[cududa]

If they published the extension source that might be more reasonable. I assume the extension is so a lot of heavy lifting on hitting individual apps/ API's happens locally to alleviate costs or rate limiting

[richardsocher]

Working on it right now :) Extension changes your navbar setting. It's 33kB. All the heavy lifting happens on our servers so as to not slow browsers down for users.

[mh-]

FYI, 17kB of that is a PNG icon that will never be rendered above 128x128.

edit: actually, you have properly sized favicons additionally. Not sure what the 17kB one is for.

[rameshvel]

If its just 33 kb, whatever it does can be done in the webpage itself.

To try the search engine, I have to install an extension or make it as a default search engine. Not cool at all.

[cududa]

sorry you got downvoted so much! But would be great to know the purpose of the extension, and why the service can't work without it

[richardsocher]

Hey.

Thanks. We got lots of love in other places like Twitter, LinkedIn, ProductHunt, Facebook and others. So that made the launch an overall big success :)

The only purpose of the extension is to make it convenient and easy to change your default on Chrome. Convenience usually wins on the internet.

The extension has permissions to write to one field. No read access. Chrome flags and lets you verify permissions when you install an extension.

Sadly, most users on the internet would not go into their settings to make a change.

Of course, here on HN there are a lot of experts who care about their privacy and can make that change manually.

We've listened and it's not required anymore to try it out. Being fully open is ultimately more aligned with our values of trust, facts and kindness.