Happy 1st birthday to YOU!
Disclaimer: This blog post was published prior to You.com’s latest AI advancements and may not reflect our current capabilities. You.com has transformed from a search engine to an AI assistant. With a foundation in search and the team’s AI expertise, You.com was perfectly positioned to enhance LLMs with live access to the Internet to address issues around hallucinations and transparency. As such, You.com is capable of tasks ranging from searching online to writing an essay, debugging code, creating digital art, solving complex problems, and more. Learn more about getting the most out of You.com.
You.com also offers its core technology through a suite of self-serve APIs. Get complete details about the YOU API.
On a stormy day last year we launched You.com to the world. It was a scary moment — the internet was out in the Bay Area. The team spent the night at a pizza place trying to forge the storm. Nevertheless, we were abuzz with excitement and expectations for the future. It was our chance to build a new kind of search engine — one that puts you first with trust, facts, and kindness.
Today, we look back at our inspiring year, one of innovation and firsts. All we can say is what a year! We’re so grateful for all of you, our users, who helped bring this vision to life.
Keep reading for highlights from our first year as the AI Search Engine You Control.
An award winning launch
We launched to the public in November 2021 on Product Hunt, were voted the #2 product of the day and became finalists for the Golden Kitty Award in the privacy category. The celebration continued after CB Insights tagged us as one of the top AI startups in the world. In a sweet moment at the end of the year, TIME named us their Best Invention of 2022 in the apps and software category.
Brought game changing apps to search
We introduced apps to search, with over 280 custom applications built right on top of You.com. Each app adds functionality to the core search engine so that you can find summarized information or complete a task. Some are well known, like a weather forecast app. Others summarize forums allowing you to skim the most relevant content and find fast answers. We were the first to incorporate apps like Reddit and TikTok into search.
Whenever someone says Reddit is the new search, or TikTok is the new search, or ChatGPT is the new search, we are usually the first to actually incorporate those features.
Built a YOU Platform so the world can add their content to You.com
In December, we introduced YOU Platform, opening our platform to the world. This allows companies to build low-code apps to meet users on the exact intent of their search, instead of paying Google millions of dollars in ads just to appear on the search page.
Made the most cutting-edge AI easily accessible
To help our users accomplish more, we built AI-powered search apps that provide functionality never before seen inside traditional search engines and established ourselves as a disruptor of both search and science. You can write, code, and create art with YouWrite, YouCode, and YouImagine.
Then we revolutionized search with YouChat — The AI Assistant that Lives in Your Search Engine
In the wake of ChatGPT, we became the first in the world to upgrade a large language model for relevance and accuracy and incorporate it into search.
YouChat, our ChatGPT-like AI search assistant accesses the internet and knows about recent events. It also cites its sources so that you can feel confident in its answers.
Officially named the best search engine for coders
We were thrilled to see the success of YouCode, the best search engine for coders. An independent study by Surge AI found that developers search faster on You.com than on Google.
- In 72% of developer queries, YouCode results were the same or better than Google’s.
- YouCode was the same or better than Google on 90% of troubleshooting & debugging queries
- When YouCode was better than Google, users saved 58% in search time (~ 20.6 sec. saved per search!)
Unveiled a social media search engine
As sites like TikTok became to go-to search engines for younger users, we combed the web and summarized Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit to introduce the Social tab, allowing users to search across 9+ social media sites at once.
Built the most customizable mobile apps and extensions for every browser
We built extensions so you can set YOU as your default search engine on Chrome, Firefox or Microsoft Edge to enjoy best-in-class privacy, custom search results and ranking as well as faster search from the URL bar. We also released mobile apps on on Google Play and the App Store for top-notch privacy and personalization on the go. Our Android mobile browser is the most customizable on the planet. You can add widgets to your homepage to stay up-to-date with your favorite content from around the web.
Gave users control over every search
We listened to calls for more privacy on the web and developed two complementary modes of operation: private mode and personal mode. Personal mode guarantees a customizable search experience through ranked apps. With minimal amount data collection we improve the product and give you a personalized experience — we don’t share that data with anyone. Private mode is the best on the market. There’s no data collection or sharing.
Pushed the bounds of UX and UI
We used artificial intelligence and natural language processing to parse large informational repositories into concise summaries with side panels that expand to reveal the most important information for faster skimming. We designed a dark mode, functionality to let you set your preferences, region and time frame filters, and 16,000 !bang search shortcuts so you can browse to your liking.
But the absolute best part of this year? All of you — our users and our community — we can’t thank you enough for your continued love and support. Keep the feedback coming, and keep sharing You.com so we continue crushing it in year two. We hope to co-create systems that offer future generations exciting tools to push the boundaries of technology. Here’s to a tremendous 2023!
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