[richardsocher]

Yea... Requiring the default was a tough choice.

You actually can try it out in incognito mode and any other non-Chromium browser. But we found that without the convenience of a navbar search, most people won't give it a proper try either way.

I hope we can drop this requirement even in Chrome when we become one of the default options.

If you set your search engine default to http://you.com manually in Chrome with "https://you.com/search?q=%s" you will not need the extension... but for most people convenience wins and well...

It's tough to go up against a monopoly that controls the browser too?

[vngzs]

I installed the extension, tested a search, then switched my default back to another search engine. Future searches on you.com failed because I did not have the extension installed - even though I did.

I uninstalled the extension. I don't want to use tools that give me less power over my browsing experience, arbitrarily breaking although I'd done what was explicitly documented. I want tools that give me more power.

[smoldesu]

This seemed interesting to me, but requiring an installation is a no-go, especially for privacy-minded software. I can tell you right now that most privacy-conscious individuals won't give you a proper chance if this is how you treat the onboarding process, regardless of how David V. Goliath the situation seems.

> I hope we can drop this requirement even in Chrome when we become one of the default options.

I don't mean to be pessimistic, but the chances of 'you.com' appearing in my search engine choices is slim to none. You're welcome to drag me through the mud when you prove me wrong, but hedging your entire bet on getting added as a default option is a suicide pact for any software, particularly ones that are competing with bigger players.

> It's tough to go up against a monopoly that controls the browser too?

It's tough doing anything on someone else's platform, monopoly or not. This just reads as a vague dismissal of a frankly serious problem. I recommend taking notes out of DuckDuckGo's book, where they took proactive measures to accommodate for security-minded individuals. The fact that they let you connect without Javascript enabled is a subtle nod to their power users, who might be more concerned with that stuff. On the other side of the spectrum is you.com, which requires me to install an extension while promising that it's 'more secure' in the end. The optics are not good, particularly for the people who know what they're looking for.

[globalise83]

It seems to me like becoming a default search option is something you.com should work on (and should be much easier) once you are already really successful, but blocking instant try-out of search on the most popular browser is going to prevent you.com from achieving the user numbers needed to achieve that. I have literally never installed a Chrome extension and never will, so I guess I will never find out what improvements to the search results you can offer compared to other search engines.

[maxk42]

Your customers are telling you they want and you're making excuses for why you won't give it to them. I don't foresee this going well.

[afandian]

I don't use Chrome, I use Firefox. It was confusing for it to ask me to add an extension to Chrome.

[richardsocher]

Oh. That's odd. It shouldn't ask you for the Chrome install if you're on Firefox. We can't reproduce that bug. What version of FF are you on?

[skinkestek]

Happens for me too, Firefox on iOS.

Edit: it badgers me to install it in Chrome even in mobile Safari.

Edit 2: seems there is a search box on top of the page. It works but I didn't notice it initially because

- the page was so intensely focused on getting me to install a Chrome extension (both in Firefox on iOS and Safari on iOS)

- and the placeholder text ("you.com")looked like a decoration initially (try something like "type here" or something)

[tobr]

Looks like the issue is that the submitted link is a search for “you.com”, which appears to be a special search result that includes prominent promotion of the Chrome extension, regardless of which browser you’re using. It would probably have been a better idea to submit a link to the landing page or a normal search result.

[skinkestek]

Aha, that explains a lot!

[jamestanderson]

Same here on Firefox 94.0.1 on MacOS.

I also have privacy.resistFingerprinting enabled, maybe the other commenter does too, and that might muck with things.

Just tested and my reported user-agent is: "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/91.0"

[nickstinemates]

Same happens here. Normal search works fine though (using top nav bar)

[riquito]

Latest Firefox mobile, android

[mgcross]

Ok, after trying incognito, I do like it, but I'm not ready to switch my default from DDG yet. Maybe on the non-incognito chrome results page you could include a note that your search can be tested from incognito along with the prompt to install the extension?

[richardsocher]

Hey, thanks for the feedback. We dropped the requirement to install the extension. We're open on all browsers now. Happy searching or trying :)