We want to stay free and open to everyone so we will explore private ads (not user dependent, only based on query, not tracking, similar to DDG) and useful monetized apps like youWrite or youImagine (ie stable diffusion).
If there's enough interest, we can also open up a paid account without ads.
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.)
Yea. These are valid concerns. We care a lot about privacy and are making public statements and commitments to it.
Technically any privacy-focused business (proton, ddg, etc) could pivot and change their mind but the hope is that by starting with those commitments potential future shareholders would understand that the erosion of trust would hurt the brand and not push for it?
Personally I’d pay for it but I’m sure monetization is far more complicated. Hopefully you will have a breakthrough app (or two).
We hope to grow this new kind of search engine/portal together with the community and then incorporate chat+apps+links into a new kind of experience.