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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

#81

Post by Macha »

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.

Google is catching them on the way down in my experience these days. I'm doing less and less !g, not because I like the DDG results, but because I'm just not confident in Google showing me anything useful either.

This might be just a consequence of cutting the feed of data into Google to personalise from other sources, though. Perhaps people who've thought they've been equivalent for a longer period were ahead of me on that one.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#82

Post by Tmpod »

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'll add Migadu to the existing suggestions ;^)

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#83

Post by rattray »

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 haven't seen much mention of Maps.Me, but it's another OSM-based android app I've heard good things about from Europeans and enjoyed while traveling in South America.

I haven't tried it much in the US.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#84

Post by AussieWog93 »

basisword wrote: post #74
AussieWog93 wrote: post #67

I got rid of my smartphone altogether 2 years ago and haven't missed it at all (we use my wife's phone in the car for Google Maps). Before that I tried de-Googled Android and the experience wasn't great. Many of the alternatives can ostensibly do what the Big Tech product does, but there are bizarre pitfalls that break the experience. Stuff like OSMAnd having no business names and taking literally 15 minutes to map a…

Could you explain issues you have run into by ditching the smartphone and the solutions to those issues? A few things come to mind for me: - 2-factor auth (SMS or app based). - Banking (in the UK now a lot of online purchases must also be verified through the banks app). - Navigating in your city (public transport + just finding places by foot). - Anything else you've come across that assumes everyone has a smartphon…

>- 2-factor auth (SMS or app based).

I still have an old Blackberry for SMS 2FA.

>- Banking (in the UK now a lot of online purchases must also be verified through the banks app).

We have an Android tablet at home for Chromecast. I just use that. When we're out, I don't tend to make online purchases. When push comes to shove, PayPal is a plan C.

>- Navigating in your city (public transport + just finding places by foot).

I'm one of those people who always knows where North is, and which directions main roads run in. I guess I'm just doing whatever it is that people did 50 years ago?

>- Anything else you've come across that assumes everyone has a smartphone.

I usually just ignore the COVID check-ins if they are phone only. Only one person has stopped me and immediately didn't care when I showed them my dumbphone. Apart from that, literally nothing has caused an issue.

>Also, what benefits have you found through ditching the smartphone?

I am not constantly plugged into an online hate machine. I can look around and realise that, actually, people aren't all that shit after all.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#85

Post by ericfrazier »

zorrolovsky wrote: post #12

Not sure if you do it for privacy, ethical or practical reasons, but here's my journey: I removed my life from Big Tech (FB, TW, Gmail, YT, G Drive, MS, and other anti-user/spyware/malware companies). It was surprisingly easy to do and refreshing spiritually. First, philosophy: this article resonated so much with me that I made the brave step of deleting my big tech accounts and switching to Linux: https://medium.com…

Good for you for voting with your wallet and being conscious of which causes your money supports.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#86

Post by Macha »

greendude29 wrote: post #68
throwaway67743 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How strange, I've been using DDG for a few years now and only rarely do I need to go to Google. Do you have examples of searches where Google is definitely superior (just out of curiosity, not challenging the notion)?

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.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#87

Post by maxerickson »

rattray wrote: post #83
RicoElectrico wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 haven't seen much mention of Maps.Me, but it's another OSM-based android app I've heard good things about from Europeans and enjoyed while traveling in South America. I haven't tried it much in the US.

Organic Maps is a fork of maps.me that was started after maps.me got bought.

The US should be pretty good for trails, reasonable for streets and highly variable for addresses and POIs.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#88

Post by lizardactivist »

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…

Try Posteo, privacy is at the center of their whole e-mail business.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#89

Post by srhngpr »

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 recently moved all emails on personal domains to Cloudflare Email Routing [1]. It works flawlessly and you can setup ProtonMail or whatever other email you want as your private address that everything gets forwarded to without having to reveal what the destination address is.

For sending email, I setup an SMTP relay via Amazon SES. If you verify your domain, you can send an email from any alias.

This combination works great!

[1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/email-routing-open-beta/

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#90

Post by xenonite »

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…

https://posteo.de/en
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