You is a new search engine that focuses on artificial intelligence and user privacy: it wants to wage war on Google, but doesn’t yet know what it will gain
For the past couple of days there has been a new search engine on the Web, yet another one that tries to nibble away at Google’s market share, which currently has an average global “market share” of 86.64%. This engine is called “You” (www.you.com), it’s free, it’s all about privacy and a completely different approach to search than Google’s.
Also graphically You is different from Google and must be understood well in order to use it at its best. It is, therefore, an ambitious project with an approach different from that fielded by other challengers of Google, primarily Microsoft Bing and DuckDuckGo. Behind You there are Richard Socher and Bryan McCann: they are not as famous as Larry Page and Sergey Brin (the founders of Google), but the second has a great experience in artificial intelligence algorithms and deep learning: he was in fact among the authors of the Einstein system of Salesforce, one of the American giants of Cloud services for companies. In short, the good premises for a success of You are there, but the usual, big doubt remains: how will it stand economically?
How the You search engine works
After entering the words to search in You and starting the search, the results obtained are shown in a particular way: in blocks with horizontal scrolling (in practice a swipe). The first block contains the classic results from the Web, similar to those offered by Google.
The second block is always dedicated to the content present on Reddit for those search keys. Then there are the “Quick Facts”, very often fished from Wikipedia, and related searches. Depending on the type of search, then, blocks with content from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Linkedin or other social networks can appear. There is also a box with a map, in case of searches for commercial activities or public places.
Each of these blocks contains more content, which the user can scroll by swiping right or left on the cell phone or, from the desktop, by clicking on the arrows at the sides of the screen.
It is difficult to evaluate the quality of the search results, because at the moment You is focused mainly on content in English and on American platforms (except for TikTok, which is Chinese but is very popular in America).
How You Earns
Google is used by practically everyone, but practically everyone complains that the search engine collects a huge amount of personal information about the user in order to administer personalized advertising.
You claims not to administer targeted advertising to its users, has a private mode (equivalent to Google’s incognito mode) and claims not to sell its users’ data to advertisers. To be honest, You doesn’t even have an advertisement yet, but it claims that in the future it will.
But, then, what does You earn from? At the moment, from nothing: it’s totally loss-making and its creators say that in the future they will find a way to monetize the project, but that it will be respectful of users’ privacy. The priority, at the moment, is to be known and develop the project.