You.com Wants to Be Your AI Search Engine for Complex Work Queries [CNET]

The startup hopes to distinguish itself from heavyweights like Google and OpenAI by zeroing in on a niche.

Computer scientist Richard Socher first had the idea for You.com when he was a doctoral student at Stanford, but at that point — 2009 to 2014 — Google seemed untouchable, so he shelved the concept.

But following developments in prompt engineering, which is the method for creating inputs for generative AI tools to yield desired outputs, and natural language processing, which is a branch of AI that enables computers to understand human language, he and cofounder Bryan McCann realized that search could evolve into a format with summarized answers. And that Google didn’t seem to be moving in that direction.

“We didn’t see any change and so we decided someone’s got to do it,” Socher said of launching You.com in 2020.

The startup is hoping to distinguish itself from the likes of Google, OpenAI and Perplexity — which all are now offering or working toward their own blends of search and AI — by going after more complex queries from enterprise users. Socher even got a vote of confidence from Time Magazine last year when it named him one of the 100 Most Influential People in AI and said “his research in natural language processing was integral to the field’s advancement.” 

You.com got its name because Marc Benioff, CEO of software company Salesforce, gifted the URL to Socher. The two crossed paths when Salesforce acquired Socher’s deep learning platform MetaMind in 2016. Socher served as chief scientist and executive vice president at Salesforce until 2020. (It should be noted that Benioff owns Time.)

You.com was a URL Benioff had owned for many years. Socher thought it was “an amazing consumer URL,” which opens itself up to puns with words that start with u, like user and university.

Now serving as You.com CEO, Socher is focused on the increasingly popular field of AI-infused search, in which platforms perform the research and analysis for us and deliver answer summaries with citations. He is competing with giants of both search and AI for a stake in a market projected to reach $430 billion by 2032. 

Search beyond Google

The Palo Alto, California-based startup began as a search engine, but Socher admitted Google already has a lock on short informational queries with single answers, like, “Who was the first president of the United States?” or “What is the capital of Maryland?” (Google controls about 90% of the global search engine market.)

“There is nothing you can do to give that answer 10 times better than Google,” he said.

And so You.com started to focus on knowledge workers, or employees “whose careers actually depend on getting things right and getting to pretty sophisticated answers,” he added. It now thinks of itself as more of an AI assistant or a “productivity engine.”

Instead of those simple searches, You.com seeks to generate accurate responses to complex queries with relevant citations. That includes queries that require researching and summarizing information from multiple websites, as well as multistep complex problem solving.

“It’s ultimately about making you more productive and giving you access to answers so that you can get the stuff done that you want to get done,” Socher said.

If it sounds similar to Google’s AI Overviews, OpenAI’s SearchGPT or AI search engine Perplexity, that’s because it is. But You.com  pointed out last November that it had the first consumer-facing LLM with internet access for answers and citations in December 2022 and Socher said he has the patents to prove his company’s technology came first. (Perplexity’s answer engine also came out in December 2022. AI Overviews debuted in May of this year, and SearchGPT followed in July.)

You.com in action

There are some obvious distinctions. You.com lets you choose from 21 AI models, including GPT-4o (which powers ChatGPT and SearchGPT), Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Meta’s Llama 3.1 405B and Google’s Gemini 1.5 Flash, or You.com will choose for you. (It wasn’t immediately clear what criteria it uses in the latter. A spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

You can also tell You.com to zero in on particular sources, like science journals.

I briefly kicked the tires by asking about one long-running mystery: Why has it been so hard to prove whether Bigfoot is real?

You.com delivered a 353-word answer, which cited kids’ Q&A site Wonderopolis.org, science and travel publication NationalGeographic.com, online encyclopedia Wikipedia and science and nature magazine SmithsonianMag.com. The response said it’s a combination of lack of evidence, hoaxes and misidentifications, unreliable eyewitness accounts, cultural factors, and scientific skepticism.

Perplexity generated a 313-word answer, which also cited SmithsonianMag.com, as well as science website Live Science. The answer also pointed to lack of evidence, unreliable sightings and cultural factors, as well as ecological implausibility.

Other than the breadth of sources, I’m not sure I noticed a huge difference.

Then I asked, “What is the best AI-focused search engine?”

You.com generated a 268-word answer, which listed You.com, Perplexity, Neeva, Brave Search, Komo and Arc Search. Its sources included SEO agency Boostability, CNET sister publication ZDNet and AI website builder Dorik.com.

There was one error: Neeva was acquired by data platform Snowflake in 2023, and its search technology was integrated into Snowflake’s platform.

Perplexity delivered a 222-word answer, which had some familiar names, along with Bing AI and Andi. It cited ZDNet and Dorik too, along with blog site KDNuggets and AI resource site AI-Pro.

I’m not sure how much I would trust KDNuggets or AI-Pro, but with You.com’s error, I don’t know if either one really has an edge here.

To be fair, this is barely scratching the surface. And You.com is focusing on enterprise use cases now, so it isn’t in direct competition with these consumer-facing AI search engines.

In November, You.com released an API that allows developers to bring real-time web search to their own LLMs and AI chatbots.

You can also use You.com to build an interactive work assistant that can generate headlines for a blog, optimize content for SEO or identify all possible sources of procurement for a particular product.

You.com didn’t disclose user figures.

Individual and business users can access a free plan with limited access to models and uploads or pay $15 per month for an annual plan or $20 monthly. Custom pricing is also available for team plans.

The startup raised $25 million in a Series A round in 2022. Salesforce’s Benioff is one of the startup’s backers.