You Don’t Have to Choose Between Privacy and Convenience
By: Earlybird Venture Capital
Tags: AI, Search, Privacy, Digital West, Portfolio

You Don’t Have to Choose Between Privacy and Convenience

Xayn is a privacy-protecting search alternative enabling people to regain control over algorithms and provide them with a smooth user-experience. Using cutting-edge AI tech that’s made in Europe, the startup ushers in a new generation of user-friendly privacy tech — making privacy available for everyone. The AI company was founded in 2017 with deep academic roots in Oxford and London and maintains a workforce that is made up of 30% Ph.D.s. Their open-source framework for federated analytics and learning, XayNet, is the basis of the privacy-protecting personalized search engine Xayn.

Xayn recently launched a new product so we spoke with the CEO on how it offers privacy and convenience.

We talked with our portfolio company Xayn’s CEO Leif-Nissen Lundbæk, PhD, on the occasion of launching a brand new product that hands you back your privacy and convenience. Congratulations and welcome, Lief-Nissen!

1: First off, what problem are you solving with Xayn?

Privacy is a key issue for people around the world: Current data from the 2019 Cyber Security Insights Report shows that 92% of surveyed online users worldwide have at least one significant concern about their data privacy. But even though more than two-thirds of those surveyed are more alarmed than ever about threats to their privacy, almost as many still accept certain risks to their online privacy to make their lives more convenient. The fact that search queries make up around 30% of all global website traffic further underlines the need for a true privacy-protecting and convenient search alternative.

Despite knowing that their privacy is at stake, many people — myself included — still used the established search giants, simply because it is so convenient and saves you so much time. I hated being stuck in this trade-off where the user is always the loser. That’s why my co-founders and I decided to solve this problem and build a search engine with no compromises. With Xayn you always have full privacy, find what you’re looking for in a fast way — and you have even active control over the algorithms.

Xayn’s CEO and Co-Founder, Leif-Nissen Lundbæk, Ph.D., in Berlin.

I hated being stuck in this trade-off where the user is always the loser.

2: So what’s actually your main goal?

Privacy is a fundamental human right. That’s why we want to make it available for everyone by making privacy tech go mainstream. With this we provide digital privacy, transparency, and ethical AI from Europe — in line with the Digital Decade proclaimed by the EU Commission. Their goal and our goal actually align quite nicely: To give users control over their personal data.

We provide digital privacy, transparency, and ethical AI from Europe…

3: What obligation do you believe startups have in upholding data privacy for their users?

I’m convinced that all companies have an obligation to protect the data privacy of their customers and users in general. Startups have a special responsibility because they usually operate at the fore-front of new ideas that have the potential to change the way we use tech. Data privacy regulations are sometimes seen as hindrance to innovation — even though they can actually be the basis for new products as our search engine demonstrates.

The Xayn app on your mobile phone gives you well-designed privacy tech at your finger tips.

4: What is uniquely tricky about designing privacy-protecting search engines and apps? What exactly is privacy tech and why and how can it go mainstream?

The term privacy tech refers in the broad sense to all services and tools that help you protect your digital privacy. This can include a secure VPN, a browser with no tracking or — as in our case — a search engine that doesn’t collect any data from you.

The crucial thing about privacy — that has been overlooked for a long time — is that it not only has to focus on protecting user privacy but also on a good user experience. It is still the case that the vast majority of privacy tech tools and services are designed mostly for tech experts.

Xayn’s app includes collections to help you keep and curate favorite things you’ve searched for.

Privacy tech can only go mainstream if users are given alternatives that can compete with the incumbents on design and user experience. That’s why we focused so much on a smooth search experience and a nice design for our search engine.

We also added a couple of convenient features such as flexible content collections where you can save webpages, news, images, videos etc. These personal content collections provide you with all researched information at one glance, in an interface that provides a clear overview.

Privacy tech can only go mainstream if users are given alternatives that can compete with the incumbents on design and user experience.

5: How exactly is Xayn built?

Xayn is built on our AI platform XayNet which started as a research project four years ago and which we’ve open-sourced since then. This enables us to bring the algorithms to the data and not vice versa.

If you download Xayn, you actually download four different AI models that work together to deliver you the best search results while protecting your privacy. Once you’ve entered a search query it goes directly to our proxy which acts as an intermediary to hide your IP address and personal info. This way, no one can see where the search request came from — not even us. We then send search results from multiple sources to your device via proxy. These results are then tailored to you by the aforementioned four AI models.

If you download Xayn, you actually download four different AI models that work together to deliver you the best search results while protecting your privacy.

The first model understands the context of each search: Do you mean the city or the football club when you search for “Barcelona”? The second model looks at your domain preferences: Do you like Wikipedia more than Instagram? Model number three builds a picture of your interests: Which sports or music you like more? The final model then combines all this with further context such as the time and location of your search.

After you’ve received your search results or suggestions to your personal home screen you can give direct feedback via swiping. Swipe left to dislike a result, swipe right to like it. This way, you can control what the search algorithms learn about you.

To sum it up, our XayNet framework and our search engine show that the conflict between convenience and privacy can, in fact, be solved through technology.

The conflict between convenience and privacy can, in fact, be solved through technology.

6: What learnings came from working with some major German corporations?

For corporations such as Porsche, Daimler, Deutsche Bahn, and Siemens privacy is not a nice-to-have but a necessity. For one thing, they want to protect their company data but they also have to make sure to follow regulations such as employment laws. Therefore, they not only have to protect their own data but also the data of their employees.

That’s why we’re also building a business version of our search engine with which companies can not only search the web but also their own databases.

7: What’s unique about your solution?

L-R swiping functionality helps the AI to learn your preferences

There are several aspects that are unique about our approach; some of them are directly visible to a normal user, some only to experts.

One of the latter ones is for example our decentralized approach (also called edge AI) which enables us to protect the privacy of our users. Instead of collecting all the data from the users and shipping it to a central AI, we bring the algorithms directly to the devices of the users. This way your data can stay where it belongs — with you.

Another thing that is unique about our search engine is that we empower you to take back control over your search results. You can decide what the AI learns and what is shown to you by simply swiping. This makes the AI transparent and more human.

8: Where can people try Xayn out?

You can now download the app free of charge from Play Store or Apple’s App Store. We’re also featured on ProductHunt. And in case you’re wondering: We’re already working on a desktop version and will release it next year.

Thanks for sharing these insights with us. We’re excited to see Xayn’s progress!