This afternoon TechCrunch posted a story about Richard Socher’s new venture called You.com. You.com has a lofty goal of replacing Google as our go-to search engine. 

You.com’s homepage is short on details right now, but it appears that it will be a search engine that doesn’t rely on advertising for funding and that it will give you greater control over the privacy of your search activity. It sounds promising, but so did Blekko when it launched with a similar goal of being a better search engine ten years ago. If you have forgotten about Blekko as I did until today, here’s the Wikipedia page about the defunct search engine. 

 I like the idea of a search engine results pages that aren’t influenced by advertising or prior search activity. That’s one of the reasons why I encourage teachers and students to try alternatives to Google Search from time to time. I hope that You.com can follow through on its goals. I’ve already registered for the beta list. You can do the same right here.