
Autocomplete your life with Greplin (YC W10) - danicgross
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/31/greplin-ycombinator-personal-search/
======
Sukotto
Why should I trust these guys with my data? It's bad enough that Google knows
so much about me... but at least they have some checks and balances built in.
What sort of safety does "greplin" have to offer adopters?

~~~
danicgross
If you get uncomfortable, you can delete your account at any time. We'll
delete your data. Not in 14 days, a week or tomorrow. That moment. We're
convinced that you'll find enough value with Greplin to overcome that issue -
the same way many did with mint.com.

We're also working with a) encrypted indexes b) only writing the index to disk
rather then any content. this shuts down a lot of neat features (generating
snippets etc.) - but users that are willing to forgo features for added
security might find it useful.

~~~
whatusername
So you don't have any backups then? (And I mean actual backups - replication
is not a backup)

~~~
danicgross
we're going to offer that.

~~~
simonista
I think the worry was actually, "Isn't my data backed up somewhere even if you
delete it the instant I tell you to? So then you still have my data?"

~~~
whatusername
bingo. If they can delete my data on the instant -- then they quite possibly
don't have backups. If they do have some form of semi offline backups - then
not all of my data is deleted on the instant.

Not a worry so much as a harder problem that sometimes doesn't get considered.

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edanm
There was a story recently (don't remember which) that sparked a discussion
about indexing all the sites I've ever visited. In other words, provide me
with a browser history search that didn't suck, in that if I remember looking
at some article a few months ago, I should be able to find it pretty easily.

I bring this up because I think this is a great concept, and would be a great
tie-in service to (what I understand of) Greplin. That would make it "search
for anything you're supposed to know, we'll find it", which to me sounds
really cool.

Edit: So your tagline is "the search bar for your life", which fits what I was
talking about above even better.

A note from a quick look at your site: the text under the second column
("Greplin works with nearly every computer, browser and mobile device in the
market.") is badly aligned, and seems to "crash into" the text on the last
column. Looks really bad and makes it hard to read, so you might want to fix
it (I'm using Chrome).

Secondly, congrats! Always happy to hear about other Israelis succeeding. Is
there any way I can get in touch with you? I'm applying to YC, and would
appreciate any advice you have about dealing with visas/etc.

~~~
vark
Are you thinking about infoaxe.com ?

~~~
cdawzrd
Or maybe historio.us?

~~~
edanm
Yes, I think it was historio.us prompted the discussion.

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pg
Little known fact: Hipmunk founder Adam Goldstein came up with the name
Greplin, the day before the March 2010 Demo Day.

~~~
10ren
The name has a cool sound, but I think "grep" is only meaningful to people
like us, not the mainstream that it targets. Still, create something useful,
and the name doesn't matter as long as it's memorable and distinctive, as this
is on all counts.

~~~
danielha
Little inside nods is what makes names like this particularly fun. For
everyone else, it's just a catchy name.

~~~
pg
We knew this was safe because it worked for YC.

~~~
10ren
Doesn't YC target people like us, as opposed to the mainstream?

~~~
j_baker
I think that even for _programmers_ , Y Combinator (the fixed point combinator
not the company) is somewhat obscure.

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arashf
I should probably already know this (and we'll email you about it), but I was
wondering how you're currently keeping your dropbox index up to date. our
existing APIs don't make it all that easy (or efficient :).

~~~
sesqu
And the TOS forbids anything else (I just signed up):

    
    
      You agree not to do any of the following while using the Site, Content, Files or Services:
    
      * Attempt to access or search the Site, Content, Files or Services with any engine,
      software, tool, agent, device or mechanism other than the software and/or search
      agents provided by Dropbox or other generally available third-party web browsers
      (such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox), including but not limited
      to browser automation tools

------
jackowayed
Giving them my entire life (a lot of what Google has + a lot of what Facebook
has + a lot of what Twitter has + a lot of my files if I decide to do Dropbox)
raises serious privacy concerns. But it looks so awesome that I don't give a
damn.

EDIT: But I am refraining from doing GMail, Google Voice, or Dropbox for now
at least. I try not to do any communication that I truly care about staying
private via Facebook or Twitter, so those don't concern me as much.

------
bkudria
I signed up and it indexed my data but now I only see:

"Thanks for registering for Greplin. We're in beta. We'll email you once the
system's ready for you."

Bummer.

~~~
fraXis
Yeah that kind of irritated me a bit because authorized them to access my
Facebook and then I was told that I would be e-mailed once they are ready for
me.

I didn't even get a welcome letter or anything in my e-mail. I at least would
of felt better if I had some type of acknowledgment that I signed up for the
service, and a status screen where I could check on the indexing process.

It was almost like: "Thanks for letting us use your Facebook data to build
out/test our service. We will be in touch."

I wouldn't of signed up if I knew the sign up process was going to be like
that.

~~~
danicgross
point taken. we didn't want to spam people's email until we were ready, but it
seems that folks have gotten used to that flow

------
troymc
My first thought was, "Doesn't Backupify already offer this?"

Backupify already backs up all your cloud data, so I figured it would be easy
for them to index it and provide search. Digging through the Backupify
website, it seems they have a strong privacy policy. From their FAQ:

"We don't do anything with your data once it is backed up. We don't look at
it, we don't sell it, we don't analyze it, we don't modify it."

I guess it's too late for Backupify to change their privacy policy so they can
offer search. Or maybe not. Facebook changed theirs...

~~~
Lewisham
One of my concerns about Backupify is that they didn't use APIs (at least when
I tried it) so I couldn't revoke access later. I'm pleased Greplin does.

------
heed
Something I'd really like is the ability to search through my social news
comments/submissions. Will websites like Hacker News and reddit be added to
the list of indexes?

~~~
danicgross
yes! better yet - as a developer you can write your own indexers for greplin!
(little known fact: we were going to launch with a hn module but we hit the
site too hard and paul banned greplin)

~~~
mrduncan
Lots of "little known facts" in this thread!

Have you talked to the guys who run <http://searchyc.com> about working with
their data?

------
k7d
one little criticism - frontpage looks a bit too similar to Evernote:

<http://www.greplin.com/> <http://www.evernote.com/>

Maybe it would also make sense to emphasize data security since in essence you
give the service access to every private bit of information you have online.
It's not mentioned anywhere in frontpage and I'm hesitating to signup without
some reassurance that data will be safe.

Other than that, good stuff.

~~~
tbrooks
A bit?

Capture anything => Find anything

Access anywhere => Get it anywhere

Find things fast => Search at lightning speed

~~~
blackswan
They even used the same stock photos.

------
Timothee
Based on the services put under the Pro accounts (Salesforce, Google Voice,
Basecamp, Box.net and Evernote), $5/month for premium access sounds very low
to me.

Granted, I haven't been able to try it at this point. But I can see the value
in it, and it looks very well done.

So, I feel that people who will want to use the premium features are people
who strive for efficiency and will be ready to pay more than $5. (Salesforce,
for example, is not cheap)

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I would agree with this. In fact, I bet you could differentiate services for
different amounts: Evernote integration is probably not worth nearly as much
as Salesforce integration.

You could also consider buffet-style pricing, where you get X services for N
dollars, X+Y services for N+M dollars, etc. As you get more services, that may
enable you to keep the value/data ration reasonable. It doesn't make sense
with 12 services available; with 144 services, it might. I know I don't want
to pay extra because you support 130 services I'll never use.

------
bruceboughton
Interesting product. I may be missing a trick here, but is it possible to link
to your Google Apps mail/calendar? If I login to Google with my apps username
and password, it just tries to connect my @gmail.com account. This could be
because my apps email is a secondary email on my @gmail.com account

... Google seriously suck at accounts!

~~~
Mistone
"... Google seriously suck at accounts!" agreed.

~~~
lanstein
Well, when Yahoo Mail launched, they only reserved some of the employees'
@yahoo.com email addresses. My friend is still pissed about that to this day.

------
lukesandberg
sounds pretty cool, when i was working on a mac i couldn't live without
spotlight.

i also like the little info box at the bottom where it says that greplin was
founded in September 2010. :P

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arnabdotorg
Where's the autocomplete? I only see find-as-you-type -- there are no Google-
suggest like _suggestions_ , per se.

Also, I am very curious to see back-of-the-envelope calculations on resource
usage -- e.g. what is the expected billing per user (in dollars)? ("Doesn't
matter" is an acceptable answer for now, but I'm worried that this type of
service is unreasonably expensive to provide and cannot be offset by
ads/freemium models)

------
endtime
This is one of those ideas that's obvious as soon as you read it - congrats,
Dan.

However, it really needs to support multiple accounts from the same service.

------
fauigerzigerk
That's a great thing, but I really think it should be a desktop app or maybe a
desktop option as an alternative to the online service. I know the drawbacks
and they are real but I'm just not ready to trust _anyone_ with all my data
from all services. I know I can delete the account at any time but then I
cannot use it any longer.

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gfunk911
Sometimes you sign up for something and wonder how you ever lived without it.
I'm getting that feeling already, and I haven't even used it yet. I signed up
before finishing the article, it's indexing my data now.

Assuming it works as advertised, this sounds like a brilliant concept. Any
timeline on when I can actually start using it?

------
elasticdog
I absolutely love the idea of an extensible framework that you could write
plugins for to connect up to various sources of data, but I'd much prefer the
same functionality in a desktop application rather than a hosted web-app. That
way you wouldn't have to be paranoid about what is being done with all of your
personal information...

------
Splines
Great work, but I don't personally see much value in this. Gmail already has
great search, and Facebook and Twitter have good-enough search.

I'm also a little leery of handing out credentials to a third party. I would
imagine that adding in support for web-services to desktop search engines
(Google or Windows) would provide better value.

~~~
axomhacker
Agreed Gmail/FB/Twitter all have good enough searches, but wouldn't a simple
(spotlight-like) search box for all that be game-changing?

From the article: "Greplin only uses OAuth and other APIs for authorization,
so they never see your third party site credentials".

~~~
Splines
Calling it game-changing is (to me) a little hyperbolic. It looks to be
convenient and time-saving, but my search problems extend primarily to Gmail,
which already has great search. To each their own, but I very infrequently use
FB/Twitter search. I actually sort of distrust FB/Twitter search (e.g., search
is not finding something I'm _positive_ is in there), and adding an
abstraction layer doesn't alleviate any of that distrust.

To be completely honest, if Greplin were acquired by Google or MS, I'd be more
willing to try their service out. I understand that they're using
authentication mechanisms that don't require credential caching, but my
content is on there _somewhere_. This is more of a touchy-feely paranoia
thing, and not exactly backed up by any technical facts (i.e., for all I know,
the smartphone in my hand has malware on it that is broadcasting my every
keystroke to some teenager in Russia, so worrying about greplin may not make a
lot of sense. But I can choose to use/not use greplin, whereas I'm sort of
stuck with my phone).

Again, this is the value-proposition to _me_. I don't generate/consume enough
content that I need cross-site search at my fingertips. I would imagine that
others who are more involved with social sites would appreciate a tool like
greplin.

~~~
moe
_This is more of a touchy-feely paranoia thing_

I find it funny how feeling wary about giving out _all_ _your_ _passwords_ to
some startup company is considered "paranoia" nowadays.

~~~
mitjak
It doesn't store any of your credentials!!!

~~~
moe
Oh. Really!!!

But somehow they need access to my data, right? To index it?

So we're working on the promise that they won't do anything dumb or evil in
the future. Not with that index, nor with the API tokens that grant them
access to, uh, all my online data.

Great for people who have always wondered "Why do I need so many stupid
passwords, I have no secret data anyways" I guess.

------
almost
This is an awesome idea. Any plans top allow custom indexing plugins? I'd like
to be able to index different services and also to deal with special file
formats.

I'd also like to be able to search from Emacs, I've signed up for the API so
I'll see if I can make that one happen myself :)

------
amac
We'll see the real value of this service I believe when more and more desktop
applications move online. Can you imagine how useful this sort of service
would be in the enterprise?

Looking forward to Greplin launching more indexes and developing further.

------
troyk
Very cool product, if it indexed google apps and integrated with spotlight it
would be part of my daily routine. Great work Daniel, your future looks
bright!

------
oziumjinx
Any plans for a desktop app like Spotlight? Or a browser plugin that added
another search box into the browser for my cloud data searching?

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Sephr
When attempting to log on after logging off, I get an invalid password error
(I know it's valid). It also seems that the "forgot your password?" link
doesn't work at all. Would you happen to be storing passwords in plaintext in
ASCII or anything similar? I can't think of any other reason that my password
wouldn't work (it's a random UTF-8 blob).

------
immad
Looks really awesome, can't wait till my life is fully indexed. Congrats
Daniel and Robby

------
resdirector
(Looks _very_ good. I can see this becoming as big/successful as DropBox.)

Question: Does it do anything more than search? E.g., can you sort your
indexed data into folders? Tags? Or are these concepts now redundant?

------
kilian
Too cool, I signed up and will be waiting for my 'go-ahead' mail. Also signed
up for the api, I have a nice little command-line tool in mind that I'd like
to build. When can we expect API access? :)

------
minalecs
just wondering .. in general what are people searching for on linkedin and
facebook, that greplin does better than just going to these sites directly ?

~~~
adamsmith
events are a GREAT example.

long term, services like greplin will also make it easier for people to switch
/ move around across service providers for various cloud functions. for
example, the more greplin gets used the easier it will be for folks to switch
to using event webapps other than facebook.

------
inrev
For the Facebook search, can you also index of my friends' wall posts, as
sometimes they post relevant information there?

------
ciupicri
> _The original inspiration for Greplin? Says Y Combinator cofounder Paul
> Graham: “He was on his way to a party, and he didn’t remember where the
> address was stored. Was it a Facebook event, or in an email, or in his
> calendar? It was a pain to try searching all these things from his phone.”
> So he built the solution._

If you can't memorize the address you write it in your phone's
organizer/reminder. This sounds a bit like over-engineering.

------
Tichy
Nitpick: why do I have to register when Greplin oAuths to a number of other
services? oAuth should be sufficient.

------
oziumjinx
Would be slick to integrate Disqus, Backtype,and the other commenting systems
as well.

------
Mistone
very cool to have the pro feature ready from the start, rather than the
someday we will figure out how to make money approach. lots of value for the
business user there.

------
messel
It's tools like Greplin that make being senile at 36 ok

------
c00p3r
yeah, if something is closed from Google, just enter passwords and open it.

btw, Google should create a similar service - like enter all your passwords
and we will add your personal search results in a some frame. ^_^

It is remarkable that such simple idea got funding and that YC provided so
much support for a young guy.

