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Why I’m Worried About Google

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Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#101

Post by post_break »

corobo wrote: post #99
post_break wrote: post #93

I'm trying so hard to move my email away from Gmail. I have a paid proton account by the syncing for desktop and the mobile app is terrible. Are there any other options out there? I switched to Firefox and I love it so far.

It gets thrown around a lot and in my opinion for good reason - I've switched to Fastmail[1] myself. I've got the $5/mo account because I wanted to bring my own domains. Had it for a while just forwarding everything to my gmail but have now cut the forwarding and switched fully. If you're in the Apple ecosystem the app I attribute to finally moving was Spark[2], which I discovered after Google announced it was killin…

Thank you I will check it out.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#102

Post by gregmac »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #40
robin_reala wrote: post #4

It’s the closing paragraph that’s the important bit: In the end, this is why I’m moving away from the Google ecosystem. If nothing else works, then at least I can vote with my feet—or my fingertips. Google have set their path, so it will take effort for them to deviate from it. The best way to show them that the effort is worthwhile is to affect their bottom line by reducing your use of their services. And maybe you’…

Firefox is fine and DuckDuckGo is good enough by now. Firefox has the added bonus that it doesn't implement a two tier cookie system. Of which one tier cannot be deleted. This, in combination with the new and improved "sign-in-convenience" convinced me that Google is exactly as dirty as any other tech company and should be avoided like the plague, wherever possible.

I keep hearing this, but I'm constantly disappointed by the results I get on DDG. Eg, The first page of DDG shows (old) forum posts while Google shows a couple project sites on GitHub and some relevant stack overflow answers.

I'm sure some is personalization, but I've also compared results in incognito and Google is still better. I really want to like it, but I'm not going to sabotage my ability to efficiently find things.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#103

Post by bla2 »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #89
bla2 wrote: post #47

> But it brings users within an accidental click of sharing their bookmarks and browsing history with Google. It's two clicks, you need to be really explicit about it. The first click opens a huge "You're about to turn on sync" dialog, where you have to click "Yes, I'm in" again. I don't disagree with the general sentiment, but the article isn't factually correct. It's also by the same person who misunderstood the re…

Could you tell me what claims in my post were incorrect? So far nobody at Google has disputed them, just pointed out that they don’t activate sync (which my blog post already stipulates.)

"Google developers claim this will not actually start synchronizing your data to Google — yet"

It sounds like you got up in arms because you thought that chrome now auto-syncs when you sign in to gmail, and wrote the blog post draft. Then you learned that this isn't the case but you kept your arms up anyway, added that unsubstantiated "- yet" and hit "publish" anyway, despite nothing really having changed.

(Disclaimer 1: I used to work for google, so I'm likely biased to give them more benefit of doubt. Disclaimer 2: This is a shared HN account (the password isn't exactly hard to guess), so not all of its comments or posts are written by me.)

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#105

Post by the_clarence »

gagege wrote: post #92
the_clarence wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is fine? It’s the best browsing experience thanks to Tree Style Tabs unless you are a lambda user and you only have 3 tabs open at all time. And even lambda users pile up tabs when they browse

What's a lambda user? Sounds like I might be one. I only keep a few tabs open at a time.

In terms of browsers that would be someone who only go on HN, reddit, facebook, gmail and linkedin. In other words HRFGL.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#106

Post by [deleted] »

the_clarence wrote: post #82
CaptainZapp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is fine and DuckDuckGo is good enough by now. Firefox has the added bonus that it doesn't implement a two tier cookie system. Of which one tier cannot be deleted. This, in combination with the new and improved "sign-in-convenience" convinced me that Google is exactly as dirty as any other tech company and should be avoided like the plague, wherever possible.

Firefox is fine? It’s the best browsing experience thanks to Tree Style Tabs unless you are a lambda user and you only have 3 tabs open at all time. And even lambda users pile up tabs when they browse

[deleted]

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#107

Post by kvz »

ekzy wrote: post #65

I've switched to Safari and DuckDuckGo last week. I can still search on google with the DuckDuckGo shortcut !g when the duck doesn't quack. I tried Firefox but it became too slow. Safari is actually pretty good, for me the main problem is that it reduced my productivity for web development (I need to get used to the safari devtools) and the lack of some browser extensions (redux devtools etc). For now, I keep switchi…

Did you try FF recently? It feels as fast as Chrome for me these days! devtools are good and transition was surprisingly frictionless. Bonus: I’m trying Linux and it works/syncs my stuff across Mac/iOS/Ubuntu.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#108

Post by matthewdgreen »

bla2 wrote: post #103
matthewdgreen wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you tell me what claims in my post were incorrect? So far nobody at Google has disputed them, just pointed out that they don’t activate sync (which my blog post already stipulates.)

"Google developers claim this will not actually start synchronizing your data to Google — yet" It sounds like you got up in arms because you thought that chrome now auto-syncs when you sign in to gmail, and wrote the blog post draft. Then you learned that this isn't the case but you kept your arms up anyway, added that unsubstantiated "- yet" and hit "publish" anyway, despite nothing really having changed. (Disclaime…

If you look up my Twitter account, you’ll see that I had a long discussion with multiple Chrome engineers days prior to writing the post, and there they explained the sync distinction to me. The post clearly explains the situation (mandatory login, but not sync) and articulates several reasons why I think it’s still an issue even if Google doesn’t auto-synchronize — a guarantee I don’t feel confident relying on in the future. In those various Twitter threads I also identified several problems with the Chrome privacy policy, which Google had to quickly update on a Sunday as a result.

https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/10433312293267496...

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#109

Post by matwood »

ekzy wrote: post #65

I've switched to Safari and DuckDuckGo last week. I can still search on google with the DuckDuckGo shortcut !g when the duck doesn't quack. I tried Firefox but it became too slow. Safari is actually pretty good, for me the main problem is that it reduced my productivity for web development (I need to get used to the safari devtools) and the lack of some browser extensions (redux devtools etc). For now, I keep switchi…

I use Safari and treat Chrome as just another development tool. We should be using other browsers during development anyway so we don't end up in another IE situation.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#110

Post by CaptainZapp »

gregmac wrote: post #102
CaptainZapp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is fine and DuckDuckGo is good enough by now. Firefox has the added bonus that it doesn't implement a two tier cookie system. Of which one tier cannot be deleted. This, in combination with the new and improved "sign-in-convenience" convinced me that Google is exactly as dirty as any other tech company and should be avoided like the plague, wherever possible.

I keep hearing this, but I'm constantly disappointed by the results I get on DDG. Eg, The first page of DDG shows (old) forum posts while Google shows a couple project sites on GitHub and some relevant stack overflow answers. I'm sure some is personalization, but I've also compared results in incognito and Google is still better. I really want to like it, but I'm not going to sabotage my ability to efficiently find t…

To be honest: It works for me > 98% of the time.

Usually if the search is highly generic then Google definitely fares better and there's always the !g bang if DDG is not good enough for a specific search.

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