Computer scientist Richard Socher first came up with the idea for You.com while he was doing his doctorate at Stanford, but at that time – from 2009 to 2014 – Google seemed untouchable, so he put the idea on hold.
But as he followed developments in prompt engineering, the method of creating inputs for generative AI tools to produce desired results, and natural language processing, a branch of AI that allows computers to understand human language, he and co-founder Bryan McCann realized that search could evolve into a format of summarized answers. And that Google didn’t seem to be moving in that direction.
“We didn’t see any change, so we decided someone had to do it,” Socher said of the launch of You.com in 2020.
The startup hopes to differentiate itself from companies like Google, OpenAI and Perplexity, all of which already offer or are working on their own blends of search and AI, by answering more complex queries from enterprise users. Socher even received a vote of confidence from Time magazine last year, which named him one of the 100 most influential people in AI, saying “his research on natural language processing has been critical to the advancement of this field.”
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 that Benioff had owned for many years, and Socher thought it was “an amazing consumer URL” that would lend itself to puns on words that begin with u, such as “user” and “university.”
As CEO of You.com, Socher is now focused on the increasingly popular space of AI-powered search, where platforms do the research and analysis for us and provide answer summaries with citations, competing with search and AI giants for a share of a market expected to reach $430 billion by 2032.
Search beyond Google
The Palo Alto, California-based startup began as a search engine, but Socher acknowledged that Google already has a firm grip on short, one-answer information queries, such as “Who was the first president of the United States?” or “What is the capital of Maryland?” (Google controls about 90 percent 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 began to focus on knowledge workers, or employees “whose careers actually depend on getting things right and coming up with pretty sophisticated answers,” he added. The company now sees itself more as an AI assistant or “productivity machine.”
Instead of these simple searches, You.com tries to generate accurate answers to complex queries with relevant citations. These include queries that require researching and summarizing information from multiple websites and multi-step solving of complex problems.
“Ultimately, it’s about making you more productive and giving you access to answers so you can get the things you want to get done,” Socher said.
If it sounds similar to Google’s AI Overviews, OpenAI’s SearchGPT or the AI search engine Perplexity, that’s because it is. But You.com pointed out last November that it would have the first consumer-facing LLM with internet access for answers and citations in December 2022, and Socher said he has the patents proving his company’s technology was there 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 differences. 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 chooses for you. (It wasn’t immediately clear what criteria it uses with the latter. A spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.)
You can also instruct You.com to focus on specific sources, such as academic journals.
I briefly addressed a long-standing mystery: Why is it so difficult to prove that Bigfoot really exists?
You.com provided a 353-word response, citing children’s question-and-answer site Wonderopolis.org, science and travel publication NationalGeographic.com, online encyclopedia Wikipedia and science and nature magazine SmithsonianMag.com. The response said it was a combination of lack of evidence, misreporting and misidentification, unreliable eyewitness accounts, cultural factors and scientific skepticism.
The confusion led to a 313-word response that also cited SmithsonianMag.com and the science website Live Science. The response also pointed to a lack of evidence, unreliable sightings and cultural factors, as well as ecological implausibility.
Aside from the breadth of sources, I’m not sure I noticed much of a difference.
Then I asked, “What is the best AI-focused search engine?”
You.com generated a 268-word response that listed You.com, Perplexity, Neeva, Brave Search, Komo and Arc Search. Sources included SEO agency Boostability, CNET sister publication ZDNet and AI website builder Dorik.com.
There was a mistake: Neeva was acquired by data platform Snowflake in 2023 and its search technology was integrated into Snowflake’s platform.
Perplexity provided a 222-word response that included some familiar names, including Bing AI and Andi. It also cited ZDNet and Dorik, as well as blog site KDNuggets and AI resource site AI-Pro.
I’m not sure how much I’d trust KDNuggets or AI-Pro, but given You.com’s mistake, I don’t know if either of them really has the edge here.
Honestly, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And You.com is currently focused on enterprise use cases, so it’s not in direct competition with these consumer-facing AI search engines.
In November, You.com released an API that allows developers to integrate real-time web search into their own LLMs and AI chatbots.
You can also use You.com to create an interactive work assistant that can generate headlines for a blog, optimize content for SEO, or identify all possible sources of supply for a particular product.
You.com has not disclosed any user numbers.
Individual and business customers can access a free plan with limited access to models and uploads, or pay $15 per month for an annual plan or $20 monthly. Individual 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.
