I think gradient on results page are distracting. You guys should do some UI review of results page. For me it's too distracting and hard to read the results. Same with the logos at bottom they steal all attention.

EDIT: Kagi beats you hard on this EDIT2: More criticism. I feel like I am reading 10 lines at once of your menu instead of results. Move it to right/top, add padding, border or something like this. Also font is like from those cheap websites that spam.

Can anyone else compare this to you.com, which is a similar concept in regards to increased privacy? I plan to sign up for Kagi tomorrow, but having used Kagi until I ran out of search on the free version, you.com seems to offer more features specifically in regards to YouChat and ability to preview certain results. It's also free for right now but wonder if they plan to go the ad-supported route in the feature, which would be a deal breaker for me over just paying a monthly plan like you do with Kagi.

>How is you.com funded?

>You.com is funded by leading venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, and Greylock Partners. We have also raised additional capital from strategic investors such as Microsoft, Salesforce, and LinkedIn. We are committed to using our resources responsibly and efficiently in order to create the best products and services for our customers.

>How does the company make money?

>You.com makes money by providing services and products to our customers. We offer a range of subscription-based services, such as our collaboration platform, our enterprise software, and our customer support solutions. We also offer premium products and services, such as our premium APIs, our analytics platform, and our custom development services. We also generate revenue through advertising on our platform, and through strategic partnerships with other companies.

>I thought you said there were no ads?

>Yes, that's correct. You.com does not use advertising as a way to generate revenue. We focus on providing our customers with the best possible experience, and we are committed to using our resources responsibly and efficiently. Our products and services are designed to be easy to use and to provide meaningful value to our customers. We strive to make our products and services secure, reliable, and accessible.

It would be great if when clicking through the link, the relevant text could be highlighted in the webpage, similar to the featured snippets in Google search. E.g. when searching "What were the causes of the swiss civil war?" Google returns:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Swiss_Confederacy#:~:text=....

Thanks Richard

Personally I’d pay for it but I’m sure monetization is far more complicated. Hopefully you will have a breakthrough app (or two).

Does that allay OPs concerns though? What happens if tracking-based ads are significantly more profitable than private ones (probably the case, based on the huge revenues of Google/Meta)? How high would the paid account fees need to be to offset the ad revenue?

What happens if you.com is very successful and goes public, so that the pressure to squeeze out as much money as possible slowly erodes the original good intention?

(I appreciate that you took the time to respond to this btw, super cool to be able to interact directly! The magic of HN.)

For now, youdotcom is my daily driver. Clean interface and no spam. Search results have gotten better over the last year. But I worry that eventually it’s gonna succumb to those sweet ad dollars like the rest. And this from FAQ does very little to allay the concern

> We are currently focused on building the best possible search experience. We will explore monetization ideas in the future, and we look forward to your feedback in that process.