Ask HN: How to move away from Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#51

Post by blibble » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 9:52 PM UTC

hbn wrote: post #38

walrus01 wrote: post #23

> I want to eventually move away, especially gmail register your own domain name, either for personal or professional purposes take some basic security precautions on your domain registrar account, use a long complex password that's not used for any other service anywhere else on the internet, and set up some form of 2FA for logins as well. control your own authoritative DNS zonefile and choose where to set your MX r…

> register your own domain name, either for personal or professional purposes I have a question about domains, for whoever might be able to answer. I've had my own domain for a few years, a .se domain (only because it's .se and my middle name ends in that, so I was able to make the whole thing read like my name but with a dot in it) This is the Swedish TLD, which doesn't require you be a citizen to register. Is there…

> Is there any chance that the requirements for a TLD can change in the future and revoke my ability to own it?

yes, see the EU commission forcing new rules on the company running the .eu tld after brexit

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#52

Post by dankwizard » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 9:55 PM UTC

uhtred wrote: post #33

dividedbyzero wrote: post #25

I'm still looking for an alternative e-mail provider that is more privacy-conscious than Google, still works with ordinary IMAP and is based in the EU so I get to actually benefit from EU data protection. Haven't found one that ticks all boxes yet, but going with a US company doesn't appear to change much as I'm not a US citizen and hence fair game once my data is on US servers and I guess it inevitably will end up t…

I know you said based in the EU and Fastmail are based in Australia I think, but they are great. Integrates easily with email, calendar, and contacts clients using imap/caldav/carddav. What makes you consider google to be privacy conscious? Aren't they just scanning your emails 24/7 to profile you for advertising?

I'd recommend against Australian based - There are laws that state companies must be able to decrypt encrypted user data if required, and for a backdoor to be in place if they require access.

A "Data Disruption Warrant" allows them to add, copy, delete or modify your data. "Account Takeover Warrant" will remove your access to an account but still allow them full access

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#53

Post by jppope » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

throwaway67743 wrote: post #14

4kelly wrote: post #8

Fastmail for email. I used to use syncthing to maintain backups and syncing, but eventually just gave into iCloud as a compromise. Setting up and maintaining syncthing on wife and kids devices became a pain. DuckDuckGo for search. Dropping down to google when I’m stuck. Honestly I’ve found google worse for technical topics due to all the junk websites that recycle content. You’ll be fighting against the current tryin…

I really want to like ddg but it's just awful - not only are the results completely irrelevant but now it's started showing me russian language results, I'm in a country that uses the Latin alphabet.

try brave search

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#54

Post by brewdad » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

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.

I use both as I find the trails on Organic Maps easier to follow, while Magic Earth works better in cities. This is with the default map types. There might be a setting I could toggle to give me the best of both in one app.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#55

Post by awiesenhofer » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 10:01 PM UTC

amilich wrote: post #27

purplesnowflake wrote: post #20

https://app.skiff.org/ for E2EE Google Docs. Even has a direct integration to make the migration

Thanks for sharing! Happy to answer any questions.

Looks great, congrats on the funding! What I couldn't make out from the website though is: can you export pages to pdf or other formats? Or share public links to them?

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#56

Post by gregoriol » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 10:01 PM UTC

One question I've been asking myself about this migration, and didn't find all the solutions yet, is how to deal with services/websites/... I've logged into with a Google account. It's not always clear how, if even possible, to migrate from a Google SSO to a login/password.

Does anyone has thoughts on this?

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#57

Post by 1970-01-01 » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 10:03 PM UTC

I think the fast answer, unfortunately, is going to Microsoft or Apple. They aren't going anywhere.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#58

Post by delgaudm » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 10:03 PM UTC

yumraj wrote: post #31

mark_l_watson wrote: post #5

I use gmail as my backup e-mail and Google drive as one of three cloud storage services. I pay for GCP and YouTube ad-free and YouTube Music. Great non-Google services I pay for are ProtonMail, Fastmail, iCloud, and Office-365. I have played around with self-hosting options, but decided to just use Cloud services, but don’t rely on any single vendor.

Curious why both Protonmail and Fastmail? How would you rate the two if one were to use just one of those? Any experience with Zoho, if so would love your thoughts on that too..

I'm a Zoho One user and have generally been very happy with them. They have a guide[0] on how to move off the Legacy GSuite if that applies to you.

[0] https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/gsuite-to-zoho-mail-migration...

Zoho Email has been very reliable, spam protection has been satisfactory. Some minor things have bitten me, thier Zoom competitor only records audio, not video, the spreadsheets are sometimes slow to recalculate I trigger with F9 more than I'd like. But the workdrive has been on parity with GDrive, and the word Processor is more fully featured.

Zoho are very responsive for support and you do interact with a human. My "One" suite includes email, calendar, Gdocs competitor, Gdrive competitor, and also pretty much everything I need to run my small business (books, CRM, website, appointments, webinars, courses, etc..)

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#59

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 10:04 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#60

Post by jborichevskiy » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 10:07 PM UTC

gregoriol wrote: post #56

One question I've been asking myself about this migration, and didn't find all the solutions yet, is how to deal with services/websites/... I've logged into with a Google account. It's not always clear how, if even possible, to migrate from a Google SSO to a login/password. Does anyone has thoughts on this?

I've had some success requesting password resets on services I signed up with Oauth to get a chance to set an actual password. Sometimes this seems to expose the internal account management, but it really depends.