[HN Gopher] Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life
___________________________________________________________________
Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life
Author : ra7
Score : 455 points
Date : 2020-08-22 17:51 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (degoogle.jmoore.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (degoogle.jmoore.dev)
| aftbit wrote:
| Google Voice is the hardest service for me to replace. I don't
| see any alternatives on this list. I appreciate that they let me
| seamlessly send and receive calls and texts from my Android phone
| or my desktop. I have a hard requirement that my phone should be
| optional for all parts of my communication workflow.
| twicetwice wrote:
| Same. I could probably de-Google pretty quickly--my primary
| email is on my own domain now--were it not for Google Voice,
| which I rely on daily. And since I have to rely on it, might as
| well use the rest of Google's services, since they're so damn
| convenient.
| jakobmartz3 wrote:
| I agree with doing this and have started too, theres many alts to
| google and google drive
| loph wrote:
| I use duckduckgo for search, I have the DuckDuckGo privacy
| extensions installed in Chrome, along with EFF Privacy Badger.
| I'm not that worried about Google.
|
| I did de-facebook myself. IMHO Facebook is far more invasive, far
| more harmful than Google.
| coronadisaster wrote:
| > I'm not that worried about Google.
|
| doesn't look like it since you are using Chrome...
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| Does a service being part of the "5-eyes" really mean anything? I
| mean, this list makes it sound like being in China is a better
| alternative than being in Canada.
| mikece wrote:
| Depends on the service and whether you are trying to hide from
| somebody who can issue a warrant or you are just trying to hide
| from corporations who sell your data. Also depends upon the
| level of encryption. For example, spider oak can hand over
| encrypted blocks of data if served a warrant but can't tell
| even what your file names are in those encrypted blobs.
|
| What specifically do you have in mind?
| vmception wrote:
| No, it doesn't.
|
| There was a time period where people were trying to use/put
| services in Iceland or Switzerland because they weren't part of
| a known default sharing arrangement and people completely
| relied on poor interpretations of laws acting like the
| government took a completely hands off approach to data. The
| reality is that absent a treaty, these places can all choose
| respond to foreign warrants and often times do.
|
| China and Russia being notably separate from the rest of the
| world, and also large areas.
| SahAssar wrote:
| > The reality is that absent a treaty, these places can all
| choose respond to foreign warrants and often times do.
|
| The question shouldn't be if they "can" the question should
| be if they "can be forced to and be legally required not to
| disclose it".
|
| There is a reason American companies have tried to hack
| around the law with warrant canaries.
| guerrilla wrote:
| It depends entirely on your thread model. If you're trying to
| avoid persecution by one of the 5-eyes and not any of the
| others, then yes, obviously it matters. For example, for
| dissidents, leakers, activists, etc. Having someone else spy on
| you who doesn't care about you and what you're doing isn't as
| big of a deal in such cases.
| maps7 wrote:
| I switched to HEY earlier this year for email and so far so good!
|
| Google maps is probably the product I am most dependent on.
| simplehuman wrote:
| It's risky.. hey does not have custom domains
| twicetwice wrote:
| Yet--as soon as they do, I'll probably jump to them. I'm
| using Zoho right now. That's the nice thing about having your
| email address at your own domain--I can move freely from
| provider to provider while using the same address!
| flurdy wrote:
| I also blogged a fortnight ago about the same degoogling process.
| https://blog.flurdy.com/2020/08/degoogling.html
|
| My problem as I mention is that I am at the same time
| regoogling...
| dorchadas wrote:
| Yep. I'd love to degoogle my personal stuff, but my work stuff
| has to be Google (I'm a teacher, and all our stuff is run
| through Google). Plus, my university alumni account is through
| Google, which would be annoying to change as that's how I've
| gotten in touch with a lot of useful contacts I've made.
| minton wrote:
| Good luck finding an alternative to YouTube without trash
| content. I can't imagine any competition anytime soon.
| rootsudo wrote:
| I enjoy while reading that page on extensions to use, it's a list
| of what can be normally accomplished by browser settings.
|
| Are you expected to run 25 extensions? Many which do similar
| things and can be done by forcing the browser to delete cookies
| upon quit/exit/restart?
|
| If the idea is a buffet, then what's the point? You're going to
| have a gap and DNS is going to be your weakpoint.
| nuker wrote:
| > Are you expected to run 25 extensions?
|
| Yeah, that makes the article unusable. They should've split the
| list to 'must have' and 'others'.
| gerash wrote:
| I think the mistake Google is making is not charging high prices
| a la. Apple for their products. It'd result in a big drop in user
| base initially but over time people will respect it more and stop
| writing up articles on how to stop using a free ad supported
| product in favor of a set of random toy projects
| simplehuman wrote:
| If anything it will help people realize they are being toyed
| around by Google and there are better products out there
| amelius wrote:
| I wonder why more big corporations don't ban Google.
|
| Through search alone, Google knows exactly what other big
| corporations are up to (perhaps even better than the corporations
| know themselves). That is something that should scare companies.
| I know GMail has been banned for this reason in a lot of places,
| but search is just as important.
| awestroke wrote:
| The list of alternatives just makes me lose hope of cutting out
| Google. They are lightyears ahead of the alternatives in so many
| categories.
| jacobkania wrote:
| I agree in some cases that the open source alternatives aren't
| good enough, so I've done a mix of using things on this list,
| and switching to Apple alternatives (when needed). Got an
| iPhone, and using some of the Apple things has made it much
| easier.
|
| I recently de-googled myself almost completely (still have a
| couple domain names with them, still use YouTube). Yeah Apple
| has their own issues going on too, but I am just happy to be
| mostly cut out from the Google madness.
| [deleted]
| searchableguy wrote:
| Which?
| judge2020 wrote:
| [not op] Given that Microsoft/Apple/etc. aren't mentioned, G
| Suite has no real alternative other than Zoho (Note:
| nextcloud doesn't do email, so it's arguably not a GSuite
| competitor). This list would be better titled 'free/open-
| source alternatives to Google products' since excluding the
| other big companies extends past "de-google" and more into
| "open source living", if that's a good term for it.
| [deleted]
| mikece wrote:
| Lightyears ahead, but are the alternatives good enough? I
| switched from using Gmail as the common landing spot for all of
| my email to Fastmail who in some ways is nowhere close to Gmail
| but in others are way ahead of Google. But above all else I
| know Fastmail isn't running datamining programs on my email and
| contacts list to create and sell a marketing profile about me,
| and that is worth more to me than I'm paying them for email
| service.
| chongli wrote:
| I use DDG for search full time and I've found that I need to
| use !g less and less often. For the times I do use !g I am
| finding myself increasingly disappointed in the results. I
| think Google is losing the war against spamdexing [1] and I
| think the search industry is ripe for disruptive innovation.
|
| I have seen and participated in a number of discussions here on
| HN about the potential for a new search engine that eliminates
| a lot of spam and commercial sites to allow users to find small
| sites made by real people, just like in the early days of the
| web. I hope it's not just a nostalgic impulse. I'm going to
| investigate it myself after I graduate.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamdexing
|
| _Edit: forgot to add the link for [1]_
| john-shaffer wrote:
| I agree that spamdexing is a huge problem, but could the rise
| of rel="nofollow" contribute just as much? The vast majority
| of user-generated content is marked as nofollow, but this is
| largely the same type of content that made early Google good.
| I often get better results doing a reddit search than using a
| search engine. It seems that by ignoring user-created links,
| search engines are ignoring 90-99% of the signal. The rest of
| the signal is mostly from commercial and promotional sites,
| so it's not surprising that these make up nearly all of the
| top search results.
|
| I often do want results from commercial sites such as
| nginx.com, but I want results that real people have found
| valuable and not results that some paid blog post linked to.
| oauea wrote:
| I think you forgot to expand your [1]
| autisticcurio wrote:
| If you put in a request to DDG to have entries linked to
| phrases removed from their search engine under EU GDPR or EU
| Right to be Forgotten, they will have an external law firm
| write back and tell you they get their results from Yahoo,
| Bing and other search engines and you need to contact those
| search engines direct. Google have actually been the fastest
| at getting my data out of their system, Microsoft never got
| back to me despite repeated requests, Facebook would rather
| believe Norfolk Constabulary instead of me despite being the
| copyright owner. So many criminals control your life, most of
| you dont realise it.
| actuator wrote:
| Even after using DDG for the last 5-6 years, I find myself
| always using !g with it. So much that, it has become a muscle
| memory thing and sometimes I type it involuntarily.
|
| Sure, if I just care about US specific results and I am doing
| an exact term search or maybe StackOverflow result is my
| target, DDG comes close but Google gets context of things
| much better. I keep finding much better search results that
| had more context with my search. I don't know how to
| quantify/measure this but to me Google Search is still much
| better.
| maps7 wrote:
| > it has become a muscle memory thing and sometimes I type
| it involuntarily.
|
| Same. I sometimes even type '!g' into Google itself by
| mistake
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I've found personally, that nearly everyone of my DDG
| searches results in a subsequent Google search with more
| relevant data. It sucks too because I would rather use DDG on
| principle alone. I will agree, results in Google do seem
| worse, but until someone can give Google a run for their
| money they'll continue down the path they're currently on
| which is collect all the data for profit. Also, Yandex
| images, vastly superior.
| paulcole wrote:
| DDG has been absolutely awful for me. Google has 15+ years of
| my search history at this point and the improvement that
| makes on my search results is incredible.
| TheTruth321 wrote:
| I have a hunch your life will improve dramatically if you take
| a little look at your lack of imagination. No offense.
| autisticcurio wrote:
| It isnt just Google you need to cut out of your life, all the
| global corps are complicit in building the surveillance state.
| Copyright laws means you cant check your chips on your devices
| have not become persistent backdoors into your system. You
| simply can not check the code. Goal posts will always be moved
| as you are Resource Burned fighting the system. Welcome to the
| Matrix Mr Anderson.
| amelius wrote:
| They are mostly just producing office tools. Imagine that 50
| years ago people said they couldn't stop using staplers and
| typewriters. Would a ban on these products really have doomed
| these people's lives and businesses?
| didip wrote:
| This list looks closer to r/selfhosted and that is not what most
| people want.
|
| To de-google quickly, you can just pay a different vendor like
| iCloud or FastMail or whatever Microsoft offering is.
| wintorez wrote:
| I tried. I failed. I returned. Google is like Gravity. It would
| be awesome to escape it, but it's expensive, impractical, and
| sooner or later, you will be back where you where. :(
| nuker wrote:
| > Google is like Gravity.
|
| Great comment :) What beats one body gravity is bigger body's
| gravity. I escaped to Apple few years ago, except search.
| Safari should have custom search engine setting, though. Is it
| missing because of the deal with Google for default engine?
| prox wrote:
| Where have you failed? What services are like drugs to you? ;)
| wintorez wrote:
| Search, Maps, Drive
| newsat13 wrote:
| For those into self-hosting, there's some really up and coming
| options these days - Cloudron, Yunohost, homelabos. Sandstorm
| also seems some activity again these days (come on guys!).
| Honestly, it really is not that hard to degoogle these days
| especially if you are a techie.
| tzfld wrote:
| All these self-hosted platforms would definitely not help an
| average person in de-googling himself. And these are like 99% of
| the users.
| simplehuman wrote:
| So there is no room in this world for niche products?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tomerbd wrote:
| Would you prefer a world without or with google? do you use an
| android device?
| aj_nikhil wrote:
| I have been using Duck duck go for few months now. Never missed
| Google. Slowly I will shift other services as well. It's a matter
| of societal good that we degoogle. Else Google will become
| strongest company ever created by mankind.
| Taek wrote:
| Google has gotten a lot worse over the past 2 years. The SEO
| spam has outpaced Google's ability to find actually relevant
| results.
| Natsu wrote:
| It's not just spam, using Google puts you into a bubble. Now,
| the search team will tell you they're doing it to curate the
| results to present high-quality information, but it's still a
| bubble in the end. It's very harmful if you're trying to
| understand what other people are thinking and seeing without
| filters.
| e40 wrote:
| I've been using DDG for more than a year. Just switched back a
| day or two ago. I just got sick of the terrible results. I
| don't know if Google got better or DDG/Bing got worse. A few
| months ago I started comparing search results and the Google
| ones where better and the other day I just couldn't handle
| doing double searches anymore.
|
| Really sad to me that it came to this.
| exlurker wrote:
| You can !g google in DDG when you need to. I often have to
| do, and hopefully DDG picks this up and improves their
| search.
| y2bd wrote:
| Any recommendations for email providers that support wildcard
| addresses (e.g. I can just give someone foobarbaz@y2bd.email
| without having manually set it up beforehand and it works)? I
| currently use ProtonMail which does support this, but PM is still
| lacking in terms of usability. I looked at some of the other
| well-known mail providers and was surprised to see that this
| wasn't as supported as I'd expect (or, at least, they don't
| prominently advertise this in their docs).
| itzael wrote:
| Fastmail supports regex and wildcards off the top of my head,
| as I have them set up with my own personal domain. My financial
| accounts for example are in the format of
| "bank+xxxxx@domain.tld"
| y2bd wrote:
| Do you know if they're required to use the +alias format?
| I've been burnt in the past by bad contact forms silently
| stripping out special characters out of email addresses.
| zelly wrote:
| The author of this should start with the root name server for his
| domain
| simplehuman wrote:
| Rome wasn't built in a day. Take small steps at a time, nothing
| wrong with it.
| hu3 wrote:
| That is a really small step to have missed.
| major505 wrote:
| For e-mail I use kolab. Nothing special. But covers email,
| calendar and a little storage for a fair price.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| I am currently running a degoogled Android phone. Hardest part
| has been mapping -- OsmAnd lacks many points of interest as well
| as Los Angeles street numbers. I am not looking forward to having
| to go by cross streets and looking up points of interest in a
| separate app (Acastus Photon).
| carlinmack wrote:
| if you don't already, contributing to OpenStreetMap from your
| phone is easy and feels very rewarding. I recommend
| StreetComplete for beginners and OSM Go! once you want to start
| editing features
| commoner wrote:
| Magic Earth (closed source freeware) uses maps from
| OpenStreetMap, but also has data for street numbers in certain
| regions including the US.
|
| https://www.magicearth.com
|
| It's a convenient middle ground between Google Maps and OsmAnd
| until the FOSS apps improve.
| meabed wrote:
| Thinking that other corporates won't use your data is
| surprisingly naive! Apple use privacy as a brand value and not
| because the company or shareholders really cares, if there
| business dry out, you think they won't use your data. same goes
| for all corporates. I find it most important is you get best
| service no matter what company is / I wouldn't mind if company
| use my data to give me and Other users better service and benefit
| in the process! You would do the same if you build your own
| product!
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| You may not have gmail, but if most of your recipients are on
| gmail they got all your mail anyways.
| SllX wrote:
| There are plenty of YouTube alternatives if you're looking to
| just host a video somewhere; but if you're looking to grow an
| audience or have eclectic tastes, then there is not a reasonable
| alternative to YouTube yet. You can have every single other video
| service's app on your iPad or Apple TV or bookmarked in your
| browsers and all of them combined will not match the selection
| and breadth and discoverability of YouTube. They've had some
| controversies and even personally annoyed me a few times, but
| YouTube is still one of the web's jewels.
| plexiglas wrote:
| Several months ago I took small steps towards this direction.
|
| It started with downloading Firefox on desktop and web. I love
| Firefox mobile. It's performant and supports multiple tabs. Also
| comes in Dark Mode.
|
| Next came email, which was difficult. I'm still transitioning.
| Protonmail was my pick because of the price point and
| ProtonCalendar (currently in beta). Gmail and Gcal are deeply
| integrated and wanted an alternative that could offer a similar
| experience. The only con here is that ProtonCalendar is web only
| (please support on mobile soon, Protonmail!).
|
| Duckduckgo is a solid search alternative. Results are quality.
| Between these services, browsing is a joy again.
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| Organising contributions about de-googling on a Microsoft
| platform seems rather like out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire to
| me.
| kej wrote:
| I like the irony of hosting this site on a Google-operated TLD.
| franksvalli wrote:
| Thought you were joking, but unfortunately you weren't...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.dev
|
| Just how many parts of the stack does Google have its fingers
| in?
|
| EDIT:
|
| Consider this:
|
| 1. a user at home, wearing a Fitbit walks over to their
| computer, with their Nest camera recording their movements
|
| 2. they open their Chromebook, which uses Chrome OS
|
| 3. browses to their Gmail inbox with Chrome, and clicks on a
| link in one of their emails, sent by a friend using a Google
| Pixel phone running Android.
|
| 4. via their Fiber ISP
|
| 5. using Public DNS (8.8.8.8)
|
| 6. transfers between the US and Europe via the Grace Hopper
| subsea cable
|
| 7. transfers with HTTP/2 (based on SPDY)
|
| 8. to the website on the .dev TLD.
|
| Google is in every step above. Thankfully the webpage doesn't
| use AMP, or Google would be in that step as well. And good
| thing it's not a page built on Angular, or hosted in Google
| Cloud...
| techsupporter wrote:
| Especially one that Google weren't even going to let the rest
| of us use (an entire "generic" top-level domain to use as a
| globally-routable in-house domain...) and only capitulated
| after it seemed like the pressure on ICANN might cause them to
| Do Something About That.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Have context? Algolia search isn't working well for me, or I
| don't know which keywords would lead me to the story.
| techsupporter wrote:
| Here's a story from The Reg in 2015: https://www.theregiste
| r.com/2015/03/13/google_developer_gtld...
|
| They quote from Google's application for .dev in 2013: "The
| proposed gTLD will provide Google with direct association
| to the term 'dev', which is an abbreviation of the word
| 'development'. The mission of this gTLD, .dev, is to
| provide a dedicated domain space in which Google can enact
| second-level domains specific to its projects in
| development."
|
| Google finally opened it to registration in 2019, four
| years later:
| https://www.theregister.com/2019/02/21/google_launches_dev/
|
| (Google also added .dev to the HSTS preload list so
| browsers expect names in that domain to only be reachable
| via HTTPS, thus breaking in-house uses of .dev.)
| SahAssar wrote:
| > (Google also added .dev to the HSTS preload list so
| browsers expect names in that domain to only be reachable
| via HTTPS, thus breaking in-house uses of .dev.)
|
| Anyone using .dev for that was already broken per the
| spec. There are TLDs for those cases, they are .test,
| .local and .invalid.
| VLM wrote:
| You can put the effort in on your schedule to degoogle, or wait
| for them to discontinue services where you have to degoogle on
| their priorities plans and schedule.
|
| You'll note the list doesn't have solutions to replace Google
| Reader, or Google Music, or G+.
|
| Someday I'm sure I'll have to replace Google Domains and Calendar
| and YouTube. Maybe I should do that on my schedule instead of
| waiting for google to decide for me.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| That's how I got rid of my Google+ posting history for sure.
| firebaze wrote:
| Our company is degoogling by switching from angular to react, but
| of very profane causes: we don't trust them anymore based on
| their sunsetting history. Maybe that'll be the driving force.
|
| We're a (by far) market leading B2C & B2B company in a "non-
| shithole" G7 country.
|
| Yes, Facebook is not a real improvement, but at least they eat
| their own dog food!
| mikece wrote:
| The hardest service to part with is Google Analytics. Sure, there
| are some awesome and open source alternatives but you're either
| paying a lot for them or you have to set up/maintain
| servers/VMs/VPS for the app, the databases, backups, etc.
| simonkafan wrote:
| It's interesting to see how Google turned from a respected
| company everyone wanted to work at to a "persona non grata"
| within just a few years. I wonder what were the main reasons for
| this change?
| gerash wrote:
| Perhaps heavy negative campaigning previously by Microsoft
| (Scroogled?) and still by Murdoch's media outlets had at least
| some effects. Their fail fast, watch growth metics and bad
| product leadership also don't help
| corobo wrote:
| Just calendar automations to go!
|
| Edit: aww, they bought nest didn't they. Dammit Google you weirdo
| Borg creep.
|
| Oh yeah people use their DNS to resolve my domains.. and every
| site that uses them for hosting.. and my work email..
|
| oh wait youtube
| fossuser wrote:
| I dropped all google services and it wasn't that hard.
|
| The most tedious part is moving accounts from your gmail to your
| new email (I switched to using my own domain backed by fastmail).
|
| Even with a password manager and a list of all my accounts this
| took me an entire day. You also learn how terrible most non-
| software company account management is.
|
| On a lot of sites changing email is impossible. On some it lets
| you do it, but doesn't actually delete the old one on the backend
| so you get emails to both (and it becomes impossible to turn off
| notifications on the old one).
|
| One site couldn't handle custom email domains, one site told me
| to create a new account and ignore the old one. One site changed
| my email, but still makes me login with my old email as the user,
| etc.
|
| I ended up using an alias for the less trustworthy sites and
| filing as many CCPA requests as I could to the companies to
| delete accounts (naturally the sites bad about accounts are bad
| about this too).
|
| The only google service that is really relevant and hard to
| replace is YouTube. I plan to delete my old google account and
| have a fresh one with everything turned off that I only use for
| YouTube.
|
| Other than that though, it's been a lot simpler than I thought it
| would be. Google is starting to feel like Yahoo to me, a company
| without clear vision or purpose.
|
| They better hope their ad revenue doesn't decay.
| darrmit wrote:
| I did the same several years ago. Dropped a GMail account I had
| for ~10+ years and switched to Fastmail. I hard deleted the
| account. In hindsight I wish I hadn't _deleted_ it but I've
| really only run into that on a very small number of occasions.
|
| I too switched to Fastmail and have been happy. I have a new
| Google account I use with YouTube and very occasionally Google
| Docs/Sheets, but I run it in a container tab in Firefox.
|
| If you have a password manager and have been using it for
| awhile it makes things a lot easier since you can identify what
| you have tied to the account. I had over 100 sites tied to my
| GMail account and was able to mostly clean it up in a Saturday.
| abawany wrote:
| The thought of arbitrary shutdown and their 'legendary'
| customer service got me moving off Google services. I started
| with Runbox using my own domains, which works well though some
| emails just never got delivered. I'm now on a combination of
| Runbox, Mailo, and Mailbox.org with long-term prepaid plans and
| I'm satisfied - I'll probably prune at some point but the
| prices are so reasonable that the urgency to do so is not
| there. Support by Mailo and Runbox has been excellent.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| > The most tedious part is moving accounts from your gmail
|
| Every time google has done something to piss me off over the
| last few years, I have channeled that into migrating a few
| accounts away from google. It's a good way to unwind and has
| the bonus of being an action that speaks louder than words.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| Do you use complicated Gmail filters? What did you use instead
| of them after migrating? Also, any Google Apps Scripts?
| fossuser wrote:
| No google apps scripts for me so I didn't have to deal with
| that.
|
| My email style is inbox everything and route emails to
| folders or delete on read.
|
| If there's something I'm always routing without reading then
| I unsubscribe.
|
| Workflow may not be for everyone, but it keeps my email under
| control and organized.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| Ah thanks. Sounds like you had it quite easy to be honest,
| and you must not get a lot of emails at all. Not every
| email is an action item for me--many are just for record-
| keeping purposes and later searchability, though I have
| certain filters for those to mark the occasional ones that
| require action. I would go absolutely insane if I had to
| look for even 0.1 seconds at every email.
| fossuser wrote:
| The fastmail filters are supposedly pretty good, but I
| can't personally vouch for them.
|
| I also have a lot of email for record keeping (amazon
| orders etc.) I just route those to folders myself.
|
| You're right though that I probably have it easier than
| most generally.
| neckardt wrote:
| Is fastmail the best email service provider these days? I
| switched my own domain to them a while ago, but then abandoned
| it when I heard about the new laws in Australia.
| abawany wrote:
| I use a combination of Mailo, Mailbox.org, and Runbox with my
| domains. They have their varying quirks but I am happy with
| my choice esp. wrt. their host countries.
| loh wrote:
| What new laws in Australia are you referring to? I did a
| quick search and I saw a lot about anti-spam laws (which is
| great), but how does that affect switching your own domain to
| fastmail?
| zahllos wrote:
| The grandparent comment is likely referring to the TOLA
| Act, which allows Australian police and intelligence
| agencies to issue for example technical assistance requests
| to decrypt or otherwise get access to whatever data they
| want.
|
| As I understand it the oversight is relatively minimal and
| any company operating on Australian soil can be subject to
| such a request. Here's their government web page on it:
| https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-
| portfolios/natio...
|
| It passed around the end of 2018 and a lot of Australian
| companies (e.g. Atlassian) were not fans of it.
| fossuser wrote:
| I treat email as an insecure mostly public form of
| communication.
|
| This is particularly true when most of the people you're
| emailing have gmail anyway.
|
| Things like proton mail make no sense to me in that context.
|
| Fastmail works well and has design incentives aligned with
| the user, I thought they were the best of the options
| available when I switched.
| submeta wrote:
| Same here: Migrated all my gmail accounts to Fastmail. Took me
| two days. Migrated Google Docs to Dropbox. And replaced Google
| Sheets and Doc with a Microsoft subscription (MS Word and MS
| Excel).
|
| Then there's the search engine. I tried hard to replace Google
| Search with DDG, but I have to admit that Google gives me
| better search results. Still I would love to leave this also
| behind.
|
| Finally there is youtube for me. Ain't no alternative I know
| about.
|
| It's hard to leave google completely behind.
|
| Edit: Replaced Chrome first with Safari, then with Firefox and
| never looked back.
|
| Edit 2: Moved all my photos from Google's cloud solution to
| iCloud when I migrated from Android to iDevices.
|
| Edit 3: Fastmail (although a rather smallish company) do a
| phantastic job with their mail service. Their contact
| management and calendar are also superb. Fastmail + MailMate on
| MacOS are a dream-team.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Then there's the search engine. I tried hard to replace
| Google Search with DDG, but I have to admit that Google gives
| me better search results. Still I would love to leave this
| also behind._
|
| Try Searx[1]. It's a search engine aggregator that works with
| DDG, Google, and dozens of other search engines. You can
| self-host it or use one of the public instances.
|
| [1] https://github.com/asciimoo/searx
| djeiasbsbo wrote:
| I use searx and it's great. There are a lot of instances as
| well, this site has a list: https://searx.space/
|
| There even are some which are accessible over Tor.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| Hasn't firefox been defunded and likely to no have a future?
| submeta wrote:
| If that was the case I'd fall back to Safari. Even though
| my browsing experience wouldn't be the same anymore (using
| a dozen addons in Firefox).
| xigency wrote:
| As far as I can tell they canned most of the Firefox teams
| driving new features, so that's how I read the situation.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| DDG works well enough for me on anything but programming. The
| moment I need to search for anything programming related,
| Google works much better for me.
| prophesi wrote:
| I'd recommend StartPage; essentially a proxy for Google.
| nowa1000 wrote:
| Fastmail also wants a phone number. I no longer know what
| mail service to use apart from setting it all up myself.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| mailbox.org does not require a phone number. It also
| includes its own calendar sync and online office
| suite(although I've never really tried the office
| functionality myself).
|
| I've been using it for a few years now and I can't
| complain.
| prox wrote:
| I like protonmail myself, take a look at that.
| the_af wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what's the benefit of replacing Google Docs
| with Dropbox? I seem to remember HN's readership is
| occasionally hostile to Dropbox. Myself, I use it but the
| same drive that would have me ditch Google would also make me
| ditch Dropbox... (I haven't reached that point, though)
| lrissman wrote:
| For my use case, I choose to be mostly serverless -- I use
| Resilio Sync. It's not a perfect solution as they still
| host the tracker and if one device cannot find another then
| it routes via their servers, but otherwise all my documents
| are stored on my devices.
|
| Another feature lacking is sharing with a non-resilio user
| is not possible with Resilio Sync.
| jszymborski wrote:
| You can also try SyncThing, which works in a similar
| manner, but it's FOSS and you can host your own tracker.
| fossuser wrote:
| I ditched both for similar reasons.
|
| I didn't have a really strong need for either though and I
| do use iCloud to sync among my apple devices.
| submeta wrote:
| I also use iCloud for all my iDevices. It's not fast or
| as flexible as Dropbox but privacy wise I prefer them
| over any other cloud sync solution.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| iCloud is the only one with servers in China, so it is
| objectively the worst privacy-wise.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| You misunderstand the situation. Chinese users, in China,
| connect to iCloud servers in China.
|
| They are not used for anyone outside China.
| submeta wrote:
| My first impulse was to move away from everything google. I
| don't know much about any wrong-doings of Dropbox. Maybe I
| need to do some research.
| gurkendoktor wrote:
| This did it for me: https://www.drop-dropbox.com/
|
| But if it hadn't, then probably this:
| https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-
| uploads/...
|
| Dropbox was such a great and conceptually simple tool,
| having a kernel extension for smarter syncing feels like
| a step into Enterprise lala land.
| ta17711771 wrote:
| Their board list probably has some good hints.
| texasbigdata wrote:
| Conceptually, using what the SEO community feels google
| does every time google does an algorithm change that
| muddles SEM / organic after a revenue drop (source: mozcom
| 2019), you would have to assume they would keep marginally
| pushing incremental borders to ameliorate any drop or
| "lower than wall street expected growth" in ad revenue. So
| the OPs approach to fully migrate is consistent with that
| world view.
| colordrops wrote:
| If it's about privacy, you can still use google search
| through various proxy search engines as others have
| mentioned.
| john-shaffer wrote:
| I'm not sure if this will work. Google results are
| absolutely horrible for me, but not for my brother. It may
| be because they don't have a profile on me, but they have
| years of data on him. Using a proxy search engine may
| result in degraded results for someone who is currently
| getting good results from Google search.
| chris_f wrote:
| _> It may be because they don't have a profile on me, but
| they have years of data on him..."_
|
| That might be true, but I'm not sure. Outside of local
| searching I am skeptical of the benefits of filter
| bubbling.
|
| I think it is just as likely that you and your brother
| have different opinions of relevance (even if you were
| both returned the same exact results unrelated to past
| activity), and the relevance decisions Google makes more
| align with your brothers perspective.
|
| I am the creator of one of the search engines [0] named
| in the post. It will return the same exact organic
| results no matter who you are or what your prior searches
| were. Feel free to give it a go with your brother and see
| how it compares for both of you. For organic results, it
| works like DuckDuckGo does with Bing, but the difference
| is the main source of our organic results are actually
| from Google.
|
| [0] https://www.runnaroo.com/
| submeta wrote:
| That's a good perspective. Never thought about it that way.
| arkitaip wrote:
| Another Fastmail user here. What's missing for me are Android
| widgets for mail, calendar and note-taking. Also, their note-
| taking app needs some work.
| XCSme wrote:
| Is Microsoft Office really so much better than Google Docs in
| terms of privacy? Or is mostly just the "I hate Google,
| others are probably better" idea?
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| The mere fact that Microsoft actually has real customer
| support and implements features alone makes it better.
|
| I was trying to rotate non-image / non-word-art text in a
| Google Docs table cell the other day and it's literally
| impossible. I ended up having to create it as word art and
| position it as an image so it appears to be in the table
| but actually is on top of it
|
| When I searched for Google support threads on how to rotate
| text in Docs, I only found forum posts by Google support
| agents stating that you can't do it, which read to me
| approximately as "fuck you go away."
| submeta wrote:
| I received many documents in that format in the past.
| Actually that isn't the case anymore. I just have thousands
| of legacy documents in doc/x and xlsx format on my
| computer. Other than that I don't use MS Word to create
| documents anymore. I prefer Emacs/Org + pandoc.
| gabruoy wrote:
| Newpipe has completely replaced my Youtube usage since I mostly
| use it on mobile, and it lets you save your subscriptions
| locally. Its actually really nice and imo superior to the
| dumbed down Youtube app used nowadays anyway. Freetube is the
| same idea but for desktop, but I've found it to be much buggier
| in using it, so I occasionally just use youtube in a private
| tab and directly search for a video on desktop, usually after
| seeing in my Newpipe feed. Both of these are listed in the
| original list, but they deserve special shoutouts since YouTube
| is the site with the most universality within Google's
| ecosystem. Also many of your favorite video creators may
| already use services like LBRY and Bitchute.
| fossuser wrote:
| It's less about the product to me and more about the content.
|
| YouTube has the content I want to watch, creators that use
| YouTube rely on it for their revenue and recommendation
| algorithm.
|
| Until that problem is fixed the alternatives won't work.
| gabruoy wrote:
| Newpipe and Freetube are YouTube frontends, so all the
| content is there just without having to sign in. If you
| only really use a subscriptions list and directly related
| videos as your way to find youtube content, it's a drop in
| replacement. If you want to use google's recommendation
| algorithm though,I don't think anyone is going to be able
| to recreate that experience any time soon.
| fossuser wrote:
| Thanks, that's good to know - I'll check those out.
| keb_ wrote:
| I also moved all my e-mail off Gmail and onto Migadu using my
| own domains. This ensures that even if Migadu goes under, I
| could swifty move to another service and keep my same e-mail
| addresses (for the record, Migadu is awesome).
|
| Like you mentioned in another comment, it _did_ take me some
| time to move all my accounts over (about 2 days worth), but I
| 'm so happy I did.
| hx2a wrote:
| How well does Migadu handle spam filtering? I recently
| switched from Google to AWS Workmail and get spam and junk I
| never saw before.
| keb_ wrote:
| Quite well in my experience... sometimes too well. When you
| sign up with Migadu, you are essentially your own
| postmaster and can set how aggressive you want to filter
| spam on the domain level as well as per mailbox.
| maps7 wrote:
| Lots of text on Migadu's site but no pictures of what the
| inbox looks like
| keb_ wrote:
| I think they appeal to powerusers that probably already use
| a client like Thunderbird. :) However, their webmail client
| is just RainLoop, which you can find a demo of here:
| https://www.rainloop.net/try-now/
|
| Also, they are currently collaborating with sourcehut to
| develop a new webmail client to replace RainLoop. For the
| record, I like RainLoop quite a bit and find it to be very
| speedy.
| Shacklz wrote:
| > The only google service that is really relevant and hard to
| replace is YouTube.
|
| For following channels, I personally use Feedly and can only
| recommend it - it's not _exactly_ the same but for me it comes
| close enough.
| actuator wrote:
| I know it is easy to hate on big companies but how do you leave
| them when credible alternatives are not even close in
| productivity/performance.
|
| I tried leaving Macbook, but whenever I have tried the
| alternatives(even Thinkpad with Ubuntu), Macbook still seems to
| be at the sweet spot of life time ownership cost/performance. I
| do care about repairability, good keyboards etc. but I do have
| to look at things in balance.
|
| On just principles, I tried switching to DDG, Gmail
| alternatives like Hey etc, Maps alternatives but they are not
| even close to making your life easy. At the end of the day, I
| really don't want to take time categorising every email, handle
| spam on my own, worrying about data security. Services like
| Gmail seem far superior to alternatives to me.
|
| Edit: Lastly, I would add one can pay for Gsuite and then Gmail
| etc. are ad free. I doubt they would be mining paid Gsuite
| user's data since companies use that.
| fossuser wrote:
| I have a MacBook and it's great, I also have an iPhone. It's
| the business model that matters to me more. It's not a "hate
| on big companies" thing.
|
| In fact the big software companies usually have better
| security (google included) because they have some of the
| world's best security people.
|
| I try to avoid companies that have an incentive to collect
| user information for ad targeting. Apple doesn't have that
| (and they've also made privacy a brand thing now so they're
| even better than average).
|
| Gmail was great when it came out, but today it's a pretty
| mediocre product. Fastmail is actually _better_ and I don't
| say that as someone making excuses for non-google services.
| Their docs and custom domain support are really great. Their
| support for aliases is also great. They have good fancy
| workflow options I just don't need so I don't use.
|
| DDG was worse for a long time, but for the last year or so
| it's become good enough for me to make default. I
| occasionally g! to run a google query, but that's probably
| only 10% of the time (and of those only half are probably
| actually good).
| actuator wrote:
| Well, if business model is what you are worried about. If
| people are fine with paying for email services, you can
| even pay for Gsuite and then no ads on even Gmail and even
| custom domain support. I am not sure on this but I doubt
| they would be mining any paid Gsuite user's data. Also,
| even in free you can turn off personalized ads and they
| would no longer be related to your data.
|
| The thing is as you mentioned, with something as personal
| as email, docs or drive, I would trust a big company to
| keep it safe. Specially one that has historically has had a
| very good track record of it. Google hires some of the best
| offensive security guys, some of them you can see in
| Project Zero.
|
| My experience with DDG hasn't been good at all with
| anything other than simple term search or website search.
| fossuser wrote:
| I think that's a reasonable position to take and you
| won't find any disagreement from me.
|
| I like supporting software companies where the product is
| their main focus (I think the ad driven business model is
| a corrupting influence on design).
|
| It can also be tedious to go through all the settings and
| make sure things remain the way a user would want them. I
| like working with a company that has incentives aligned
| with the user.
|
| On DDG, I would have said the same thing not that long
| ago. Everyone will have their own threshold for what's
| good enough for them.
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| Apple's privacy protecting actions only apply in countries
| where they can go through with it. Here's one example where
| they can't protect your privacy. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-
| insigh...
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah I'm with you there, I find western companies making
| exceptions for China pretty unethical and upsetting:
| https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
|
| I think it's wrong and something they shouldn't do.
| hellofunk wrote:
| > Gmail was great when it came out, but today it's a pretty
| mediocre product.
|
| Gmail has actually gotten super slow to me, I'm not sure
| what the problem is. Their site loads slowly, navigating
| around it is slow, the whole UX is slow. It didn't used to
| be that way. I've considered migrating for that reason
| alone, let alone any opinion I have of the company.
| texasbigdata wrote:
| This is how superhuman mail came about. Silly paid
| solution to a UX problem, but would recommend as a
| practical workaround if gmail is a major bottleneck to
| your day job productivity
| actuator wrote:
| Yeah, Gmail hasn't become that fast with loading etc.
| considering how much internet has improved. That is one
| place where I think they can improve a lot.
|
| It also might be related to all the smart auto
| compose/grammar features they have been adding, which do
| really improve your workflow but might add just more
| resources to load/parse on page load.
| hddherman wrote:
| > I tried leaving Macbook, but whenever I have tried the
| alternatives(even Thinkpad with Ubuntu)
|
| Perhaps the change was made more difficult by the fact that
| you changed two variables at once: the OS (macOS -> Ubuntu)
| and the hardware (Macbook -> ThinkPad). Something to
| consider.
| dnr wrote:
| I concur with the other comments that Fastmail is actually
| better than Gmail these days: the web UI is much faster and
| nicer, the Android app is not perfect but pretty decent,
| filtering and customization options are better.
|
| My only potential concerns are: spam (I still get most email
| to my gmail address and imported by fastmail, which filter
| out spam on the gmail side, so I don't have a good sense of
| their own spam filter), and overall security (their own
| production security as well as resistance to account
| takeovers, etc.)
| texasbigdata wrote:
| Stupid question but why not just forward if all your other
| activity is off of google? Do you believe the gmail data
| capture is high enough that your otherwise complete migration
| would be compromised?
| fossuser wrote:
| Totally reasonable question.
|
| I haven't deleted the old account yet and do have it
| importing right now (that's a good strategy for catching any
| straggling accounts or friends you haven't given your new
| email too).
|
| I don't have a good answer beyond some weird sense of
| aesthetic tidiness. I have a dash of wanting to compulsively
| organize things, so having the old account bothers me
| irrationally.
| dheera wrote:
| How do you deal with work situations that want you to use
| Google Hangouts, Docs, or Calendar?
| fossuser wrote:
| I'm lucky that I don't have any of that at work.
|
| If I did I would need a google account just for that purpose.
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| Google's purpose is to help the NSA circumvent congress. Google
| is here to stay until further notice.
| Efuveo wrote:
| This thread is filled with juicy dumb comments, but you
| certainly win.
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| Seriously? Have you not read any of the snowden leaks?
| fossuser wrote:
| The leaks suggested the NSA was accessing information via
| taps between unencrypted data center connections, not via
| direct support or collaboration from the companies.
|
| After the leaks google encrypted those connections.
|
| The other parts are within FISA and other parts of the
| law. There may be disagreements with the transparency or
| way this stuff works, but your first comment was overly
| broad and mostly inaccurate.
| [deleted]
| ditonal wrote:
| If you're going to astroturf don't use a brand new account.
| jacquesm wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing,
| shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It
| degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're
| worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll
| look at the data. "
| dylan604 wrote:
| I hereby provide notice they can feel free to go away.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I needed way longer than a day to get all of the accounts I
| created over the years with my gmail. I found I had to check my
| gmail for over a year until I was confident that I wasn't
| missing any accounts.
|
| Still use YouTube and Google search. They have no (decent)
| competition still.
| dnr wrote:
| An entire day! I wish it were that easy. My password manager
| says I have 331 accounts using my gmail address. I figure it'll
| take me a year to move everything if I spend a couple hours a
| week. I categorized them into tiers based on importance and
| still ended up with 63 in the top "important or regularly use"
| tier and 59 in the next "will probably use again" tier. The
| lower tiers, I'll probably not even bother with.
| searchableguy wrote:
| There is an automatic email change option in few password
| managers but yeah, that's one of the reasons why I have been
| redirecting lot of things using my own domain name. If in
| future, some service go down - I can reroute that. If google
| deprecate gmail, no worries.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Changing it in the password manager is the easy part. The
| tricky one is changing the account details on the different
| site and switching from @gmail.com to
| @myfancydomain.whatever
| fossuser wrote:
| I have 163 accounts for clarity, so it'd probably take you
| two days.
|
| I do mean an entire day, I basically did it for 12 hours.
|
| Have to find some ways to entertain myself during the
| pandemic lockdown :).
| DavideNL wrote:
| Same here, but I simply forwarded ALL incomming e-mail from
| my old Gmail to my new email address. That way, i did not
| have to change all website accounts at once.
|
| So I slowly updated a lot of less important accounts/websites
| to my new email address over the period of 1+ year.
| ehsankia wrote:
| The incremental approach is always the better solution imo.
| For email, for password managers, for any big migration.
| People always put off saying it'd be a lot of work, but if
| you start at any given time, within 1-2 year you'll be
| fully migrated.
|
| This is what I did for password manager, I migrated each
| website on a per-use basis. Every time I used a website
| with a manual password, I replaced it with a generated
| password. This automatically prioritizes more important
| websites, which you tend to use more often.
|
| For email, similarly, you migrate to the new email, and you
| give people the new one gradually too. Eventually anything
| that's left over will be spam, and that'll actually be your
| "less-important" secondary address you can give to websites
| you don't care about.
| 7tsfmCAusrQ wrote:
| I would love to see a similar list for de-Apple-ing. Apple's
| anticompetitive and monopolistic practices with the App Store,
| the terrible direction MacBooks have taken, its price gouging on
| hardware... the list goes on. Google is saintly by comparison.
| hu3 wrote:
| Plus Apple makes devices that harm the environment by being
| hard to repair.
| [deleted]
| afro88 wrote:
| There's no need for a list. To de-Apple, in the context of
| those 3 examples, is to not buy or use Apple hardware. That's
| it.
|
| Apple is saintly by comparison.
| HIP_HOP wrote:
| Interesting article. Thanks for sharing it.
| zackmorris wrote:
| Looking at this list, I would propose that it's easier to
| regulate and tax Google than it is to free ourselves of it via
| the private sector.
| dan1234 wrote:
| That's a possible solution if you're in the US, and trust the
| regulators, but what of the rest of the world?
| w0mbat wrote:
| I am old so I have worked for various big and small tech
| companies, including most of the ones being discussed here.
|
| Google is the one I would trust with my data.
|
| They know how to do hosting at scale (unlike some really quite
| large and famous companies who suck at that), although not
| perfect, they have a humanist moral compass in their culture, and
| I don't expect them to go out of business.
|
| I would not make myself reliant on a niche Google product (like
| Google Reader) as those tend to vanish, but a mainstream Google
| service like GMail or YouTube is a great reliable thing. If you
| think other companies are more moral than Google, you are fooling
| yourself.
| nickelpro wrote:
| Genuinely, why should I care? What harm is likely to happen to my
| life by sticking with Google, a service provider I find
| convenient?
|
| EDIT: I don't want to be accused of fan-boying or astro-turfing.
| I just see "Avoid Big Company X because they collect your data" a
| lot and I just can't give a damn about companies collecting my
| data. Be my guest, if it means I get free stuff. My data is
| boring tech nerd data, use it to deliver relevant vacuum cleaner
| ads, I don't care. I block them anyway.
| XCSme wrote:
| I think the biggest problem is Google becoming a monopoly, when
| you rely daily on tens of their services. Than, if for some
| reason, they decide to close your account or use your data to
| "be evil", there's not much you can do.
| nickelpro wrote:
| Is there a history of Google de-activating accounts
| arbitrarily? I agree this would be a huge problem, but I'd be
| similarly devastated if my ISP stopped doing business with
| me, or any other email provider if I wasn't on gmail.
|
| True, if Google deactivated my account I'd lose a little bit
| more than just gmail, but any company I do business with
| arbitrarily cutting me off would be on the same magnitude of
| problematic. That seems like a risk you take just by doing
| business with third-parties at all.
| eyeball wrote:
| I would be screwed if google deactivated my mail account.
| So many accounts linked.
| XCSme wrote:
| I remember seeing a few cases of Google account de-
| activation every year. Not sure how often it happens, but
| it does happen. I personally use Gmail and really like it,
| I don't expect to have any problems with them, but I do
| know that my account being deleted at some point for no
| reason is a real possibility.
|
| I think that email is a bigger problem as it's the main
| connection between you and all the other services you use
| online. Lose your email address? You're going to have a
| hard time recovering the accounts on all the other
| services.
| npsomaratna wrote:
| The risk with Google is that (if you're like most of us),
| you're likely to be using several of their services. If
| you're flagged in any one of those services (for whatever
| reason), you run the risk of losing access to all of
| their services at once - including Gmail.
| nickelpro wrote:
| I totally agree with this point, it absolutely does
| happen. It's just every time I investigate a given
| incident further it is either: A) A clear ToS violation
| where Google is completely in the right with the
| suspension B) An engineering error that is fixed in a day
| or two.
|
| Which puts Google in the same camp as every other tech
| company I do business with, and every other email
| provider for that matter. Moreover, given the hundreds of
| millions if not billions of gmail users and only handful
| of suspension stories, I'm probably less likely to face
| suspension on Gmail than other platforms.
| jaynetics wrote:
| > Is there a history of Google de-activating accounts
| arbitrarily?
|
| Yes.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+%22google%
| 2...
| nickelpro wrote:
| Can you be more specific? I see two links that are
| directly related to account suspension on the front page
| of DDG. One related to Newpipe, where the comments on HN
| call it out as a likely troll, and another with a dead
| link.
| ciarannolan wrote:
| Here's a better search of this stuff:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false
| &qu...
| npsomaratna wrote:
| Example:
|
| https://support.google.com/adsense/thread/11487570?hl=en
|
| "I uploaded a YouTube video, which was a normal video in
| my eyes.. that got removed for inappropriate content and
| got my account disabled. Now my access to the gmail
| address is blocked"
|
| Being banned from Youtube because you violated their TOS
| is one thing. Losing access to Gmail at the same time,
| because everything is linked to the same Google account?
| That's excessive.
| nickelpro wrote:
| That's a fair criticism, and perhaps a good reason to not
| use Gmail. But that's not an arbitrary deactivation, and
| it doesn't support totally avoiding Google in all things.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > Is there a history of Google de-activating accounts
| arbitrarily?
|
| Absolutely. And usually the only solution is to make it
| known virally so that someone that works at Google try to
| intervene for you.
| strangescript wrote:
| People have been raising flags about this for literally decades
| now and the other shoe has yet to drop in any kind of
| meaningful way. Everyone is tracking you online, but for some
| reason we only care about it when its companies that make good
| products that we like to use. Would you rather they not target
| you with ads and sell google searches for a nickel each?
| Meanwhile, I had an ad in my gmail yesterday for Google Fi,
| sign up today, its super easy! Except I already have google fi.
| Google's ad service literally couldn't check my gmail account
| against google fi accounts (apparently).
| pydry wrote:
| >People have been raising flags about this for literally
| decades now and the other shoe has yet to drop in any kind of
| meaningful way.
|
| The threat model I work off is "fascist government seizes
| power in the United States and sequesters all data for all
| citizens from the top 15 large corporations". Then they get
| to work weeding out undesirables. This would happen, I'd
| estimate, in the space of about a month although if history
| is anything to go by, the signs will have been flashing for a
| while.
|
| You could just switch at that point, I suppose, and hope that
| something in the last 15 years of emails, chats, your entire
| contact network and your location history doesn't incriminate
| you along with the fact that you _just_ switched.
| gkoberger wrote:
| Sure, but if that happens... I think we're fucked either
| way?
|
| I think any providers would be just as susceptible (maybe
| more so; Google ostensibly has the means to protect data,
| legally and technologically), and your data would already
| be on Google's servers unless you only emailed or chatted
| with other non-Google users.
| pydry wrote:
| No, you're not fucked either way. In fact, if you're
| white, middle class, etc. you're probably better off than
| most and will be given the most leeway.
|
| If your data on google/facebook/microsoft/amazon servers
| is kept to the bare minimum (& kept innocuous), if you
| self host and if you keep your data on smaller services
| your chances of getting caught up in a dragnet operation
| are minimized. Your chances of having an elevated "risk"
| score because of some stray data point (e.g. some people
| you emailed once, or some guy's house you visited) is
| minimized.
|
| They're not going to keep track of everybody personally,
| but they will be running machine learning models all up
| and down every data point you left to pick out anything
| suspicious.
| granzymes wrote:
| Or they go after the people who have tried to hide
| themselves -\\_(tsu)_/-.
|
| I think this is a very odd thing to structure a life
| around, but then again I've never understood any kind of
| doomsday prepping.
| pydry wrote:
| I've never understood people who stock up on baked beans
| and hide in bunkers either.
|
| Maybe you're right. Maybe between the people who have
| facebook accounts they use to say bad stuff about
| dictator du jour and those who don't have facebook
| accounts at all they'll go after the latter -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| And, maybe there won't ever be a fascist dictatorship in
| the United States. After all, right wing populism is
| getting more and more unfashionable these days.
|
| Isn't it?
| jszymborski wrote:
| No, we care when those companies are giant multinational
| monopolies.
|
| Think of it this way. I walk into a mom & pop clothing store,
| and one of the sales people on the floor takes note into a
| little pad the items of clothing I touched, so that they
| might optimise their purchasing.
|
| Contrast that to one person from one of the worlds largest
| companies, following me at home, work, the shops, the pub,
| the bedroom, tallying up all the things I do so that they
| might broker that information to commercial interests, or
| more nefariously, to further cement their choke-hold on the
| ever-increasing industries which they've a financial stake
| in.
|
| One of those situations is clever business, the other is an
| Orwellian hellscape.
|
| I'll take every opportunity I can to rid myself of that
| second pursuer, thank you very much.
| nickelpro wrote:
| In either case I still bought my slacks from the clothing
| store, my pint from the tavern, and slept soundly in my
| bed. You object to the company having your information, I
| object to it being used to impact my life. I don't give a
| damn about them just having it.
|
| And thus my question, how does this affect my life?
| jszymborski wrote:
| Alphabet uses this information to expand its influence,
| be it soft power, political power, or economic power.
|
| For strong democracies to flourish, you can't have one
| corporation control the way its citizens access all
| information, from sea cables to browsers to proxying all
| the web through AMP.
|
| The impact of these things on your life are major,
| disproportionately so according to your privilege and
| station, but the causality can sometimes be subtle, so we
| just shrug and carry on.
|
| Right now, you're getting your needs met. But eventually,
| your needs, or the needs of someone you care for will be
| at a cross-roads with Alphabets best interest. Feeding
| them the information and critical mass they need to
| continue to exist now is what will allow them to take
| advantage of you in the future.
|
| This is the classic "well, MY house isn't on fire yet"
| kind of thinking that gets us all burned in the end. All
| because the browser with the pinwheel logo is more
| familiar than the one with the fox on it.
|
| I can only urge you to try to inform yourself, the
| information is unequivocally there for anyone to see,
| mass data collection by massive multinational
| corporations are limiting your civil liberties every day.
|
| https://globalnews.ca/news/3983626/google-alphabet-
| washingto...
|
| https://whyprivacymatters.org/
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_mat
| ter...
| SahAssar wrote:
| > People have been raising flags about this for literally
| decades now and the other shoe has yet to drop in any kind of
| meaningful way.
|
| Besides all the hypothetical horror scenarios I have one
| argument that at least for me is strong: I just don't want
| them to track me. In some cases (like posting this comment) I
| accept the tradeoff, but I want to be able to choose.
|
| These sort of evasive techniques are about allowing people
| who want to make that choice for themselves to also have a
| choice of participating in modern life.
| boocoo wrote:
| For one, Google could identify you since on Chrome you might
| have your name, address, and phone number saved for auto-fill,
| and sell your information to companies. They could sell your
| information to a certain company if their AI identifies you,
| for example, as a left-wing elderly male. I think the recent
| documentary that got deleted off Youtube explains it.
|
| Google also censors results a lot compared to Yahoo and
| DuckDuckGo so you'll mostly get popular sites. An example is
| how when I searched "youtube deleted documentary" Yahoo and
| DuckDuckGo got the right results but Google didn't.
|
| For Youtube, it dominates video uploading so it can delete and
| censoring things easily and all you can do is complain.
| nickelpro wrote:
| None of those things affect my life. They may be moral or
| principle concerns for you, but they're not for me.
| simplehuman wrote:
| Why should i care for your opinion? It does not affect my
| life.
|
| See, its easy to type nonsense like this.
| Razengan wrote:
| This post is not just for you.
| nickelpro wrote:
| No, but this reply was for me
| Razengan wrote:
| Your first comment was "Why should I care?" and you keep
| repeating that. Obviously this for people who do care,
| and many do.
| _def wrote:
| You could also argue that global warming probably won't
| affect you in your lifetime. It's a very egocentric way of
| looking at things.
| nickelpro wrote:
| Global warming affects every person on Earth, I don't
| think Google's data collection negatively affects a
| single digit percent of their customers, much less the
| majority. I don't get the comparison.
| millstone wrote:
| See some of the stories here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23057365
|
| People have been locked out of their Google accounts with no
| explanation and no recourse.
| simplehuman wrote:
| You shouldn't care. Same way I don't care about giving my data
| to Google. My data is precious though compared to yours, so I
| value it.
| raspyberr wrote:
| Accepting this is setting a precedent that you're happy for
| companies with a lot of power to have efficient systemic
| influence. This has _already_ (it 's barely been 10/20 years)
| started to influence the outcome of elections. Literally the
| cornerstone of a functioning democracy. And you're saying you
| don't care.
| nickelpro wrote:
| Information distributors do more than influence elections,
| they completely control them.
|
| Walter Cronkite impeached Nixon, Pulitzer and Hearst started
| the Spanish-American war, and FAANG companies, directly or
| indirectly, nudge the needle on elections. I don't see how
| Google is unique or notable in this regard.
| ciarannolan wrote:
| It's not unique in this regard, therefore it doesn't
| matter? Is that your argument?
|
| Also, comparing the relative power of newspaper men to
| Google doesn't make much sense.
| raspyberr wrote:
| With standard media because of its mass audience nature,
| it's easier to see how they influence people. The mass
| acceptance of the internet has started to push traditional
| media out but replaced it with incredibly personalised and
| thus a more effective version that is yet to have proper
| legal regulations in place.
|
| My personal thing with Google and "convenience" is that the
| convenience is with just a low barrier to entry. Once you
| set up your own workflow with "Google alternatives", the
| convenience factor disappears.
| [deleted]
| helij wrote:
| I use Zoho mainly for email but some other services as well. I
| like it very much but it cannot rival G suite or Office365 yet.
| Website states that it can though so their experience might be
| different. Text editor and spreadsheet app are way slower than
| both Google and Microsoft solutions.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Note: For password manager root accounts its better security to
| use a gmail address with 2FA as nobody is going to be able to
| hijack the gmail domain.
| maletor wrote:
| This is funny having come from a Google TLD.
| [deleted]
| marianov wrote:
| Android google maps is what keeps me going back to Google. No
| other service has all local shops, phone numbers, schedules, etc.
| blendergeek wrote:
| If a company is based in an "X eyes" nation", but the product is
| A) self-hosted and B) open source, does it matter that the
| organization the develops it is based in an "X eyes" nation?
| gramakri wrote:
| I don't think it matters if the product is selfhosted and
| opensource. That said, in my circles, people are wary about
| deploying software from specific countries even if they are
| selfhosted and opensource. I think part of the issue is that
| docker is the preferred more of deployment these days and
| sometimes it's not clear what does into the docker image (i.e
| when you don't build your own images, which you always should)
| petronio wrote:
| The risk is much lesser, but there's the possibility of
| poisoning the binaries or release package.
|
| There's also the whole "just because open source allows people
| to review code doesn't mean that they do" problem, but I don't
| expect that attack vector to be used by state actors because it
| would make the beneficiary of the attack too obvious to the
| public.
| fareesh wrote:
| Toughest ones for me would be Search, Android, YouTube. The rest
| should be easy enough.
| AtomicPlayboy wrote:
| It's becoming increasingly difficult to avoid Google with the
| upcoming Fuchsia OS designed to work everywhere and replace
| Android and also Google's upcoming SoC.
| junon wrote:
| I will never, ever install Fuchsia if I can help it. Replacing
| one Google Spyware OS with another doesn't solve anything.
| hu3 wrote:
| I will keep using Goohge products for as long as they keep
| being great.
|
| Life's too short for these extreme measures. You gotta pick
| your fights.
| usb0 wrote:
| thanks for the list but we've seen such things from time to time
| and yet no one to my knowledge ever tried to measure their
| effectiveness.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| I never considered a Gmail alternative since Gmail has
| primary/social/promotion/updates tabs and proper threading of
| replies and almost perfect spam protection. What services do the
| above things as good?
| sosborn wrote:
| I'm with you on the SPAM protection, but I find the tabs and
| threading to be god awful.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Tabs work flawlessly for me. It takes a little bit of time to
| get used to what goes where, and you can only use a subset of
| them, but in general, I love promotional emails being
| separate, so i can unsubscribe from them all in one place,
| that's my favorite.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| Love the tabs, but the threading is such a PITA thanks to
| their convoluted interface. Every time I want to selectively
| reply and change the subject line, I have do do a minor
| research project to figure it out.
| curiousmindz wrote:
| Yahoo! Mail has one really cool feature: It supports actual
| browser-like tabs. So, it is possible to open multiple email
| conversations in parallel, as well as run some searches, and
| look at various folders.
| Razengan wrote:
| I have never used Gmail and never needed to. iCloud mail has
| been good enough for 9 years.
|
| * Does not ask for phone number.
|
| * Allows _actual_ aliases (instead of a self-defeating
| YourRealAddress+Alias@Gmail.com)
|
| * Does not sneakily sign you into Search and every other Google
| service when you just want to check your email.
|
| In addition to all the privacy advantages.
| paranorman wrote:
| They haven't gotten much love on this site but I recently
| switched to hey.com after being a gmail user since beta in 2004
| and couldn't be happier. I like the "feed" for newsletter-y
| things (with a neat scroll to preview messages view) and the
| paper trail for transactions. There's also something empowering
| about the simple "thumbs up" "thumbs down" screening queue for
| new senders.
|
| I will say, however, that I never realized just how
| infrequently I receive mail that actually warrants my attention
| (let alone a reply) and that feels sort of lonely in a funny
| way.
| usb0 wrote:
| thanks for the list but we've seen such things from time totime
| yet no one ever tried to measure their effectiveness
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| If only Google were my 10th biggest problem. Try to get Exxon,
| Shell, et al out of your life who aren't violating abstract
| principles but are literally killing the planet. Then let me get
| unethically farmed or raised foods out of my life (which, thanks
| to the US preoccupation with corn and the nitrogen it requires,
| are frequently overlapping with petroleum). Then let me get
| Oracle and Microsoft out of my life. Then let me get the Murdoch
| empire out of my life. Then let me get Facebook out of my life.
| Then let me buy a consumer good that isn't designed for
| obsolescence. Then let me get intermediate middlemen in the
| healthcare system in the US out of my life. Then I'll take an eye
| at Google.
| twicetwice wrote:
| Why Microsoft over Facebook and Google? Recently I've been
| thinking that MS is the FAMGAN/whatever that I'd be most
| willing to work for, so I'm interested to hear your case.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Because I saw how they behaved in the 90s, see how much
| passive telemetry they collect with their share of the OS
| market, how much they push Windows logins with antipatterns,
| and because they own Github (when now controls npm).
|
| edit: Let me say some nice things about them. I put them
| towards the end for a reason, and they probably don't belong
| with Oracle. I don't think they are a big problem in the
| world, if at all. They aren't the company they were in the
| 90s. Gates has become one of the worlds most staggeringly
| successful humanitarians because of his direct effort and
| indirectly from the giving pledge, and it has redeemed him
| many times over again. Nadella seems like a decent person and
| truly great executive, and they have improved enormously as a
| company under him. I would probably work for them. But I
| don't have any problem with Google, either. What Microsoft
| does have is a vastly greater potential for abuse.
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