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Ask HN: How to move away from Google

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Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#131

Post by stavros »

currysausage wrote: post #111
thebean11 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail is much cheaper if you need many gigs of storage, but you don't get the encryption Proton offers.

On the upside, Fastmail is the one e-mail service that I have tested that is actually more comfortable to use than Gmail. How they manage to incorporate practically every feature I could dream of while offering a totally neat, snappy, intuitive interface across platforms is just impressive. (Testing right now and planning to move there from Gmail.) Proton looks really neat too, I just don’t like the thought of not ha…

I switched from Gmail to Fastmail years ago (it only takes a few minutes of you own your domain) and whenever I have to use Gmail (for work) it seems slow and bloated.

Fastmail is very quick to load and user-friendly, I don't miss Gmail at all.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#132

Post by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS »

keraf wrote: post #36

I moved away from Google a few years ago. I'm using the following alternatives: - Email: ProtonMail - Contacts, Calendar, Online storage: NextCloud hosted by Hetzner ( https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share ) - Phone: LineageOS (Android) -- App stores: F-Droid for most apps and Aurora store for the occasional non F-Droid apps (like the ProtonMail client) -- Maps: MagicEarth (not open source but privacy friendl…

Organic Maps is good, especially if you like hiking, and is on F-Droid

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/app.organicmaps/

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#133

Post by pkulak »

currysausage wrote: post #111
thebean11 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail is much cheaper if you need many gigs of storage, but you don't get the encryption Proton offers.

On the upside, Fastmail is the one e-mail service that I have tested that is actually more comfortable to use than Gmail. How they manage to incorporate practically every feature I could dream of while offering a totally neat, snappy, intuitive interface across platforms is just impressive. (Testing right now and planning to move there from Gmail.) Proton looks really neat too, I just don’t like the thought of not ha…

And the Fastmail mobile apps are better than the Gmail mobile apps. Way better. It's crazy.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#134

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

xfour wrote: post #69
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for Fastmail. They also championed the open JMAP standard [1] [2]. [1] https://jmap.io/ [2] https://fastmail.blog/open-technologies/jmap-new-email-open-...

The problem with the JMAP standard is that nothing seems to actually implement it. There is their proxy which was built in like a week and not updated and Cyrus. The latter which I couldn't (not for lack of effort) implement, and went back to dovecot which doesn't have an implementation.

Thunderbird

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#135

Post by crossroadsguy »

thebean11 wrote: post #75
destitude wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ProtonMail has abysmally small storage space if you receive attachments in mail frequently.

Fastmail is much cheaper if you need many gigs of storage, but you don't get the encryption Proton offers.

Fastmail doesn’t allow custom domains on it’s first tier paid plan, does it?

$50 per year - custom domain, 30GB

$30 per year - no custom domain, no IMAP, 2GB (yes, 2GB!)

That’s some pricing!

The last thing you want is use an email that’s paid and not on your domain! Fastmail’s Basic paid plan is absurd not only price/feature wise, it’s useless just for not letting custom domain use.

I would rather stick to alternatives.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#136

Post by crossroadsguy »

RicoElectrico wrote: post #43
keraf wrote: post #36

I moved away from Google a few years ago. I'm using the following alternatives: - Email: ProtonMail - Contacts, Calendar, Online storage: NextCloud hosted by Hetzner ( https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share ) - Phone: LineageOS (Android) -- App stores: F-Droid for most apps and Aurora store for the occasional non F-Droid apps (like the ProtonMail client) -- Maps: MagicEarth (not open source but privacy friendl…

An alernative to Magic Earth would be Organic Maps. https://organicmaps.app/ Though it's not as focused on driving, it seems. But may be good enough.

These apps are pretty much not useable in rest of the world.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#137

Post by zzxcvb »

I'll suggest Searx/SearXNG as a search engine. It's self-hosted, but you can find public instances at https://searx.space/

If you decide to go the self-hosted route, it's trivial to deploy with searx(ng)-docker. Being a meta-search engine, it can pull results from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, dictionaries, torrent sites, etc; this gives it a degree of customisability that traditional search engines don't have.

I'll also mention Whoogle, which serves as a libre front-end to Google, although it doesn't currently support any other search engines.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#138

Post by walrus01 »

jackthetab wrote: post #72
hbn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to know. I suppose my next question is: is there any known instances of this happening in the past? I suppose regardless, if it ever actually happened, it's not like you wake up one day and lose your domain. There would probably be time to buy a new domain and point all your accounts there before your next renewal.

I remember the sex, tech and sextech journalist had a domain, vb.ly, listed in Libya because of the .ly suffix, much like oreil.ly is today. When the PTPB found out she talked about sex they pulled her domain. So yes, The Swedish government could revoke your domain because they're the government.

maybe buying a domain controlled by the "government" in a place that has two warring claimants-to-government engaged in a civil war isn't the best idea ever.

if somebody were to ask "what's the least politically stable nation on earth right now?", libya would certainly rank in the top 10

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#140

Post by fsckboy »

ilikepi wrote: post #102
Macha wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recent one from me: "Hibernate window function" Google showed results that explain Hibernate's expression language isn't sufficient to express them and explainers on how to drop down to native queries. DDG showed me how to hibernate my windows PC.

I tried the same test, in a clean browser that should have nothing for Google to grab (beyond IP address) to correlate with my browsing habits. Of the top 10 results, Google got the right context in 7, while DDG got it in only one (the 10th in fact). I guess if you work with that particular piece of software, maybe you hit this sort of thing a lot. Thankfully, my experience is more like GP's: I only rarely try sendin…

i also checked bing, and it's the same as DDG, but if you add "SQL" to your search query they turn up a lot of the same stuff as google. Since my goal is getting rid of Google, and it's the first thing I thought to do, it works fine for me
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