Micro
apps without ads, algorithms or tracking
Details
- External ID
- 47532331
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Micro
- Website domain
- micro.mu
- Launched
- March 26, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 6
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.2853628536285363
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
For over 10 years I've been trying to accomplish something that took Claude Code and a lot of failure to realise. We need alternatives to big tech and we're not working hard enough to make that happen. In an era of addiction, usury and exploitation it's now time we seriously consider alternatives. Proton and the like worked on privacy focused individual services at a pain stakingly slow pace. Maybe for good reason. But it was also in an era pre AI. 10 years ago I was convinced the super app model would work. And that a platform needed to exist to facilitate that. Today I realised the tech doesn't matter, the idea and execution from the top down does. I put aside my technical perfectionism to try pull together a solution to some of the problems that plagued my own life with tech addiction and I rewrote and threw away this thing multiple times over the years pre AI and after. I burned VC funding, I burned bridges, I burned community trust in an open source project. But it was all in the pursuit of something I was compelled needed to exist. I use this on a daily basis probably 10+ times a day. Every person has different use cases but for me what's key is to try pull all the digital daily habits in one place and then be able to build on that. I can't replace my own google usage for mail yet but I also saw a need for something in between by private email and a work email.There's so much more I could say but essentially Micro and the app Mu (https://mu.xyz) is the culmination of many years of work. And it's also open source. https://github.com/micro/mu. Please provide feedback. Please tear it apart. Please poke holes in my theory. I'm not looking for hype. I really do just think we need an alternative to big tech.
Enrichment
- Theme
- interactive simulations and creative experiments
- Vertical
- Media & entertainment
- Function
- Vertical SaaS
- Audience
- B2C
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Commercial product
- Normalized one-liner
- apps without ads tracking or algorithms
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes The project consists of minimalist web applications built without ads or trackers, driven entirely by standard frontend code and basic backend services that modern LLMs can easily write.
Discussion
4 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: korru.app (web alternatives directory), RSS feeds for news (mu.xyz/wallet)
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 33 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #23 of 34 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 148 days after the earliest competitor.
- microide, a 100% vibecoded IDE that LLM agents can drive · hn · 2026-07-05 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- Microcosm Industries · hn · 2026-07-10 · 22 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- Bodge.app · hn · 2025-11-28 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- There's a full suite of open alternatives to BigTech hardware now · hn · 2025-12-17 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- A local, open-source personal database with AI powers · hn · 2025-10-29 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.36
- Leash, a low-dopamine mobile browser replacement · hn · 2026-06-10 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.36
- Meepr · hn · 2026-01-18 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.36
- MCP app for Android, drive apps via AI (no root, PII redacted locally) · hn · 2026-08-19 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.35
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a vertical saas tool for Insurance yet.