You.com, an AI-based search engine now has hundreds of thousands of unique users

There's a growing appetite for alternative search engines. Developing a complete search engine framework integrated with AI is really really hard. "You" search engine that uses AI to understand search queries, rank the results and parse the queries into different languages including programming languages. At least, that's the crux of the argument Richard Socher, the former chief scientist at Salesforce, likes to make.

You.com is a privacy-focused search engine that summarizes web results using website categories, contrary to a traditional search engine that shows a list of links. The search engine was founded by former Salesforce employees and opened its public beta. Google and other search engines rely on complex AI to determine how content gets ranked. The algorithms used by these AI systems have many rules that prioritize different factors, from the types of keywords in your content to your site's user experience. AI has been a trending topic in the search engine optimization industry.

You.com search engines stepping over Google:

You.com isn't optimized for answering basic questions the way Google is, especially for queries that require guessing what people want instead of what they literally type. Too often large AI models try to manipulate users into spending more time on a platform and eventually clicking on ads. Socher believes in apps not ads for search. Socher wants to give people control over the AI that influences their information diet.

 According to the soccer search, the platform lets you select your preferred sources and apps such as StackOverflow, Reddit, AI code completion, TikTok, Twitter, + 150 more On http://you.com/apps. You can see the most popular ones in different categories. And You.com is generally worse at guiding your eye to the most relevant information. It will deliver links to lists while Google will give you a grid of movie stars. It doesn't include little features like offering answers in the search bar.

It has closed a $25 million funding round led by Radical Ventures. You have built up an installed base of several hundred thousand users. Its search engine jumped 70% in June. Users are running 30% more unique searches than they did last month and 50% of users who set the platform as their default search continue to use it afterward. You are the latest in a series of search startups to have raised funding over the last few months. Additionally, it plans to enable third-party developers to build custom applications on its search engine.

Socher said that the search engine now has hundreds of thousands of unique users, which pales in comparison to Google's 4.3 billion, but is still impressive for a relatively new challenger. He also highlighted You's impressive user retention rate, with half of all users who set the platform as their default search engine keeping it that way.

Investors, at least, seem convinced as the search engine has just closed a funding round of $25m. It also intends to make it possible for outside developers to create original applications for its search engine.