You.com is a Google search alternative promising better privacy — but something's a bit off

You.com is a Google search alternative promising ameliorate privacy — but something's a bit off

(Image credit: You lot.com)

Yet another new search engine, Y'all.com, has debuted on the internet promising to preserve user privacy better than large bad Google. But for a privacy-minded venture, it seems to exist kind of intrusive.

"You lot.com is sparking a motility to take back the internet and give people control of the information they consume and so they tin live more thoughtful digital lives free from manipulation," said Richard Socher, Yous.com CEO and co-founder, in an announcement today about the availability of the public beta (Nov. 9).

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"With yous.com, we're fostering a much more open up interface that people tin can contribute to — non just with likes, upvotes, and engagement — but with the co-creation of apps and content in an environment of trust, facts, and kindness."

Socher has a Stanford doctorate in informatics and until recently was working on bogus intelligence and natural-language processing for Salesforce, and Salesforce caput honcho Marc Benioff is named every bit You.com's lead investor. (The company has raised $20 one thousand thousand so far.)

The company promises that it "never sells personal information, nor does it e'er rails users around the internet," and "has committed to never offering targeted privacy-invading ads."

Name, email address and browser extension

So we were a little taken aback when we tried to utilize You.com — and were promptly told that nosotros had to install a Chrome extension offset.

Yikes! Knowing what we do near how badly Chrome extensions tin exist abused and how much data they tin can collect, we advise having every bit few extensions enabled as possible.

OK, how near "search.you lot.com"? Nope, got a 404 there. The other privacy-minded search engine that debuted in the past couple of months, Dauntless Search, lets you use it with no strings attached at "search.brave.com."

Simply information technology turns out yous can add You.com as the default search engine on about browsers, which doesn't raise whatsoever privacy red flags. (Here'south a folio with instructions for most major browsers.)

Anyhow, we took You lot.com for a spin. Searching for "fish," we got a overnice-looking filigree of results in rounded-square tiles, perfect for mobile screens. The page looks very different from the text-heavy list interface you go from most search engines. Instead, it looks like what we'd accept seen if Apple had always come up with its own search engine.

A screen grab of search results on You.com — (Image credit: Y'all.com)

Dictionary definitions led the results, followed past web-search results that were nearly identical to Bing'south results. News stories were next, followed past a Wikipedia link that got its ain row. (Google, Brave Search and the truly privacy-minded DuckDuckGo all led with Wikipedia.) We didn't see any ads.

You.com says its results are partly based on user feedback, and that you can re-rank the results you become. We tried doing then and were taken immediately to a screen that asked united states to create a Yous.com user account and provide our full name and email accost. So much for full privacy.

In fact, people searching for things online may not be You lot.com's actual clients.

Speaking to VentureBeat, Socher said that "our new platform will enable companies to contribute their about useful actual content to that start page, and — if users like information technology — they can have an action right then and there." (Thanks to Gizmodo'south Sam Rutherford for pointing us to that.)

A TechCrunch piece said that You.com plans to "concentrate on complex consumer purchases," which implies that You.com may plan to make some money through affiliate links.

However, it's non totally clear what You.com's business model is yet, and Socher wouldn't tell VentureBeat or TechCrunch what it might exist. (VentureBeat did glean that Y'all.com has most 30 employees.) Merely Benioff and a few venture-capital firms are going to expect something back for their investment.

We've reached out to Y'all.com with a few questions, and nosotros will update this story when we receive a reply.

Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom'southward Guide focused on security and privacy. He has also been a dishwasher, fry cook, long-haul driver, code monkey and video editor. He's been rooting around in the data-security space for more fifteen years at FoxNews.com, SecurityNewsDaily, TechNewsDaily and Tom's Guide, has presented talks at the ShmooCon, DerbyCon and BSides Las Vegas hacker conferences, shown upwardly in random TV news spots and even moderated a console give-and-take at the CEDIA habitation-engineering science conference. You tin can follow his rants on Twitter at @snd_wagenseil.