoms wrote: post #14
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.

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.

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"

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

#86

Post by abetusk »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #46
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 a…

> I'm curious what ... you ... mean by "build trust into the technology by the outset"?

I'm not sure I could come up with a checklist that would take all the considerations in mind, so it's an ill defined question in some sense. For folks who market their product as "secure" and "privacy conscious", I would hope they would have thought about these questions and come up with a solution. At the very least, I would hope they would be able to list out their assumptions and limitations of whatever solution they came up with.

To try and actually answer the question, though, I would think something along the lines of queries that are Tor enabled or have an option to allow for Tor connections (without the need for Javascript). Maybe something that uses distributed data/queries for decentralization and resiliency against snooping or attacks on a central location?

It looks like You.com uses a chrome extension, so they should have more control over what form the queries take. Connection to the Tor network is presumably not out of the question.

I agree that knowing what code is running where is a hard problem in general but besides being able to audit code that's open source, the other leg of that is to be able to stand up your own instance. There could be a way to provide incentives for people to return "good" results by random verification and/or user (transparent/frictionless/micro) payments.

There are fancier systems like homomorphic encryption but I'm not sure those are really ready for everyday use yet.

The amount of data is massive and any search service is going to be competing with a corporation that has 20+ years of domain knowledge and a compute infrastructure that is many orders of magnitude larger than anything that's really available, so I'm not sure there are any easy answers, which is why I'm asking.

Maybe You.com is focusing on a more AI centric search service, which is how they're trying to compete or differentiate themselves? If so, then making that data available (under a libre/free license) along with the code would go a long way towards building good will and cold lead to a path for a "trustless" community built search engine.

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

#87

Post by srhngpr »

richardsocher wrote: post #39
srhngpr wrote: post #28

If your search engine requires an extension to work and display the results, it's a total non-starter. Cannot suggest this to any non-HN crowd. Good luck.

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…

I get that and appreciate that this was a tough choice, but the alternative you're proposing (1) requires several more clicks, (2) expects the end user to trust an extension that is unknown to them at the onset, and (3) does not provide an intuitive way for the average user to know they can use incognito to try it out.

You have an extremely memorable URL and in my view, the quality and accuracy of the results should naturally help spread the word for you if you do indeed provide a compelling alternative.

I'm sorry, I just don't buy your argument about "monopoly and controlling the browser" when you don't require an extension for those using Firefox, Edge, etc. - yet you _hope_ that Google will still add you to the default list of search engines.

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

#88

Post by m-i-l »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #11

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?

According to https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/you-com-523e they have received $20M in funding, so as long as they have a sensible burn rate, they could last for years before having to think about how to make a profit. Although the projects that don't have a plan at the outset always seem to either turn bad or fail.

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

#89

Post by shkkmo »

richardsocher wrote: post #77
nabakin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On mobile I'm able to search no problem. I guess that makes sense though because Chrome extensions on mobile aren't a thing.

Yea. It's not like we're tryin to block users :) We just found that without the convenience of a navbar search - you're ngmi (not gonna make it) as a search engine. We hope we can drop all restrictions in the future.

This sort of attitude that prioritizes your own growth over the experience of your customers does not bode well for a company that is trying to sell itself as committed to user privacy.

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

#90

Post by bryanmccann »

Tyriar wrote: post #69
richardsocher wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea. That makes sense. I avoid extensions myself since many of them are super sketch. This one literally changes just one setting and you get the same results if you do it manually. But most web users won't know how to make setting changes. We describe the steps for all the different browsers in the first link of our FAQ: https://youdotcom.notion.site/Make-You-com-your-default-sear... Full FAQ here: https://youdotcom…

> This one literally changes just one setting and you get the same results if you do it manually I just checked and this isn't actually true though, it looks like it also installs a service worker that runs some code in background.js. It sucks I needed to look at the extension's contents to verify that and backs up why I wouldn't want to install it in the first place. My proposal seems win-win, you can even push the…

Hi Tyriar,

Just wanted to provide some more info on the background service worker, though if you've pulled the code you've probably already seen the same.

Right now that worker does two things. It redirects to a survey if you uninstall the extension (going away in the next update once it makes it through the webstore review), and it allows detection of the installed extension since its required in Chrome unless you search from the url/navbar.

And just so there's full details on the restriction here too:

We determine if the search is from the url/navbar only through that fromSearchBar query parameter, so either manually entering the url without that query param, following links without that query param, or by setting your default in your settings manually and searching from the url/navbar will all work. It is just that search bar on the page that gets disabled without the extension. There's also no restriction right now on non-Chrome browsers or in a Chrome Incognito Window.

Thanks for digging in, bringing that up for clarification, and for your proposal!

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