Why doesn't google offer a paid version which encrypts your data and takes all manors of privacy measures? I would go for that
Google gets some special perks from the Government if they don't...
De-Googleify Internet
51–60 of 266 posts
Re: De-Googleify Internet
#52> These services track us everywhere, while claiming to give us a better “user experience”. That's kind of the problem though; they usually _do_ offer a better user experience. If we want users to start using open source software rather than walled garden solutions from large companies, we're going to have to start building open source solutions which offer a comparable user experience to proprietary ones from large…
I believe this is true. But I also have found that sometimes the user experience is diminished when not "logged in" to encourage people to create accounts. Pinterest has a box that slowly covers up more of the screen as you scroll drown. Facebook has a login prompt box that stays at the bottom of the screen and occasionally expands as a reminder. Quora prevents internal redirects to new pages. With enough know-how th…
Is signing up for an account really that big of a deal to you?
Re: De-Googleify Internet
#53Not to get too political, but I find the idea that the internet is better being decentralized and non-corporate to be the new Libertarianism. Sure, these ideas sound nice, just like how "small government" and "free market", but how well do they work in practice on a large scale? Don't get me wrong, I'm not necessarily against such concepts as ideals, but in the end they are hard to implement in their pure form as the entire system gets larger and they aren't without consequence. An internet not dominated by Google, Facebook, Reddit, Amazon, etc., sounds great because, well, screw the man, man! Let's go back to 1999(or better yet, the 80's so we can connect to dial-up BBSes for free by routing through a bunch of local numbers, because, screw the man!). I know I'm hyperbolizing here a little bit, but it seems silly and pointless. The vast majority of users don't want this.
Re: De-Googleify Internet
#54Worth an upvote for the Asterix reference alone.
For me it's mostly the smartphone which is difficult to unlock. I use Ubuntu on my laptop, run my own web/mail/irc/etc servers, flashed all routers with OpenWRT... and it all made my experience better but Android with a Google Apps account is hard to beat. Say what you will about tracking and spying but it delivers.
Using FLOSS tools I can compete with Microsoft or TP-Link, not Google though.
Re: De-Googleify Internet
#55Just talking about search alternative; DuckDuckGo is my default search engine for over 2 years. It's incredibly good, the only caveat is you need to re-learn how to search. The same way you "changed yourself" initially for google.
Isn't DuckDuckGo Bing behind the scenes, though? That doesn't seem that much better to me. It would be nice to have a truly independent, startup search engine but it's a really big task for a fresh company to tackle.
There's always Gigablast (gigablast.com)! And it'd be sweet if YaCy (yacy.net) took off.
Re: De-Googleify Internet
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except google didn't need learning, in fact that's part of what made it so much more powerful, they early on dropped support for AND and OR and other boolean keywords which other search engines required to get good results. In fact one of google's early "hidden" successful features was using implicit AND not implicit OR, which had been the de-facto on other search engines, so searching for "gold plates" on other sear…
You certainly did have to learn to use google, you just don't remember it, or remember it selectively. I frequently come across people who ask questions which seem simple to google for, but when they try ask google, they do so incompetently and get bad answers or no answers, because they fundamentally don't get keywords, how other uses of words can override your intended meaning, or how to clarify by adding further p…
I feel like nowadays you can just Google "how do I change my oil" or "why do spiders make webs" and I pretty much always get something good.
It seems to me as if you can just ask Google the way you would a normal person.
I know that wasn't always the case, but I'm curious what specifically you feel like you need to learn about using Google today.
Re: De-Googleify Internet
#57Framatalk is surprisingly quite good and easy to use
Re: De-Googleify Internet
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe this is true. But I also have found that sometimes the user experience is diminished when not "logged in" to encourage people to create accounts. Pinterest has a box that slowly covers up more of the screen as you scroll drown. Facebook has a login prompt box that stays at the bottom of the screen and occasionally expands as a reminder. Quora prevents internal redirects to new pages. With enough know-how th…
Is signing up for an account really that big of a deal to you?
Did you even read the post? This is about avoiding tracking. And yes, signing up for accounts can be grueling. Try making a google account without submitting a blood sample.
Re: De-Googleify Internet
#59This is just a lame advertisement attempt, and it's not even decentralized, the advertiser controls all the published alternatives and links thereof I'll stick linking people to http://alternativeto.net - thank you very much
alternativeto is great if you are looking for a software.
degooglisons-internet.org is a non-profit that aims at hosting software for people who do not have the skill to host it themselves.
Re: De-Googleify Internet
#60Why? To completely remove anything from your life that happens to have Google as a part of it would be so inconvenient. Gmail is objectively an amazing email app on both desktop browser and mobile. No search engine can come close to Google. Lots of great apps like Google Docs, Calendar, and Translate exist to make your life easier for free. Google Maps is kinda annoying with Uber ads but its navigation and UI is so n…
> Gmail is objectively an amazing email app on both desktop browser and mobile. Hum. I would not say "objectively". I can't stand gmail, it does not come close to what I can do with Thunderbird and K-9, and I'm not doing anything complex. A webapp still can't compete with a native client. > Lots of great apps like Google Docs, Calendar, and Translate exist to make your life easier for free. Google services are not fr…
Indeed objectively is easily an opinion.
And I'd like to see that talk if you could, I'm still in the migration process of migrating off gmail. Its slow though as I have to change a ton of logins to use my own domain that gets stuff sent to fast mail. So nice having regular email on a domain I control.