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Why I’m Worried About Google

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Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#281

Post by xte »

sigi45 wrote: post #264
xte wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me to, personally I drop GMail for a personal mail (20 euros per years, with a bunch of mailbox + unlimited aliases altogether with a personal domain. Benefit: alias to tell anyone a different mail so I know where the spam came from and I can easy drop anyone I dislike. Lightweight webmail (Roundcube) instead of monsters like actual GMail, login with user and password visible at the same time without the absurdity of…

Roundcube is everything but not a replacement for Gmail. I have my Gmail account logged in on 3 PC's going back to IMAP and Thunderbird never.

Well I say something similar in the past, now have seen the GMail evolution path I change my mind, beside that I do not generally use webmails except when I'm with a machine without my environment, my main MUA is notmuch-emacs.

I also agree about TB, classic MUA seems to be remained in the 90's however at leas for us not-basic-users notmuch-emacs, mutt&forks, pine&forks, mu4e etc are valuable options, long to setup-up, mostly because anyone have a personal recipe and no one offer a ready-to-use solution, but far more powerful than any webmails.

However mailpie can be consider a good GMail-inspired webmails and IMVHO for most of mail users Roundcube even if is really basic it's enough, clear, simple and effective. Contacs are a bit limited compared to Google's one but the rest work well.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#282

Post by ex3ndr »

For me breaking point was enabled by default google assistant on any Android phone. Not assistant itself, but one smaaaal feature. If you hold home button a little bit longer phone takes screenshot and uploads it to google to recognize it. That... just insane. I only wonder why no one is talking about this?

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#283

Post by jaegerpicker »

qubax wrote: post #85
Spartan-S63 wrote: post #49

With all of these emerging privacy concerns, it reinforces my choice to move away from the Android and Google ecosystem insofar as I can. It reinforces my choice to embrace the Apple ecosystem. While their products aren't perfect, they do take your privacy seriously and you do pay for it. But to me, that seems like a fair trade. Additionally, they have second to none customer support, so it's going to take a company…

Every post about google, facebook or privacy, there is a PR comment about Apple. Apple doesn't care about privacy any more than google believed in "do no evil". They collect data on you just like google does. They buy data from other vendors like google does. They sell data on you. The idea that a company who gives data to the chinese government cares about privacy is laughable. http://www.latimes.com/business/techno…

Literally nothing you said is true. Apple doesn't sell your data and they collect dramatically less data which has been proven numerous times. This is basically a cheap attempt at trolling.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#284

Post by MikeTV »

Today Google popped up a little survey in the corner of my account page, with questions like "I trust Google to keep my data private", "It's easy to find out what data Google has on me", that sort.

Answers were one-click response buttons: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree (top to bottom, in that order).

The first time I clicked "Strongly Disagree", a few questions in, the next question had the order of the answers reversed so that Strongly Agree was on bottom. Submitted an opposite sentiment before realizing what happened.

Strikes me as manipulative, like the survey really isn't so much for discovering my opinion as it is for collecting favorable ones. I wonder who will get the results, and to what end?

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#285

Post by Paul-ish »

MikeTV wrote: post #284

Today Google popped up a little survey in the corner of my account page, with questions like "I trust Google to keep my data private", "It's easy to find out what data Google has on me", that sort. Answers were one-click response buttons: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree (top to bottom, in that order). The first time I clicked "Strongly Disagree", a few questions in, the…

That's common in surveys. It's to see if you are paying attention.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#286

Post by romseb »

amelius wrote: post #218
CosmicBagel wrote: post #192

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…

> but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. Isn't this mostly because you don't know yet how the same features work in FF and DDG?

For me it's a long list of missing features (using Mac OS).

* No Chromecast support

* Missing pinch to zoom support (smooth as butter in Chrome). Possible via Add-on "Multi-touch zoom" [1] in Fx but it's very sluggish.

* Youtube is much slower, also some features don't work there, like being able to scroll down when having a fullscreen video open. Can be fixed by installing "Classic Youtube" [2]

* Fullscreen is broken for me, I was not able to hide the address bar and tab bar. I had to install "Fullscreen Plus"

* Some extensions don't work as good, like Dark Reader [3]

* No good alternatives for some Chrome extensions, like "The Great Suspender" [4] or "Vanilla Cookie Manager" (Cookie AutoDelete for Firefox)

* Pdfium performs much better than Firefox' solution. Unfortunately Mozilla abandoned Project Mortar [5].

I could go on with the list. Don't get me wrong, I will still stick to Firefox even though Google Chrome is the superior product performance- and feature-wise.

[1] https://github.com/haxiomic

[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-class...

[3] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-reader/eimadp...

[4] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende...

[5] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mortar_Project

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#287

Post by ealhad »

driverdan wrote: post #237
ealhad wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, last time I tried Firefox on Mac OS it was terrible. On my laptop, running GNU/Linux (with lower specs), it's way faster.

When was the last time you tried it? It's still not as fast as on Windows or Linux but it's much better than it used to be.

The point is, performance-wise, it's not the best choice on Mac OS. Not that I care much, I rarely dwell on Apple computers.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#288

Post by daveFNbuck »

macintux wrote: post #195
daveFNbuck wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I'm considering now, but I'm concerned that I'll forget to update my credit card information or make some other minor mistake with the registrar and lose my domain.

I get hassled via email for months leading up to a renewal, and even if something goes wrong there's a grace period. It's really not a big deal. Were I smart, I'd set up a calendar reminder each year for my most important domains.

Your experience sounds like the start of stories I keep seeing on HN about people and companies losing their domains. I just saw this one today. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18130832

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#289

Post by MikeTV »

Paul-ish wrote: post #285
MikeTV wrote: post #284

Today Google popped up a little survey in the corner of my account page, with questions like "I trust Google to keep my data private", "It's easy to find out what data Google has on me", that sort. Answers were one-click response buttons: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree (top to bottom, in that order). The first time I clicked "Strongly Disagree", a few questions in, the…

That's common in surveys. It's to see if you are paying attention.

I've noticed that with single-question responses such as Amazon's "why are you returning this" drop-down, and it makes total sense there. A consistently random arrangement means that users picking just the top answer will have no more influence on the overall report than random noise. Makes less sense when available answers are the same for each question, such that the user might have mentally cached them to avoid rereading.

However, n=1. The timing might have been coincidental.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#290

Post by ukyrgf »

outworlder wrote: post #276
CosmicBagel wrote: post #192

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 have been trying (not entirely successfully) to move away from Google for a while now. Gmail replaced by Fastmail. I used to think Fastmail's interface to be clunky - but no longer. It was never an issue, because you can very easily use any mail client, each with their own 'app password'. Drawbacks: GMail's filtering it top notch, for both spam and their pre-defined categories (updates, social, etc). I never realiz…

Ah! Google Cloud Print. I was looking forward to actually uninstalling Chrome on my main computer, but I'd forgotten how critical that is. Like you, I just can't get My MacBook to work with my network printer.
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