Autocomplete your life with Greplin (YC W10) | Hacker News Reader

Autocomplete your life with Greplin (YC W10)

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195 pointsdanicgross89 comments

Why should I trust these guys with my data? It's bad enough that Google knows so much about me... but at least they have some checks and balances built in. What sort of safety does "greplin" have to offer adopters?

If you get uncomfortable, you can delete your account at any time. We'll delete your data. Not in 14 days, a week or tomorrow. That moment. We're convinced that you'll find enough value with Greplin to overcome that issue - the same way many did with mint.com.

We're also working with a) encrypted indexes b) only writing the index to disk rather then any content. this shuts down a lot of neat features (generating snippets etc.) - but users that are willing to forgo features for added security might find it useful.

So you don't have any backups then? (And I mean actual backups - replication is not a backup)

Hmm, could they use on-the-fly encryption/decryption? That is, use a symmetric cipher to encrypt the stored data on the servers and then do a simple backup of the data. When you delete your account they would just delete the encryption key. Backing up the encryption key could be done on your side (send you your own encryption key if you need to recover your data).

we're going to offer that.

I think the worry was actually, "Isn't my data backed up somewhere even if you delete it the instant I tell you to? So then you still have my data?"

bingo. If they can delete my data on the instant -- then they quite possibly don't have backups. If they do have some form of semi offline backups - then not all of my data is deleted on the instant.

Not a worry so much as a harder problem that sometimes doesn't get considered.

Can you share any details of how your encrypted indices work? Searching over encrypted data is an active research area. I'm curious to learn what you are doing in practice.

Thanks for caring about the privacy of user data so much from day one!

Sorry to pollute the stream here, but...

I'm interested in talking to you about integration. I can't use the contact form on your website because every page now sends me to the "Thanks for signing up" page and, unfortunately, you don't have an email address in your profile. Can you (or somebody appropriate :) shoot me an email (address in my profile)?

that's not true. I can not delete my account at this very moment. You have sucked in 6 of my accounts and have not showed me an ounce of value. That was a terrible decision.

that was the risk you took when being a very early adopter

Mint prominently provides privacy and security information, and background on how they secure the system. You should similarly provide something on the front page, providing some of the details you've mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

I've been kicking around and gradually prototyping an idea somewhat similar to greplin, but locally hosted. I originally thought of it more as a cloud archival system, as a guard against some dinky web service I use shutting down and locking me out of my data, but once you're collecting all the data adding really good search on top of it is a natural next step. Right now I'm aiming at distributing it as a VM image (because the dependencies and such are rather complicated), but some day I'd like to see it running directly on backup/NAS devices like the Drobo so that you could have a (roughly) "just plug it in" backup solution for both local files and cloud data.

You just described how it should be: locally hosted solution. I believe you are onto something here.

I use http://www.google.com/quicksearchbox/ for this use case (OS X). However, it does not search network based data. Only filesystem content.

The great thing about OAuth is that you can revoke access after the fact. At least Greplin doesn't ask for your username and password when it's not necessary.

There was a story recently (don't remember which) that sparked a discussion about indexing all the sites I've ever visited. In other words, provide me with a browser history search that didn't suck, in that if I remember looking at some article a few months ago, I should be able to find it pretty easily.

I bring this up because I think this is a great concept, and would be a great tie-in service to (what I understand of) Greplin. That would make it "search for anything you're supposed to know, we'll find it", which to me sounds really cool.

Edit: So your tagline is "the search bar for your life", which fits what I was talking about above even better.

A note from a quick look at your site: the text under the second column ("Greplin works with nearly every computer, browser and mobile device in the market.") is badly aligned, and seems to "crash into" the text on the last column. Looks really bad and makes it hard to read, so you might want to fix it (I'm using Chrome).

Secondly, congrats! Always happy to hear about other Israelis succeeding. Is there any way I can get in touch with you? I'm applying to YC, and would appreciate any advice you have about dealing with visas/etc.

Are you thinking about infoaxe.com ?

Or maybe historio.us?

Yes, I think it was historio.us prompted the discussion.

MSR had a prototype application called "Stuff I've Seen" [1]. It was pretty neat - it would index your browser history (along with other stuff). I don't know what happened to it, but I'm guessing that it eventually ended up being part of Windows Desktop Search. I liked the idea that if I remember seeing something earlier, that this tool would find it.

[1] http://news.cnet.com/2100-1012-997350.html

Yup, browser history search is an idea I am toying up with my web app, http://www.folderboy.com. At the moment FolderBoy is search-as-you-type for stuff that you jot down. With hierarchical labels for fluid organizing.

Little known fact: Hipmunk founder Adam Goldstein came up with the name Greplin, the day before the March 2010 Demo Day.

How common is it for companies to not have names until that late?

Companies often change their names well after that, as their ideas change. OhLife only became OhLife 2 years after their Demo Day. Before that they were MeetingMix, and on Demo Day they were IDidWork.

The name has a cool sound, but I think "grep" is only meaningful to people like us, not the mainstream that it targets. Still, create something useful, and the name doesn't matter as long as it's memorable and distinctive, as this is on all counts.

Little inside nods is what makes names like this particularly fun. For everyone else, it's just a catchy name.

We knew this was safe because it worked for YC.

Doesn't YC target people like us, as opposed to the mainstream?

I think he meant the name 'Y Combinator' is also similar. It has significant meaning to those who know what a Y-Combinator is. For others, it's just a cool name.

I think that even for programmers, Y Combinator (the fixed point combinator not the company) is somewhat obscure.

i originally misread it as "gremlin", those little devils that do annoying things when no one is looking.

I doubt the resemblance is a coincidence: greplin appears to be a portmanteau of grep and gremlin. (IMHO, it's a great name.)

Although it does also make me think of moblin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moblin

I think it's impressive they actually managed to fit a real word in there, even if it's a hacker neologism.

I should probably already know this (and we'll email you about it), but I was wondering how you're currently keeping your dropbox index up to date. our existing APIs don't make it all that easy (or efficient :).

And the TOS forbids anything else (I just signed up):

  You agree not to do any of the following while using the Site, Content, Files or Services:

  * Attempt to access or search the Site, Content, Files or Services with any engine,
  software, tool, agent, device or mechanism other than the software and/or search
  agents provided by Dropbox or other generally available third-party web browsers
  (such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox), including but not limited
  to browser automation tools

Giving them my entire life (a lot of what Google has + a lot of what Facebook has + a lot of what Twitter has + a lot of my files if I decide to do Dropbox) raises serious privacy concerns. But it looks so awesome that I don't give a damn.

EDIT: But I am refraining from doing GMail, Google Voice, or Dropbox for now at least. I try not to do any communication that I truly care about staying private via Facebook or Twitter, so those don't concern me as much.

I signed up and it indexed my data but now I only see:

"Thanks for registering for Greplin. We're in beta. We'll email you once the system's ready for you."

Bummer.

sorry! we're scaling out as quickly as we can!

I had the same feeling as these guys and the difference for me was that the beta notification came after you started loading some of my data. If I don't have an account, why are you getting the data from the services? I think it's really important that you modify that process. I don't feel entitled to an account in any way but if I'm going to try and sign up and trust the service, it needs to logically make sense. No account = no need for my data yet esp. when you prove right in front of my eyes it's a 30 second task...

just signed up and had the same experience, would have much preferred being told that the system is not ready before I logged into one of my social accounts.

Yeah that kind of irritated me a bit because authorized them to access my Facebook and then I was told that I would be e-mailed once they are ready for me.

I didn't even get a welcome letter or anything in my e-mail. I at least would of felt better if I had some type of acknowledgment that I signed up for the service, and a status screen where I could check on the indexing process.

It was almost like: "Thanks for letting us use your Facebook data to build out/test our service. We will be in touch."

I wouldn't of signed up if I knew the sign up process was going to be like that.

point taken. we didn't want to spam people's email until we were ready, but it seems that folks have gotten used to that flow

Same disappointment here. "We'll email you once the system's ready for you" I took as "We're now indexing. Once we get done indexing, we'll e-mail you and you'll be good to go!"

Indexing completed and I still waiting for that e-mail 5 hours later.

My first thought was, "Doesn't Backupify already offer this?"

Backupify already backs up all your cloud data, so I figured it would be easy for them to index it and provide search. Digging through the Backupify website, it seems they have a strong privacy policy. From their FAQ:

"We don't do anything with your data once it is backed up. We don't look at it, we don't sell it, we don't analyze it, we don't modify it."

I guess it's too late for Backupify to change their privacy policy so they can offer search. Or maybe not. Facebook changed theirs...

One of my concerns about Backupify is that they didn't use APIs (at least when I tried it) so I couldn't revoke access later. I'm pleased Greplin does.

Something I'd really like is the ability to search through my social news comments/submissions. Will websites like Hacker News and reddit be added to the list of indexes?

yes! better yet - as a developer you can write your own indexers for greplin! (little known fact: we were going to launch with a hn module but we hit the site too hard and paul banned greplin)

Lots of "little known facts" in this thread!

Have you talked to the guys who run http://searchyc.com about working with their data?

>Something I'd really like is the ability to search through my social news comments/submissions.

I use comment feeds to archive my own submissions into a feed folder on Thunderbird, makes it quicker when I can't remember a link or resource properly but know I've commented on it before. Also I have a vague idea that it might be interesting to look back on.

It means I usually try to quote or make it clear what the context of a comment is to make it a more readable resource if anyone should ever want to do that.

one little criticism - frontpage looks a bit too similar to Evernote:

http://www.greplin.com/ http://www.evernote.com/

Maybe it would also make sense to emphasize data security since in essence you give the service access to every private bit of information you have online. It's not mentioned anywhere in frontpage and I'm hesitating to signup without some reassurance that data will be safe.

Other than that, good stuff.

A bit?

Capture anything => Find anything

Access anywhere => Get it anywhere

Find things fast => Search at lightning speed

They even used the same stock photos.

Based on the services put under the Pro accounts (Salesforce, Google Voice, Basecamp, Box.net and Evernote), $5/month for premium access sounds very low to me.

Granted, I haven't been able to try it at this point. But I can see the value in it, and it looks very well done.

So, I feel that people who will want to use the premium features are people who strive for efficiency and will be ready to pay more than $5. (Salesforce, for example, is not cheap)

I would agree with this. In fact, I bet you could differentiate services for different amounts: Evernote integration is probably not worth nearly as much as Salesforce integration.

You could also consider buffet-style pricing, where you get X services for N dollars, X+Y services for N+M dollars, etc. As you get more services, that may enable you to keep the value/data ration reasonable. It doesn't make sense with 12 services available; with 144 services, it might. I know I don't want to pay extra because you support 130 services I'll never use.

Interesting product. I may be missing a trick here, but is it possible to link to your Google Apps mail/calendar? If I login to Google with my apps username and password, it just tries to connect my @gmail.com account. This could be because my apps email is a secondary email on my @gmail.com account

... Google seriously suck at accounts!

"... Google seriously suck at accounts!" agreed.

Well, when Yahoo Mail launched, they only reserved some of the employees' @yahoo.com email addresses. My friend is still pissed about that to this day.

sounds pretty cool, when i was working on a mac i couldn't live without spotlight.

i also like the little info box at the bottom where it says that greplin was founded in September 2010. :P

Where's the autocomplete? I only see find-as-you-type -- there are no Google-suggest like suggestions, per se.

Also, I am very curious to see back-of-the-envelope calculations on resource usage -- e.g. what is the expected billing per user (in dollars)? ("Doesn't matter" is an acceptable answer for now, but I'm worried that this type of service is unreasonably expensive to provide and cannot be offset by ads/freemium models)

This is one of those ideas that's obvious as soon as you read it - congrats, Dan.

However, it really needs to support multiple accounts from the same service.

That's a great thing, but I really think it should be a desktop app or maybe a desktop option as an alternative to the online service. I know the drawbacks and they are real but I'm just not ready to trust _anyone_ with all my data from all services. I know I can delete the account at any time but then I cannot use it any longer.

Sometimes you sign up for something and wonder how you ever lived without it. I'm getting that feeling already, and I haven't even used it yet. I signed up before finishing the article, it's indexing my data now.

Assuming it works as advertised, this sounds like a brilliant concept. Any timeline on when I can actually start using it?

I absolutely love the idea of an extensible framework that you could write plugins for to connect up to various sources of data, but I'd much prefer the same functionality in a desktop application rather than a hosted web-app. That way you wouldn't have to be paranoid about what is being done with all of your personal information...

Great work, but I don't personally see much value in this. Gmail already has great search, and Facebook and Twitter have good-enough search.

I'm also a little leery of handing out credentials to a third party. I would imagine that adding in support for web-services to desktop search engines (Google or Windows) would provide better value.

Agreed Gmail/FB/Twitter all have good enough searches, but wouldn't a simple (spotlight-like) search box for all that be game-changing?

From the article: "Greplin only uses OAuth and other APIs for authorization, so they never see your third party site credentials".

Calling it game-changing is (to me) a little hyperbolic. It looks to be convenient and time-saving, but my search problems extend primarily to Gmail, which already has great search. To each their own, but I very infrequently use FB/Twitter search. I actually sort of distrust FB/Twitter search (e.g., search is not finding something I'm positive is in there), and adding an abstraction layer doesn't alleviate any of that distrust.

To be completely honest, if Greplin were acquired by Google or MS, I'd be more willing to try their service out. I understand that they're using authentication mechanisms that don't require credential caching, but my content is on there somewhere. This is more of a touchy-feely paranoia thing, and not exactly backed up by any technical facts (i.e., for all I know, the smartphone in my hand has malware on it that is broadcasting my every keystroke to some teenager in Russia, so worrying about greplin may not make a lot of sense. But I can choose to use/not use greplin, whereas I'm sort of stuck with my phone).

Again, this is the value-proposition to me. I don't generate/consume enough content that I need cross-site search at my fingertips. I would imagine that others who are more involved with social sites would appreciate a tool like greplin.

This is more of a touchy-feely paranoia thing

I find it funny how feeling wary about giving out all your passwords to some startup company is considered "paranoia" nowadays.

It doesn't store any of your credentials!!!

Oh. Really!!!

But somehow they need access to my data, right? To index it?

So we're working on the promise that they won't do anything dumb or evil in the future. Not with that index, nor with the API tokens that grant them access to, uh, all my online data.

Great for people who have always wondered "Why do I need so many stupid passwords, I have no secret data anyways" I guess.

This is an awesome idea. Any plans top allow custom indexing plugins? I'd like to be able to index different services and also to deal with special file formats.

I'd also like to be able to search from Emacs, I've signed up for the API so I'll see if I can make that one happen myself :)

We'll see the real value of this service I believe when more and more desktop applications move online. Can you imagine how useful this sort of service would be in the enterprise?

Looking forward to Greplin launching more indexes and developing further.

Very cool product, if it indexed google apps and integrated with spotlight it would be part of my daily routine. Great work Daniel, your future looks bright!

Any plans for a desktop app like Spotlight? Or a browser plugin that added another search box into the browser for my cloud data searching?

When attempting to log on after logging off, I get an invalid password error (I know it's valid). It also seems that the "forgot your password?" link doesn't work at all. Would you happen to be storing passwords in plaintext in ASCII or anything similar? I can't think of any other reason that my password wouldn't work (it's a random UTF-8 blob).

Looks really awesome, can't wait till my life is fully indexed. Congrats Daniel and Robby

(Looks very good. I can see this becoming as big/successful as DropBox.)

Question: Does it do anything more than search? E.g., can you sort your indexed data into folders? Tags? Or are these concepts now redundant?

Too cool, I signed up and will be waiting for my 'go-ahead' mail. Also signed up for the api, I have a nice little command-line tool in mind that I'd like to build. When can we expect API access? :)

just wondering .. in general what are people searching for on linkedin and facebook, that greplin does better than just going to these sites directly ?

events are a GREAT example.

long term, services like greplin will also make it easier for people to switch / move around across service providers for various cloud functions. for example, the more greplin gets used the easier it will be for folks to switch to using event webapps other than facebook.

For the Facebook search, can you also index of my friends' wall posts, as sometimes they post relevant information there?

> The original inspiration for Greplin? Says Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham: “He was on his way to a party, and he didn’t remember where the address was stored. Was it a Facebook event, or in an email, or in his calendar? It was a pain to try searching all these things from his phone.” So he built the solution.

If you can't memorize the address you write it in your phone's organizer/reminder. This sounds a bit like over-engineering.

Nitpick: why do I have to register when Greplin oAuths to a number of other services? oAuth should be sufficient.

Would be slick to integrate Disqus, Backtype,and the other commenting systems as well.

very cool to have the pro feature ready from the start, rather than the someday we will figure out how to make money approach. lots of value for the business user there.

It's tools like Greplin that make being senile at 36 ok

yeah, if something is closed from Google, just enter passwords and open it.

btw, Google should create a similar service - like enter all your passwords and we will add your personal search results in a some frame. ^_^

It is remarkable that such simple idea got funding and that YC provided so much support for a young guy.

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