[HN Gopher] Show HN: A search engine for your personal network o...
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       Show HN: A search engine for your personal network of high-quality
       websites
        
       Hey all,  Last time when we were on HackerNews [1], we received a
       lot of feedback, and we incorporated most of it.  - We have changed
       our name from grep.help to usegrasp.com  - A privacy policy page  -
       Bulk import  - Pricing page  We are happy to introduce a new
       feature: a personalized answer search engine that provides direct
       citations to the content on the page.  Demo:
       https://usegrasp.com/search?q=is+starship+fully+reusable%3F  1 -
       https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35510949
        
       Author : vignesh_warar
       Score  : 224 points
       Date   : 2023-05-05 08:04 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (usegrasp.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (usegrasp.com)
        
       | airstrike wrote:
       | Minor nit but I can't help notice it: the logo doesn't really
       | match the product. Typography choices evoke certain feelings and
       | attributes. Your choice to me says "women's* beauty / personal
       | hygiene", not "find whatever you want at your fingertips"
       | 
       | Short of hiring a designer (and also for fun), may I suggest
       | watching the Helvetica film? https://vimeo.com/570441741
        
         | marginalia_nu wrote:
         | Make sure to avoid The Helvetica Scenario though.
        
         | elicash wrote:
         | I think you're referring largely to women's beauty/fashion
         | products, not mens; I haven't noticed this type of logo with
         | the products I use or on clothes I buy. And to whatever degree
         | the logo might be feminine, I certainly don't think that's a
         | bad thing.
         | 
         | People should push the envelope and not just do the same thing
         | as everybody else! (Obviously do so with intent, but I wouldn't
         | assume there wasn't any.)
        
         | leroy-is-here wrote:
         | I looked at the logo to see what kind of non-sense you were
         | talking about, but you are absolutely correct. That logo really
         | does belong on a shampoo bottle.
        
           | alexvoda wrote:
           | And people wonder why all logos today are boring.
           | 
           | Of course they are boring if reification has become the norm.
           | 
           | Maybe just because something is cursive and italicized does
           | not mean that it is automatically feminine.
        
             | leroy-is-here wrote:
             | I sign my name in cursive and do not think of it as
             | feminine.
        
             | airstrike wrote:
             | > "all logos today are boring"
             | 
             | That's an overstatement. Many logos are boring, but
             | certainly not all
             | 
             | I'm not suggesting a boring logo. I'm suggesting a good one
             | that matches the feeling of "grasping"
        
       | aflag wrote:
       | I think the top element with the LLM response is a bit
       | distracting, since it takes so much longer to load than
       | everything else. I think it'd be nicer if it was on a side panel
       | or, at least, that the block allocated to it was fixed and the
       | results didn't keep jumping around as the output for that is
       | generated. Also, it seems odd that sometimes the citation numbers
       | don't start at 1 (as you can see if you search for "vscodium
       | marketplace")
       | 
       | Finally, just brutally honest feedback. I found the concept
       | interesting and I would actually take it for a spin. However, you
       | can only make a few queries before it asks you to sign up. I
       | didn't find it that interesting to actually sign up just yet. So,
       | I'll probably never truly try it out.
        
         | vignesh_warar wrote:
         | Thanks for your feedback. The LLM part is a bit buggy since I
         | rushed its release. Currently, I am rewriting the entire LLM
         | section to ensure that it is both fast and reliable.
         | 
         | May I ask how many queries you would like before signing up?
        
           | aflag wrote:
           | I'm not sure if the number of queries is easy to measure. My
           | experience is as follows:
           | 
           | I found out about it and decided to make some queries. I was
           | trying to understand what it's good at and what it is not. I
           | think I tried the same query a few times and small variations
           | of it. I was trying to figure out when citations would start
           | at 1 and when it wouldn't when it stopped working. I had
           | already made a more generic query and I was trying to think
           | some queries that would be probably answered by hackernews
           | stuff. I would probably play around with a little more today,
           | so even for that exploration the number of queries were too
           | little. It even surprises me the limit is 20, I thought I
           | made less than that.
           | 
           | Anyway, after I knew what it was good at and what it was not.
           | I was planning on just keeping it in the back of my mind
           | throughout the next days, specially when I go back to work
           | (I'm on holidays now) and I thought I'd try it out whenever I
           | had a natural query that I wanted to search for. That would
           | be the true test in my mind.
           | 
           | In my mind, an unlimited 30-day free trial would probably be
           | what makes most sense for that sort of thing. I do realise
           | you'll probably want the user to sign in to offer that.
           | Which, I might, reluctantly, do if the site actually offered
           | me that option, but I didn't get the impression that I'd get
           | anything like that. Signing up is a bit annoying because then
           | I'll have to sign in from work as well, which I never really
           | like to do, but I don't have a better way to offer a 30-day
           | trial anyway. Alternatively, if you limited to 5 queries a
           | day instead of a month it would already be a better
           | proposition, because at least I'd be able to try it again
           | tomorrow or when I get back to work. As it currently stands,
           | I can only try it again in a month. I'll surely have
           | forgotten about this by then.
           | 
           | Edit: actually just realised that not even $15/month gives
           | you unlimited queries. 26 per day seems a bit on the short
           | side of things. For the same reasons above, I think
           | refreshing the queries daily or at least weekly makes more
           | sense. I'd hate to run out of queries at the end of the
           | month. Or maybe just have a price per query and charge based
           | on that while allowing the user to set a limit. I suppose at
           | the moment the price is $0.01875 per query. But you are
           | required to bulk buy 800
        
           | nicenewtemp84 wrote:
           | Instead of just asking one person for their answer, you could
           | randomize how many quarries people are allowed, and then see
           | which one converts best.
        
             | aflag wrote:
             | Yeah, I should add a disclaimer that I'm just one user
             | who's never been a product manager or anything of the sort.
             | All my opinions may be completely rubbish. But I share them
             | anyways because they may help someone.
        
               | nicenewtemp84 wrote:
               | Jesus.
        
       | xpe wrote:
       | This search engine charges beyond the free tier. I'm glad.
       | 
       | Why? An observation. As a consumer, if I pay nothing, then I'm
       | likely to undervalue a service. When I undervalue it, I'm likely
       | to use it less mindfully. Ergo, for more frivolous and
       | unimportant things. This is exactly what some advertisers want:
       | your attention without conscious intention. This is where
       | emotions overrule rationality and open the doors to unnecessary
       | spending.
        
       | gumballindie wrote:
       | A cool idea, but what I don't understand is why are many
       | alternative search engines so poorly designed? I may be too used
       | to google but I think the text should be a bit more readable. But
       | I really like this type of search engines - always wanted search
       | capability among my bookmarks and related websites. Perhaps even
       | a bit of ai fine tuning around them.
        
       | Brajeshwar wrote:
       | May be it is just me and I'm sure you have put in good effort to
       | justify the pricing. However, that $10+ makes me think, "Do I
       | really need this? I can stay without this and am I missing
       | anything, perhaps from gaining something outsized?"
       | 
       | If this was like $4.99 /mo with an annual of $49.99, I might have
       | just done it; even if I may not use immediately but to support
       | someone starting out.
       | 
       | Or alternatively, a $9.99 /mo ($99.99 annual) would still be
       | something within a budget that I'm not over-thinking.
       | 
       | My thoughts.
        
         | bachmeier wrote:
         | The pricing page shows me $15/month for 800 searches. There's
         | no way that pricing is going to work. Even setting aside the
         | issue of getting people to pay that much, who is going to track
         | their number of searches to make sure they don't go over the
         | limit? And nobody that does 10 searches a day - which is about
         | the limit if you don't want to think about this - is going to
         | pay for a search engine.
        
           | chankstein38 wrote:
           | This. I opened the pricing page and saw the 2 tiers and
           | immediately closed it when $15/mo wouldn't get me unlimited.
           | I'm not tracking search counts, I have no idea how frequently
           | or how much I search, and ultimately I don't need an extra
           | decision of "is this worth $0.018 to search for?" when I want
           | to search for something. The concept sounds interesting but
           | I'm not so confident in it being that much better that I'd
           | accept that cost decision every time I search.
           | 
           | Unlimited would be different. $15/mo to search as much as I
           | want, it's still insanely steep since I can get so much more
           | for so much less on the internet but at least I wouldn't have
           | to accept a per search cost decision.
        
         | vignesh_warar wrote:
         | Agreed. There is room for different plans, but we want some
         | search metric to define the pricing.
         | 
         | On a side note, I truly did not want to put up a paywall. But,
         | it is necessary to support our servers.
        
           | xpe wrote:
           | Don't feel bad for seeking revenue from your _customers_.
           | This is the correct incentive. Find pricing models that work.
        
           | jvanderbot wrote:
           | I find it hard to believe that I, a casual, occasional
           | googler, would demand $10/m of server time.
        
             | ravenstine wrote:
             | Not everyone's search needs are the same. I gladly pay for
             | Kagi every month, despite how at least 80% of people would
             | never consider paying for whatever The Google already gives
             | them. If you're fine with ads and limited control over your
             | search results, then use The Google.
             | 
             | Also, there's more to providing a service than just server
             | time.
        
               | bachmeier wrote:
               | > Also, there's more to providing a service than just
               | server time.
               | 
               | Exactly. So what's the point of limiting the number of
               | searches to 800? The target market is those that rely
               | heavily on search engines, and they're telling them they
               | don't want their business.
        
         | groby_b wrote:
         | As far as I'm concerned: Charge whatever you need to charge to
         | be profitable. This can _only_ work if it 's self-sustaining
         | without external influence. A good compromise might be to offer
         | a psychologically attractive price point for less searches, and
         | a slightly higher one for more searches at a round number - 800
         | is the weirdest number :)
        
         | ysavir wrote:
         | Agreed. Pricing needs improvement. Not just in the bang-for-
         | your-buck sense, but the per-search model. Right now I have the
         | following questions:
         | 
         | 1. What counts as a search? If I go to page 2 of search
         | results, does that use up another search?
         | 
         | 2. If I have to refine my search to get the results I actually
         | want, can I get a refund for all the searches I made that
         | didn't predict how the query would be interpreted?
         | 
         | 3. What happens when I meet the limit? Am I charged per-search?
         | Can I just no longer search?
         | 
         | 4. If I meet the limit and then go to DDG, or Google or
         | whatever, are you okay with that? What if the results there are
         | good enough that I start wondering whether or not I want to pay
         | $15/month for a search engine? How much is retaining a paying
         | customer worth to you?
         | 
         | 5. If I have to start counting my search numbers, I'm very
         | quickly going to learn to search less. And the better I get at
         | searching less, the less need I'll have for a search engine,
         | let alone a paid service. Are you worried about your pricing
         | model pushing people towards non-search engine solutions of
         | exploring the web and/or finding web pages?
        
       | passion__desire wrote:
       | Why isn't there a search engine specifically for e-commerce
       | websites?
       | 
       | Generally what I do is I search for X on google. Google throws up
       | some shitty suggestions. I go on to those websites to checkout
       | their products. Facebook comes to know about my intent of buying
       | X since they have their sdk integration with these websites. When
       | I open instagram, facebook starts suggesting X selling websites
       | to me. I check out those and buy X from there.
       | 
       | I have observed this effect 3 times personally.
       | 
       | Infact such a search engine will optimize towards a better buying
       | experience. Reviews, best things to look for when buying X, price
       | sensitivity, whether X can be delivered to your area, etc.
        
         | andrepd wrote:
         | There are price comparison websites, high-quality reviews
         | (rtings, notebookcheck, maybe wirecutter), deals sharing
         | websites (pepper et al).
        
         | haidrali wrote:
         | I am working on building e-commerce search engine
         | https://itemfinder.ae/.
         | 
         | Would be great If you can share you feedback and suggestions
        
         | visarga wrote:
         | Because Google didn't have enough time in 25 years to fix that.
         | Or they make more money on ads than straight referrals.
        
           | passion__desire wrote:
           | Is there a way to tell facebook, I am looking for X? Because
           | facebook suggestions are much better than plain google.
        
         | marginalia_nu wrote:
         | The market for discovery in general is really under served
         | almost across all areas.
         | 
         | Magazines and to some extent brick and mortar stores used to
         | serve the product discovery market but right now it's so hard
         | to find a product that fits your needs.
         | 
         | So much bait-and-switch nonsense and straight up scams.
         | 
         | Doesn't help that many e-commerce sites are such a pain in the
         | ass to use. 45 second page loads with an additional 15 seconds
         | of random layout shifts is comparatively good. Product listings
         | that show like 6 items per screen, in a random order with
         | useless and truncated descriptions and no useful search
         | function.
         | 
         | I don't understand how they're getting any sales at all.
        
         | pavlov wrote:
         | Amazon is that for most people.
        
           | passion__desire wrote:
           | For cakes?
        
         | hiisukun wrote:
         | I haven't used it for a while, but there is a website called
         | 'staticice' that appears to still be an e-commerce
         | price/product search engine. I'm not sure how it works, maybe
         | the sites sign up, or provide prices, or staticice scrapes.
         | It's mostly for gadgets and computer parts but has worked well
         | enough a few times.
         | 
         | Similar to pcpartpicker but much less 'utility', just pure
         | search for model w/ price.
         | 
         | I wonder how one would discover websites like this currently
         | though -- it's certainly not in google's interest to make the
         | top result infobox something like "Didn't find what you are
         | looking for? Try searching using this other site:
         | goodcommercesearch.net" !
        
         | ricardo81 wrote:
         | There sort of is, at least in Europe with Google's CSS
         | providers. IIRC there's a few dozen aggregators and aggregators
         | must have at least 50 merchants in order to be a CSS partner.
         | The products are shown as a carousel and can undercut Google by
         | 20% due to tax/competition reasons. I'm not fluent on the
         | underlying reasons- the results are also on Google shopping.
        
       | ghastmaster wrote:
       | There is a grammatical error on this page:
       | https://usegrasp.com/how
       | 
       | > We will more social features in the future.
       | 
       | This should have some verb after "will".
        
       | ThinkBeat wrote:
       | You can do this with Kagi and "Lenses". Lenses lets you define a
       | set of websites you want results from.
        
       | avinassh wrote:
       | hey I just want to let you know that you need to update title and
       | meta properties too. Whenever the link is shared on social media,
       | it still says grep                   <!DOCTYPE
       | html><html><head><meta charSet="utf-8"/><title>Grasp | New kind
       | of search engine</title>         <meta name="title" content="Grep
       | | New kind of search engine"/><meta name="description"
       | content="Search engine for your personalized network of high-
       | quality websites"/>...
        
         | vignesh_warar wrote:
         | Thanks, updated.
        
       | darkwater wrote:
       | Oh, TBH I was expecting some kind of opensource, local-first
       | scraper + search engine where you put a list of websites/info
       | source "bubble" and it will scrape them over time and present
       | them to you locally.
        
         | cdnsteve wrote:
         | Yes, except we want a shared resource for an index so we aren't
         | all crawling sites in excess.
         | 
         | Eg, here's the latest central or distributed DB, the site in
         | your personal list is on it so we don't need to send the
         | crawler there because it has already been indexed and is
         | crawled by someone else.
        
       | smcleod wrote:
       | The quality of the results seems really poor compared to Kagi. It
       | seems to favour commercial / privately owned product sites over
       | community information etc...
        
         | vignesh_warar wrote:
         | Hey, could you please link the search results page? I'd be
         | happy to take a look and remove any commercialized sites from
         | the network. The best part about this idea is that if there's a
         | low-quality site, we can block the previous node, which will
         | block all the other sites it was linking to. If a site is
         | linking to a poor-quality site, there's a chance they might
         | link to other poor-quality websites. You might ask whether this
         | will also remove good sites from your network, but a good site
         | will always find a way to enter the network.
         | 
         | The blocking feature has not been shipped yet.
        
           | smcleod wrote:
           | So I search for something I would have expected the top
           | results to be discussions, blog posts etc... (controversial
           | on purpose) https://usegrasp.com/search?q=Why+is+terraform+be
           | tter+than+C...
           | 
           | Kagi (which I replaced google and ddg with over a year ago
           | and have been really impressed with) provides far more useful
           | / interesting results - https://file.io/umsdbo2JcEfg
           | 
           | Obviously it's all subjective etc... but yeah - hope that
           | helps from my little sample size of 1.
        
             | vignesh_warar wrote:
             | Thanks!
             | 
             | I found one annoyingly low-quality site in the Grasp search
             | results, which came from https://www.protocol.com (a news
             | website). By default, outgoing links from news websites are
             | not considered while building the network, as they will
             | bring more junk. I maintain a list of UGC sites and news
             | websites to ignore.
             | 
             | I will add https://www.protocol.com to the network building
             | block list.
             | 
             | BTW, the link you shared https://file.io/umsdbo2JcEfg
             | appears to be deleted.
        
               | smcleod wrote:
               | Oh sorry, I just used a random site - try this one
               | https://ufile.io/aqxi8c4k
               | 
               | (PDF print of Kagi search results)
        
               | freediver wrote:
               | You can share Kagi search results by More -> Share this
               | search
               | 
               | It looks like this
               | 
               | https://kagi.com/search?q=Why+is+terraform+better+than+CD
               | K&r...
        
               | smcleod wrote:
               | TIL! Thank you for the tip!
        
       | neuah wrote:
       | This looks really cool! It could be useful to be able to
       | whitelist some sites without the 4 degree connection. For
       | example, if i wanted to include large networks like reddit,
       | github, stack overflow,etc. in my search results, 4 degrees may
       | start to bring in a lot of junk/undesirable stuff into the index.
       | Also love the idea of being able to follow or search within
       | curated lists made by other users.
        
         | vignesh_warar wrote:
         | As of right now, the Grasp Network builder won't consider
         | outgoing links from UGC (User-generated content) websites such
         | as Reddit, Twitter, etc. as it would bring in junk, as you
         | mentioned. I am maintaining a full list of UGC sites.
        
       | visarga wrote:
       | For me it does the search but hangs forever on the LLM.
        
         | vignesh_warar wrote:
         | LLM part is currently under load. I am currently doing a full
         | rewrite for it, which will improve its speed and reliability.
        
       | timwaagh wrote:
       | What i do not understand is how it works. I had not followed
       | anything yet it gave me a result. But the search results seem to
       | be allright. It even had recipes for andijviestamppot.
        
         | vignesh_warar wrote:
         | By default, Grasp uses the HackerNews network, which is built
         | from the top sites from HackerNews.
         | 
         | Here is a page about how it works: https://usegrasp.com/how
        
           | sundarurfriend wrote:
           | Right now, your homepage makes no mention of us following
           | websites, just a search box. It's also easy to miss or not
           | understand the "The network is built on top websites on
           | Hacker News" message in the results page, so people might not
           | understand that it's just the default and is customizable.
           | 
           | Your HN text above in the post does a good job of clarifying
           | things, but I think some more messaging is needed in the
           | website itself to make its potential clear. (Not many people
           | are going to bother checking "How it works" by themselves.)
           | 
           | I'd suggest in the homepage, below "Grasp is a search engine
           | for your personal network of high-quality websites.", have a
           | "create your personal network" link (that could take you to
           | the sign up page or wherever appropriate). And in the results
           | page for the default network, have an info box at the top
           | mentioning that this is just the default network, and the
           | user can customize it, along with a to the "How it works"
           | page.
        
       | marban wrote:
       | https://biztoc.com/search -- Top ~300 US business news sites
       | only.
        
       | stringlytyped wrote:
       | This looks like an amazing tool. I've always thought it would be
       | great if I could curate my own search index. And the way results
       | are summarized with citations is really cool.
       | 
       | However, I am not sure the free plan is generous enough to
       | properly evaluate the search engine and see if I can incorporate
       | it into my workflow. And the pricing feels steep. I would have a
       | look at Kagi's pricing model.
        
         | viraptor wrote:
         | > I've always thought it would be great if I could curate my
         | own search index.
         | 
         | You can... kinda. YaCy is pretty much dying as a project and
         | network. But it still works if you want to have your own
         | independent search. It's great for indexing specific endpoints
         | you care about + N degrees of links. (Like your list of RSS,
         | browser history, etc.)
        
       | chaxor wrote:
       | Wow, if 4 degrees out doesn't give 70k nodes it's extended to 7
       | degrees out? I figured almost any website would yield a near
       | complete graph at just ~6 degrees out.
       | 
       | This is a fantastic idea though. I have been looking for
       | something like this for quite some time to just have basically
       | wikipedia, stackexchange, email, and gitlab available for 'work-
       | mode'. My solution was to make my own search engine with various
       | tools, but this may be easier.
       | 
       | Anyone know of other good solutions in this area for restricting
       | to just {wikipedia, stackexchange, gitlab}?
        
         | freediver wrote:
         | > Anyone know of other good solutions in this area for
         | restricting to just {wikipedia, stackexchange, gitlab}?
         | 
         | Kagi Search lenses:
         | 
         | https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/lenses.html
        
         | ColinHayhurst wrote:
         | Excuse the self-promotion but this can be done with Mojeek
         | Focus [0]. This capability is also available through our search
         | engine API.
         | 
         | [0] https://www.mojeek.com/focus/
        
         | vignesh_warar wrote:
         | I'm not aware of any other products, but I think the Bing
         | Custom Search API might be able to solve your problem.
         | 
         | https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/apis/bing-custom-search...
        
         | sundarurfriend wrote:
         | I've recently been getting into Brave Goggles, and they have a
         | `discard` feature so any site you don't explicitly mention get
         | discarded from the results. For eg., see
         | https://github.com/brave/goggles-quickstart/blob/main/goggle...
         | 
         | They use 1000 domains from Hacker News posts and do ranking and
         | all that, but for your purpose, you can just have
         | $discard         $boost,site=wikipedia.org
         | $boost,site=stackexchange.com         $boost,site=gitlab.com
        
           | chaxor wrote:
           | Thanks, this is really cool. I found one from
           | gist.github.com/JellyWX/ called jude.goggles that is
           | basically already that.
        
           | alxjsn wrote:
           | Created a Goggle based on submissions from /r/netsec as well:
           | https://github.com/forcesunseen/netsec-goggle
        
       | chinchilla2020 wrote:
       | This is great. Google is no longer a useful search site.
       | 
       | Examples: * too much emphasis on awful video spam * SEO and spam
       | has floated to the top * imprecision in search
       | 
       | I recently searched for some simple instructions for jumping a
       | car battery, and it was hard to find a decent website.
       | 
       | Try searching for a simple recipe for cookies on google and you
       | will get directed to the most awful blogs where the information
       | you are searching for is hard to find.
       | 
       | There should be a ranking bonus for simplistic sites. A massive
       | bonus for simple explanations given on a forum or
       | stackoverflow... organic content that is useful and not
       | regurgitated into a blog.
        
       | anenefan wrote:
       | Do I have to relax my OS security for it to get data from the
       | local machine or using a new version of linux ... since I got
       | nothing for each query?
        
         | vignesh_warar wrote:
         | Could you please share the specific error message you are
         | facing, perhaps from the console?
        
           | anenefan wrote:
           | Page loads fine. Hit return, something obvious happens and
           | then it's back to the original state. I've got a lot of nosey
           | web stuff denied though, just days ago nabbed a supposedly AI
           | powered web tracker.
           | 
           | I guess I'll try a live boot as it's working for everyone
           | else.
        
       | xpe wrote:
       | Let's help suggest pricing models that are worth testing.
       | 
       | ... Not simply the minimum we as individuals would pay...
       | 
       | but something to help improve chances of success increase
       | innovation and competition in this space. As a former creator of
       | a search engine, I'm glad to see this.
        
         | xpe wrote:
         | To think about pricing, it helps to think about:
         | 
         | 1. How much signal do you get from pricing? For example, how
         | much customer commitment do certain price points bring? How
         | much does _real world_ usage help? Strike a balance.
         | 
         | 2. You want to attract early adopters. What pricing models are
         | worth trying? How important is offsetting costs right now? Is
         | traction and adoption more important, and if so, how much more?
         | What metrics can help measure how to balance these goals?
         | 
         | 3. How can you handle the scenario where you are lucky enough
         | to get a lot of interest? How do last long enough to test your
         | business without going bust? Your pricing model should be
         | driven by these scenarios and your risk preference.
         | 
         | 4. Leave yourself ways to adjust pricing without pissing people
         | off. So if your initial pricing is tentative, be clear on that.
         | Or let people lock in a monthly rate now in case it goes up
         | later.
         | 
         | 5. Create an internal quantitative model that predicts your
         | expenses across some likely future scenarios. Tie your pricing
         | model to some multiple of that. This can double as smart
         | business planning to think about risk and what it takes to
         | reach your goals.
         | 
         | 6. Consider adjusting pricing based on how intensively someone
         | uses your service, not simply based on search quantity, but
         | your end-to-end cost. Recall that Twitter's infrastructure
         | costs are _dramatically_ driven by a relatively small number of
         | users with high fan out. What aspects of your offering are the
         | most expensive? How can you mitigate these costs? How can you
         | map these pricing differences to features that customers care
         | about?
         | 
         | (Last edits: 12:31 pm EDT)
         | 
         | P.S. I created a search engine that never took off about 10
         | years ago. These questions would have helped me.
        
           | kjreact wrote:
           | I'm too used to getting search for free, so asking me to pay
           | for this service is something that I'm very reluctant to do
           | even though I understand that there's no such thing as a free
           | lunch.
           | 
           | What I'm willing to contribute is my computing resources. If
           | a search service wanted to use my machine for web crawling
           | that would be something I'm willing to trade for an improved
           | search experience.
           | 
           | I'm not sure how feasible this option is because it doesn't
           | pay salaries or cover server costs, but it does help
           | alleviate some of the computing costs, I'd assume.
        
         | xpe wrote:
         | Another thread a with pricing ideas :
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35827254 : "$4.99/mo with
         | an annual of $49.99" or "$9.99 /mo ($99.99 annual)"
        
           | vignesh_warar wrote:
           | Thank you so much!
        
       | goy wrote:
       | What do you think about a feature that allows users to follow
       | each other ? The websites followed by one user can be
       | automatically included in the search results of his followers. It
       | will enable people to include in their networks the websites
       | followed, for example, by authorities in their domain, members of
       | their communities, etc
        
         | vignesh_warar wrote:
         | Yes, this is going to be our next feature. In fact, this is the
         | exact idea that I prototyped a couple of months ago using
         | Twitter data, but we are completely off from Twitter now [1].
         | 
         | 1 -
         | https://twitter.com/Vignesh_warar/status/1573020208289132545
        
           | groby_b wrote:
           | When you implement that, an important thing to keep in mind
           | is that "people" are usually a mix of interests. (E.g. if you
           | followed me, you'd get a large helping of browser tech,
           | photography, 3D printing, human rights work, and fashion).
           | 
           | It might be a better idea to allow people to curate search
           | lists by interests and share those focused lists.
           | 
           | People are more interesting in the sense of "of your six
           | closest friends, 5 vouched for this site" when a site/search
           | result pops up.
        
           | ysavir wrote:
           | That is awesome! I've had the idea for the past few years of
           | making a social search engine, where the only results are
           | pages tagged by people in your "friends" list and several
           | degrees outwards from that.
           | 
           | I never had any interest in actually building the idea, so
           | it's amazing to see something similar hit the market.
        
       | killthebuddha wrote:
       | ChatGPT plugins aren't out of beta yet, but this is 100% going to
       | be eaten by one.
       | 
       | Edit: I guess that's not a super productive comment. I commend
       | the authors for building and shipping something useful, I would
       | personally use something like this.
        
         | savrajsingh wrote:
         | That's what they said about Dropbox and google drive --
         | amazingly both still exist.
        
       | pkoird wrote:
       | How wonderful itd be if we could _subscribe_ to the network of
       | our friends  / colleagues as well?
        
         | vignesh_warar wrote:
         | Yes, absolutely, it will be our next feature!
         | 
         | Link to my related comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?i
         | d=35826540#:~:text=Yes%2C....
        
       | marginalia_nu wrote:
       | Cool. We definitely need fresh takes on search.
       | 
       | I think historically too many have been attempting to copy
       | Google. It was a bad idea when they were great, and it's a worse
       | idea when they're floundering. An imitation very rarely exceeds
       | what it imitates. Is why after untold amounts of Microsoft R&D
       | money Bing is still google-but-kinda-worse.
        
         | vignesh_warar wrote:
         | Thanks!
         | 
         | I still remember the day I saw your project on HN [1]. Your
         | work encouraged me to start exploring my search engine ideas. I
         | can't believe you are commenting on my work.
         | 
         | 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28550764
        
           | marginalia_nu wrote:
           | Great!
           | 
           | Big part of why I've been working so openly on my project is
           | to inspire and to let others see that there's actually still
           | things to be done in this space, and despite what one might
           | assume, impactful things can be accomplished with a
           | relatively modest budget.
        
       | dvh wrote:
       | Can this index entirety of stackoverflow and Wikipedia? How does
       | it keep it in sync with recent updates?
        
         | vignesh_warar wrote:
         | Yes, the search results are a combination of our own index and
         | a third-party index, but our future goal is to be fully
         | dependent on our own index.
        
       | abhayhegde wrote:
       | Nice site! Gave me useful suggestions which Google could not come
       | up with.
       | 
       | A suggestion is to change the logo. Currently, it does not make a
       | lasting impression since it is in cursive. Seems like a fashion
       | brand rather than a tech product. I understand there is no need
       | to stereotype (probably this is the one to break them), but even
       | then fashionable alternatives could be tried out.
        
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       (page generated 2023-05-05 23:00 UTC)