Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Last week, we had carried a brief news report on You.com, a new challenger to Google.
This report looks at this new search engine in depth.
A new privacy centric, ad-free search engine, called You.com, was recently launched in public beta, & seems earnest in trying to outpace Google Search. Founders Richard Socher & Bryan McCann, former Salesforce employees, have developed an open source search facility that offers users the opportunity to browse the Web anonymously if they so choose.
You.com is built on an AI backbone that gives users a choice when it comes to search result optimization. Instead of an ad powered list of options, which would be the result of a Google search, you.com offers a scrollable, app based, result set. This means that users are presented with grouped, summarized results targeted by their search. The team at you.com believes that this approach will attract users since their results are not defined or weighted by advertising dollar-spend.
The new search engine is fully customizable with users able to select their search mode, layout their preferences in terms of apps they want to see in their result set, as well as being able to select which type of media they want to see in their results, such as video, image or audio results.
The team behind the enterprise have a wealth of experience in natural language processing & AI. Socher worked on the Einstein AI project for Salesforce, while McCann was the Lead Research Scientist. The duo’s focus is on building a unique user experience that is completely different to anything previously seen, an experience that doesn’t rely on curating user’s data & selling it to advertisers.
How Does you.com Work?
Users can choose whether to be completely anonymous on you.com, or whether they want to make a slight trade-off by revealing certain elements about their searching preferences to give you.com more data to work with in their stipulated aim of providing the most relevant search results. Tailoring search results requires a certain amount of data, but users are given explicitly explained options & can choose not to share their data if they prefer. For users who decide to opt in, you.com promises that it will never sell personal data to advertisers, even if it offers advertising space in the future.
Users who want to take advantage of you.com’s personally targeted AI search results can sign up for an account on the you.com Website using their email address. Once onboard, they can choose to make you.com as their default search engine & select the apps they prefer to see such as Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook or any others. Also, users can select shopping Websites they’d like to see catalogs from.
The search engine can also be set to “safe mode”, if users choose this option, making the results safe for children. You also offer two facilities aimed at educating potential users & answering any questions they might have – a FAQ, & a Slack Channel.
All in all, it will be interesting to follow this innovative initiative & watch how it develops against its giant competitor, Google.
Image credit: you.com
