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Wow, it's like a blast from the past on mobile - like some old school search engine with loads of stuff on the screen, it's hard to know where to look. On the homepage I see some ex-salesforce big shot founded this... I worked at a company for a month with an ex-bigshot Sales force person who was basically a sociopath. Maybe it's not fair to compare, but this gives me those same vibes.
Thanks...
"Some web, image, video, or news results are powered by Microsoft" So the same as Ecosia, Duckduckgo and any alternative search engines?
If you're a developer, we have several "search-apps" such as StackOverflow (with code snippets), W3Schools, MDN, Copilot-like Code Completion, json checkers, and more.
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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…
DuckDuckGo seens to have been able to do this just fine, even with the weirdest name for a company ever. Their growing by word of mouth from geeks like us. I set DDG as default on all of my family/friends browsers. Focus on making a good search and users will come
Well, to be complete, DDG also advertises on radio, on streaming, on billboards, and in newspapers. I think TV is the only place I haven't seen a DDG ad.
I searched for 'Pouchdb full text search', saw the horizontal scrolling cards then immediately switched back to Startpage.com. I can't see how sorting through info with horizontal scroll could ever be an improvement. It's bad enough on desktop, but most searches happen in mobile where it's even more annoying.
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I don't use Chrome, I use Firefox. It was confusing for it to ask me to add an extension to Chrome.
Oh. That's odd. It shouldn't ask you for the Chrome install if you're on Firefox. We can't reproduce that bug. What version of FF are you on?
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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…
Furthermore, literally drawing a search-box and then having it not actually perform a search is a dark-pattern. If you have to trick people into doing an action, it's probably not the right thing to do.
If you have differentiating features, show people them! Optimize your flow on how you're different. If there aren't niches (e.g. some people use Bing for differentiated image search or travel) that people will come to you instead of going to Google for the same purpose, you won't see adoption. Google has such an advantage not because of their market position, but because of the huge amount of person-years they've spent developing their product.
If you're privacy first, that's great, but you are competing with DDG not Google. Privacy doesn't keep users coming back. Build a better product, people will come.
And that starts with letting your users search how they want to search, not how you want them to.
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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.
Respectfully: because nobody knows who the fuck you are, and your reasoning doesn't make sense. You want to offer a privacy focused search service, but the users need to install an extension because otherwise instead of just having a regular web frontend for the masses to try. Then it's too hard for lusers to switch; you created this problem for yourself. The more you respond, the more it looks like this is some poor…
But most people need the simplicity and convenience of a few clicks in order to give it a proper try.
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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.
Original comment below, most individual bits still relevant aside from the overall conclusion that the pieces added up to accidental confusion. Apparently concluding HN folk were bad at understanding even poorly displayed tech was not wise. Who knew? I probably should have realized that was not a good bet.
At this point I consider the apparent lack of understanding from the OP willful ignorance at best. All this seems like kind of a waste now. Oh well.
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Unless the website was recently changed (final edit: yeah... unless...), I think the problem here is a combination of the link that was submitted and uh... excessively effective design, if I want to put it nicely. You're doing too good a job of directing attention to the extension, and people are missing the actual means of using your website.
Right now the link is https://you.com/search?q=you.com&fromSearchBar=true. That page currently has a little search bar in the top UI bar which is prefilled with a search term, and the contrast that identifies it as a text input is pretty minimal. Dark Reader further hides that fact with some elements like the 'x' in the input not getting adjusted to be more visible. These aspects make it extremely easy to overlook as a text input. My first instinct is to ignore it as part of the wasted space in the top bar, and it does a poor job of standing out as anything else.
Furthermore the banner for the extension is pretty freaking huge and draws all the attention. The copy on it also pretty strongly implies you need it to use the website.
The multiple comments from other HN folk that have clearly been mislead about the importance of the extension further feeds that perception. I'm sure some people haven't even actually checked for themselves - I know I almost didn't. It also wasn't immediately obvious to me what was going on once I did visit the submitted page, and I nearly fell into the same trap.
Meanwhile https://you.com/ offers a much more familiar design that does not contain so many opportunities for confusion. I think you may have been better off submitting that.
While I'm at it, I have few other thoughts. I continually find myself expecting many of the non-ads to be ads. I keep ignoring them or even getting annoyed with them, until I remind myself I should look again. This happens on both the submitted page with the various blurbs/links down at the bottom and the search results page. My very first response to attempting a search was essentially a dismissive and annoyed eyeroll as I thought you'd tried to load up an entire screen full of ads.
I'm not entirely sure what the whole problem is. I'd guess it's partly being conditioned by other search providers about the very top 'results' and partly the overall style. Maybe grids of little boxes with so-perfectly-rounded corners and strong titles just seem like ads to me. On the submitted page, I'm sure having a bunch of company names there in the Media section doesn't help.
Again, this is just my immediate impression of the UI elements. I don't believe them to actually be ads, but I'm constantly having to fight my instincts to treat them otherwise.
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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…
Not saying you're doing this but it was the first threat scenario that came to mind and it's not even something particularly uncommon in the browser extension world.