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Why I’m Worried About Google

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181–190 of 318 posts

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#181
Chrome turns on the fans on my old macbook air which is an audio reminder to only use it occasionally for specific tasks.

My paranoid side makes me wonder if all the fan activity is because it's so busy phoning home all the time 'sharing data'?

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail is really the only thing keeping me in the Google tent. Switching my address after over a decade of use is nigh-impossible. I also use Chrome for development because the debug tools are superior, but everything else Google is an easy switch for me.

>Switching my address after over a decade of use is nigh-impossible. This is why you should have your own domain. You can switch providers trivially.

Doesn't work in all cases.

Here's my story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18130832

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#183

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…

DDG search results are even worse in other languages then English. I have been trying for couple of years to use DDG and finally have given up. Pity.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#184
post #149

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 and DuckDuckGo is good enough by now. I finally made the jump to Brave and DuckDuckGo, but replacing Gmail, Google Photos, and Google Voice is going to be hard. Gmail will be the hardest since it's attached to so many of my online accounts.

To avoid this problem in the future, get your own domain. If you want to use GMail you can, you just have to create a GSuite account then edit your DNS to point your mail to Google's servers. If later, you want to move off Google, you edit your DNS MX record to point to a different host.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#185
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly. DuckDuckGo claims not to share my information or searches with Microsoft. I trust DuckDuckGo (not Microsoft) to keep their word. The fact that DDG sources information about the internet from Microsoft is unimportant. I'm concerned about my personal information, not large scale manipulation of search results.

In that case you could use http://www.startpage.com - it's a wrapper around Google, and your information isn't shared with them.

I would use this if it weren't so darn slow.

I've tried searx instances as well, but couldn't find one that functioned consistent to my liking.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#186
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A basic mail service is about IMAP (and P0P3), rather than webmail with full-text search. Searching through your mail is performed on your own computer using Thunderbird or another mail client. If your mail provider scans your email for targetting, you should switch to a paid provider where you are the customer, rather than the product.

I understand how mail works trust me, I used to manage a fleet of about 40 mail servers in a past job shudder I'm sorry but these comments aren't really saying anything with any substance. If my mail provider "scans my email for targetting" - Do you mean ad targeting? Both the mail host and the app are paid products, not ad supported.

Sorry for not being clear and stating obvious things. I just wanted to express that IMHO a mail provider has no business of scanning your email (for ad targetting or other purposes), and should not get away with this. In fact, if your email provider engages in such things, then that could be a reason for another person/org to not send you mail over that channel, which kind of defeats the purpose of email.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#187

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.

[deleted]

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#188
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the daily use case? Sounds useful, but daily?

Browsing a large code repository. The scrollbar highlights allow me to "eyeball" the page and go to the general locations quickly rather than hitting Next a thousand times (which feels primitive as hell anyway), especially when a block of code has the same keyword used many times and I need to move on to the next block. I tried Firefox for a while but I rely on that feature around once or twice a day and I preferred…

Ah, I think I just avoid using a browser to browse a code repository. Swiper/helm in emacs are far superior for searching a repository. Unless I am looking at more than what I can checkout locally... which, I typically don't need to do.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail is really the only thing keeping me in the Google tent. Switching my address after over a decade of use is nigh-impossible. I also use Chrome for development because the debug tools are superior, but everything else Google is an easy switch for me.

>Switching my address after over a decade of use is nigh-impossible. This is why you should have your own domain. You can switch providers trivially.

Easy to say now. But when gmail first came out and I snagged an address, the last thing on my mind was "this company could become evil in 15 years, I should set up my own domain and route to it from this new email service." I'm currently looking into making the switch, but it's going to be painful. Finding a good domain these days for personal email is also challenging.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#190

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

Containers are a killer app for me. Having a separate workspace for each project I am working on, or work role, vs personal browsing reduces both clutter and distraction dramatically. I still use Chrome for some things (select boxes seem to not be handled well in firefox, or sites don't implement them properly which can be annoying, and FF still feels a little slow at times compared to Chrome), but I use Firefox as much as possible.
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