You.com is a personalization-focusedsearch engine. It allows its users to upvote, downvote, or block results.[1] You.com provides additional products, including a chatbot called YouChat,[2] an AI writing tool called YouWrite,[3] and an AI-image generator called YouImagine, which utilizes AI models Stable Diffusion and OpenJourney.
The company was founded in 2020 by Richard Socher,[4][5] the former Chief Scientist at Salesforce, and Bryan McCann,[6][7][8] a former Lead Research Scientist in NLP at Salesforce. In a 2021 interview, Socher stated that the aim of You.com was to create a search engine with a balance of privacy and personalization.[9]
In 2022, You.com surpassed one million active users,[10] and the number of searches grew by over 400% in six months.[11]
History
Following its 2020 founding, You.com opened its public beta on November 9, 2021,[12] and received $20 million in funding from Salesforce founder Marc Benioff.[13][14]
In March 2022, the company launched YouWrite, a GPT-3 text generator for writing e-mails and other documents.[15][16]
Later that year, You.com surpassed one million active users,[10] and the number of searches grew by over 400% in six months.[11]
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You.com gets its search engine results from Microsoft Bing, though it does have its own crawler, known as YouBot.[17][18][19]
Users have the ability to positively or negatively influence[20] future rankings by giving thumbs-up or thumbs-down signals,[21][10] and can also block results from appearing in altogether.
Features
YouChat
YouChat[22] is a You.com-integrated chatbot based primarily on the GPT-3.5large language model. It has the ability to answer questions, suggest ideas,[23] translate text,[24] summarize articles, compose emails[22] and write code snippets. It is able to stay up-to-date with current events[25] and cite its sources. It was released on December 23, 2022.
Several further versions of YouChat have been released. The second version, called YouChat 2.0, was released on February 7, 2023,[26][27] incorporates improved conversational AI[28] and community-built applications by blending a large language model named C-A-L (Chat, Apps, and Links)[28][22] to provide results such as charts,[29] photos,[2] videos, tables, graphs, text or code, so users can find answers without leaving the search results page. A third release, YouChat 3.0 was unveiled on May 4, 2023.[30][31]
YouWrite[34] is an AI writing tool[35] that aims to help writers,[27] authors, and bloggers overcome writer's block and improve their skills. It can provide assistance with the creation various types of written content[35] including emails, blog posts, novels, essays and social media posts. It uses OpenAI'sGPT-3[36] to generate content for users based on information[37] such as text type, target audience and desired tone, provided by users in text prompts. Users can provide up to 10 prompts a day with the free version of YouWrite.
YouCode[42] is a programming knowledge base, similar to resources like Stack Overflow and GitHub, among others. It was released on July 14, 2022.[43] It aims at helping programmers to find solutions to issues.[29] YouCode has a search bar that uses natural language processing, AI code generation tools,[44] code samples, and a collection of relevant resources. It allows developers to search for code snippets[43][45] and access relevant documentation,[46] and academic publications.[43] There are several built-in developer-specific tools, such as a code editor and a debugging console,[22] tools to verify JSON files,[42][45] and to generate color codes in various formats like HEX, RGB, and HSV.[36]
Platform
The You.com open-search platform[11] allow others to[43] create custom applications[10] called "Search Apps"[11] for the search results page, allowing users to customize their search experience. These allow users to find summarized information or complete tasks without leaving the results page. The platform has a system allowing developers to gain revenue.[47] You.com currently offers more than 200 first-party apps.[32][40]
Reception
You.com has received generally positive reviews, with the main criticism being the way it organizes information, which has been described as overwhelming by The Verge.[12]
