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p/you-comPrivate search engine that summarizes the web
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Justin Kan

You.com - Private search engine that summarizes the web

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You.com, the world's first open search engine platform that summarizes the web for users, with superior privacy choices, actionable results, extensible apps and personalization through preferred sources.

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Richard Socher
Maker
Thank you so much for the hunt and your kind words, Justin. πŸ‘‹ Hi Product Hunt! I'm excited to introduce the public beta of you.com, the world's first open search engine platform that summarizes the web, superior privacy choices, 100+ search-apps, actionable results and personalization through preferred sources. I had the original idea 8.5 years ago to create personalized web summaries. Over the years, I thought deeply about what's the most high-impact thing I can do with my skillset and energy? I believe search is the most important application of AI and especially NLP today. We want people to have agency in their information diet through personalization and customization and websites of all sizes to have a chance at being on the first page of search when their content is relevant. We also believe in world-class privacy without having to tradeoff convenience. We offer a private mode that's just one click away. No matter what mode you're in β€” private or personalized β€” we'll never sell our users' data, follow them around the web, or offer privacy-invading targeted ads. https://you.com also opens up the closed gates of previous search engines by making relevant content easily available through multiple apps. For example, try finding the most relevant content across multiple sources at once. Sources like Reddit, Quora, Stack Overflow or Medium would each need their own search query. On you.com, they are all searchable in one place with one query to allow you to explore a topic from many different angles. We also think you should be able to search less and do more. For example, if you're a developer, we think you'll like our StackOverflow and Code Complete apps that help you code faster with quick copy and paste buttons on snippets of code. Give it a try and let us know what you think. We're here to answer your questions. We're grateful for your feedback and we want to continue to build the next generation of search together. πŸ” πŸ™ Thanks again, - Richard
Gary Fung
@richardsocher I've been thinking the theme of Summarizing the Web for a long while. Wrote a launch piece for my app WonderSwipe: https://medium.com/wonderswipe/r... Tackling top of funnel directly against Google is a brave take, I wish you the best of luck!
Jayanth Murthy
@richardsocher your value premise is the truth. read every word & agree with you. may the force be in you to make a huge dent in the search space. after using you.com my memories are back to google in early 2004!
Justin Kan
Hunter
You should make you.com your default search engine. I've been using it as mine for a couple of months now. The interface is dope β€” and I think my developer friends are especially going to love it for coding. Shout out to my friend and you.com's founder Richard Socher for building the future of search. Richard is one of the most brilliant minds in AI/NLP, and he's also one of the nicest guys you'll meet β€” a rare combination. Best of luck, Richard and team!
Josh Werner
Did you you it?
Richard Socher
Maker
@villainjosh hehe. yea. we'll see how that one shakes out. might be the one disadvantage to have one of the few personal pronoun URLs on the planet.. (:
Juan Rossi
Congrats on the product, but it was almost impossible to use it without installing a Chrome extension. I think it's being too pushy. I get being aggressive to get users but it went from "This is a cool project" to "Nope, thanks". Best of luck with the project!
Richard Socher
Maker
@juanrossi Thanks for the feedback. I understand. Most extensions are super sketch. We dropped the requirement and it's now fully open. The extension only has write access for one field (search engine), no read access but there's a lot of negativity around extensions so we listened and got rid of the requirement.
Matthias Gall
@juanrossi I agree. I typed a search query into you.com, got "To see results and get the convenience of you.com, you’ll need to add the you.com Chrome extension" and thought "YOU must be kidding me". I fail to see the argument about default search engines when I am searching right from the homepage.
Dean Putney
@juanrossi @richardsocher Your first search is way too early to ask for that. Are you tracking this conversion?
Tudor Baidoc
@juanrossi agree on this, it's the reason why I closed the page directly. I first want to get a taste of it without having to install any extension.
Wilhelm Rahn
As with all product that change how things fundamentally work, it took a while to get a hang of it. I had to retrain my brain to scan the results a different way, so although it might seem frustrating at first, it's worth it πŸ’ͺ Once you get a hang of it, you can get really profficient at getting to the right result FAST. tl;dr: you'll be spending more time in the SERP, but less time opening and closing tabs 😁
Richard Socher
Maker
@wilhelmr That's right. Say good-bye to sifting through 20 different tabs :)
Yurii Yatsenko
Ok, selling my GOOG stocks
Richard Socher
Maker
@kyparus hehe <3 #dropGoogle
Ravi Vayuvegula
Super excited about You.com's search engine challenge to Google's spynet. Other search engines like DDG/Bing/Neeva either promise privacy, beautiful visuals or no-ads. But You.com entirely overhauls the "Information experience" by allowing me to define my entire experience of maintaining privacy, visualization of results and ad experience.In the future you.com is promising that it will open up it's platform which I find even more exciting as that would be equivalent to Apple creating the app economy.Only this time applied to search!
Julia La Roche
Maker
@ravi_vayuvegula Thank you so much, Ravi!
boriska
One of the best ways to lose users it to ask them to try your product and than force an absolutely unnecessary extension.
Richard Socher
Maker
@login_boriska Do you know any other way to make an easy change to make convenient searches from the navbar? We found that users won't actually give it a proper try unless they can make navbar searches? 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 you.com manually in Chrome 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? You can find more details here: https://youdotcom.notion.site/Ma...
boriska
@richardsocher there is a difference between giving an option, encouraging and requiring an extension *after* I made an effort to type the search. The latter leaves a bad taste and in my case makes me think - if they resort to tricks like that why should I ever trust them? I did the ?q= query to see what it's like and honestly I found the UX to be weird. The information density seems to me much less than Google, the results are comparable, and scrolling right???
Richard Socher
Maker
@login_boriska You might like the compact mode at the top right (button). I agree, we can improve the onboarding and conversion process. We'll iterate on that moving forward. The design and UI/UX decisions seem to be loved by many, not a big deal for most and hated by some... I think that's ok. I feel like every other search engine in the last 20y looks and feels the same. Cluttered 1d list of links. For many use cases, and after a brief adjustment period (for some), you won't wanna move back to a single list. Thanks for your feedback! :)
Richard Socher
Maker
@login_boriska Update: Hey there. The Chrome extension requirement is gone and we are fully open in all browsers now. Thanks for your feedback. Keep it coming :) <3
boriska
@richardsocher https://you.com/search?q=postgre... - top 10 result quality is comparable to Google. - Google is significantly faster. - "postgresql type h" gives useful suggestions/completions with Google, not You.com - Still don't love^H^H^H^H hate sideways scrolling, it almost physically hurts my eyes. Instead of one way scanning I have to look up and down and to the right. Hope it helps :)
Richard Socher
Maker
Update: Hey all. So happy to read all the positive comments! We listen to the criticism as well. There seemed to be only one major issue which we just resolved: The Chrome extension requirement is gone and we are fully open in all browsers now. Thanks for your feedback. Keep it coming :) <3
Margarita Shvetsova
@richardsocher Yay! You got rid of this requirement so fast - great job! I hope you'll keep polishing the product and it will become a serious competitor to Google :) Congrats on the launch and on becoming #2 Product of the day! πŸ’ͺ
Fardeen Khan
WOWOWOWOW 🀯🀯!!
Sharath Kuruganty
Stoked for the launch! Congrats Richard, Julia and team! Curious to know, what kinda growth moves you are making to onboard users? Since everyone is wired to Google or other search engines.
Richard Socher
Maker
@5harath We'll have to share those with you as we roll out. Don't want to give all our good ideas to the competition before we get a chance to test them out ourselves. You're totally right. That will be a long struggle. It's a big 2tr$ monopoly.
Erick Muller
Why is it unusable without the chrome extension? I would love to try it as my default search engine but because of this I cant. I use Vivaldi as a browser which can use chrome extensions but not this one.
Richard Socher
Maker
@mullerickins Sorry for the inconvenience. Not sure why the extension doesn't work in Vivaldi. If you set your search engine default to you.com manually in Vivaldi with "https://you.com/search?q=%s" you will not need the extension. You can see Vivaldi steps also linked for the FAQ: https://youdotcom.notion.site/FA...
Erick Muller
@richardsocher I was able to do that. However whenever I search fpr something and then decide to search for something else in the top bar of you.com I get met with a "you’ll need to add the you.com Chrome extension". This is very annoying because people who search things usually want to then modify what they searched to get a better result. And I cant do that here.
Richard Socher
Maker
@mullerickins Yea, the extension takes 5 seconds to install or uninstall. We found that the majority of users want that convenience. It's a very small extension and has no other features or functionality. It's not one of those sketchy extensions. I hate those myself.
Swetha Mandava
Maker
@mullerickins Hi Erick, thanks for your feedback. The extension requirement is gone and we are fully open in all browsers. Happy searching!
Steven Rueter
Fun features for the developer community, very smart. Beautiful and intuitive UI/UX, as well.
Richard Socher
Maker
@rueter We bring back agency to our users by giving them control over sources they prefer. In the future, we will also allow developers to submit apps to the platform. <3
Nik Burin
Wow! That's literally what I said out loud and all I did was search from my home city! Love the UI and how information is broken down by the source. Really good work! My default search engine from now on
Richard Socher
Maker
@burinnik Thanks so much. And we are just getting started. So much more to come :)
Nik Burin
@richardsocher Looking forward to it Richard! Thanks again for an amazing product! I think my only request as a user would be dark mode ;)
Pascal Weinberger
Been using it since more then 6 months now and it’s especially useful for all engineering related searches πŸ¦„ huge fan of this!
Daniel Rascon
Maker
@pascal_weinberger Thanks Pascal! We appreciate the support
Ari Bajo
I am excited about this! Being able to tell you.com which kind of content you prefer makes sense to me... Google is still showing the same search results to anyone who searches the same keyword. Search needs to be personalized!
Francesco Mosconi
Maker
Thanks for the excitement @ari_bajo_rouvinen !
Devin Pickell
Great concept @richardsocher! Is the search functionality only available via Chrome extension?
Daniel Rascon
Maker
@richardsocher @dpickell Thanks Devin! You can use You.com by making it your default. The easiest way is to install the extension but you can also do this in your browser's settings
Nice! I hope we eventually surpass Google.
Jason Xu WhatsBoxx
simple, privacy and great
James Mak
I do appreciate the visual rendition of an inverted pyramid information architecture. Very refreshing to see a SERP completely clean of ads, feels so good old days. It also feels like the few $ a month days are coming…