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Why I’m Worried About Google

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Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#201

As a non-native speaker, I would have expected the title to be "Why Google Worries Me". "Worried About" sounds like it's Google who's being negatively affected by this, but that doesn't seem to be the main point of the story. Is this a common pattern?

Yours is the more succinct way of saying it. Remember that all these modern blogs usually aren't written by (or edited by for that matter) professionals of any kind, so the grammar/sentence structure will suffer at the expense of pumping out articles fast and getting clicks.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#202
Google is a brilliant company but ad based business models have weird incentive structures. When your primary customer isn't actually using your product it makes product decisions harder. I don't think Google means harm but it does seem like they are making some questionable decisions. Zuck was smart to remove ads on FB even though it cost FB lots of ad revenue. Their web browser change had no obvious benefit for users compare to how creepy it is to have gmail forced on you by the web browser. they might have some hidden strategy that will eventually benefit chrome users but it's not clear what that is

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#203

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

Nextcloud made it pretty easy to get away from Google Drive and Keep. I really like using QOwnNotes to manage my markdown files which are synced to nextcloud.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#204

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

I'm in fairly deep too, ~3 years of photos in their service. As convenient it is to do search and essentially having a "free" backup, I really need to move off. I'm not worried about moving mail since it's more of an iterative process, but moving photos is going to be a pita.

https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea this is what I did. Little by little. If you make a plan, and are dilligent you’ll be totally off @gmail.com in under a year. Make sure you switch to an email address on a domain you control, not @some_other_cloud_service.com that you’ll want to switch off of later.

Indeed, its not hard. I went through it this summer. However, I switched from a personal domain to a fastmail domain. Why? My domain registrar fucked me over. At that point, I had used my personal domain for close to 10 years when suddenly it stopped working. I contacted them and they said that it was put on hold because I hadn't paid the yearly expense. It would cost 16 times the normal cost to get it back, or I cou…

What domain registrar was that?

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#206

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

Hihi,

So, pick your battles. SimpleNote is the solution to Keep. FireFox addon's are getting better now Chrome and Firefox agreed a common format so wait on that one. Protonmail is great, but simple so don't expect the bell's and whistles you're used to.

Photo's is still the best product around so personally I'd stick with it, same for Drive (although Dropbox does work and is solid).

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#207
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What CIA connection?

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo... https://pando.com/2015/07/01/cia-foia-google-keyhole/ Search "In-Q-Tel Google" for more.

Jesus man, that's some tenuous connectivity. The first article's really trying hard to link investment capital flows into some larger conspiracy. The second is about generalizing mapping tech originally developed for surveillance satellites to be used for publicly available imagery, and the purchaser's obligations to fulfill the contracts of the purchased company. Both are results of the same underlying issue: defense & intelligence run as essentially monopsonies for the technology they care about, so they have to pay to have it developed. Sometimes their result is generally useful (better search of documents), sometimes it isn't, and sometimes it just isn't for a while (until publicly available imagery is widespread enough to cover a large map).

If articles like these are the basis for your conclusions, really take a step back. I went down this route a little some years ago, and really just felt miserable for no good reason.

Now the next part of my suggestion is going to sound rough for a second, but please take it seriously. Check out a book called "The Information Diet" by Clay Johnson. After reading (it's a really good book, and helped me a lot in avoiding this sort of stuff), watch a ridiculous conspiracy show on TV. My favorite recently was about whether mermaids were real.

Listen to the techniques they use in there -- By saying "A relates to B" and "B relates to C", they ask "Does A relate to C?" Even though A and B relate only through something remote, and similarly for B and C. But, imply a conspiracy and suddenly the remote links seem like a cabal of some sort. It's a manipulative practice to get eyeballs and clicks, and we have to identify it as toxic before we start taking it in.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#208

Google is a brilliant company but ad based business models have weird incentive structures. When your primary customer isn't actually using your product it makes product decisions harder. I don't think Google means harm but it does seem like they are making some questionable decisions. Zuck was smart to remove ads on FB even though it cost FB lots of ad revenue. Their web browser change had no obvious benefit for use…

I still see advertisements on Facebook. Even more so, in fact. They now have ads that will cut in while you're watching a video.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea this is what I did. Little by little. If you make a plan, and are dilligent you’ll be totally off @gmail.com in under a year. Make sure you switch to an email address on a domain you control, not @some_other_cloud_service.com that you’ll want to switch off of later.

Indeed, its not hard. I went through it this summer. However, I switched from a personal domain to a fastmail domain. Why? My domain registrar fucked me over. At that point, I had used my personal domain for close to 10 years when suddenly it stopped working. I contacted them and they said that it was put on hold because I hadn't paid the yearly expense. It would cost 16 times the normal cost to get it back, or I cou…

[deleted]

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#210

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

That was also the breaking point for me. I've switched back to firefox, I bought a new iPhone XS (moving off the pixel), I'm in the process of getting my own email server up (though I may just switch to proton mail we'll see), and I'm waiting on a SIM to port my number off of Google Voice.

Maybe its all futile, but I'm committed to degoogling my life at least 50%. They've shown their hand and I don't like what I see.

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