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How to live without Google (2017)

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Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#61

Post by auslander »

nottorp wrote: post #60
auslander wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what is a reliable email alternative that is certain to be around long term iCloud email

Uh... I'm not sure I trust Apple's online services. Technically, I mean. How many times did they change their email solution in the past 10 years? I think it was called mobile.me at one point? And before anyone goes into Apple fanboy mode, I'm typing this on a macbook pro, my phone is an iPhone, and my desktop is a Hackintosh ;)

I have a hack too :) iCloud will stay. And I'll bet all old adresses are still working.

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#62

Post by nottorp »

breakingcups wrote: post #59
nottorp wrote: post #57

Gmail is the main problem. I use it as a backup email and as an ID for registering about everywhere. Thing is, what is a reliable email alternative that is certain to be around long term, that I can use to register? Google can afford to keep gmail up for my foreseeable life time, what other email services (free or paid) can I trust with that? Edit: I do have my own domain, but I don't consider that as reliable as som…

What are you most concerned with? Keeping the email address active yourself for new mail or keeping your mail archive? For the first point, you are already set. You have your own custom domain and can point that to any provider you find trustworthy, including Gmail, Fastmail, ProtonMail, Outlook, etc. For the second point, nobody is as responsible for keeping proper backups as you are. Every provider could go under o…

Hmm no, I know how to handle my own mail. My concern is that gmail is a good backup solution that always works, including when I'm in the middle of nowhere with no time or inclination to fix my custom domain.

What I'm most concerned with is the email address as identity. It's the key to all my online accounts via the reset password form. Jumping from provider to provider with my own custom domain works the same, but with more hassle. I'd rather move (my identity) to another online service, as long as I'm reasonably certain that my email addy will exist for 20+ years.

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#63

Post by auslander »

nottorp wrote: post #62
breakingcups wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you most concerned with? Keeping the email address active yourself for new mail or keeping your mail archive? For the first point, you are already set. You have your own custom domain and can point that to any provider you find trustworthy, including Gmail, Fastmail, ProtonMail, Outlook, etc. For the second point, nobody is as responsible for keeping proper backups as you are. Every provider could go under o…

Hmm no, I know how to handle my own mail. My concern is that gmail is a good backup solution that always works, including when I'm in the middle of nowhere with no time or inclination to fix my custom domain. What I'm most concerned with is the email address as identity. It's the key to all my online accounts via the reset password form. Jumping from provider to provider with my own custom domain works the same, but…

> the key to all my online accounts

Most services support primary email/login change

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#64

Post by Simon_says »

roenxi wrote: post #46
phil9987 wrote: post #3

For a couple of month I have set duckduckgo as my standard search engine, but I often do not get satisfactory results. Is this because I am used to the Google results or does duckduckgo indeed not prioritize in a good way?

It'd be interesting for the peanut gallery if you went into a bit of detail about what 'satisfactory' and 'unsatisfactory' means to you. I'm sitting here feeling confused because there is no detectable difference between DDG and Google for me. Search patterns must be very particular to the person and obviously I'm not searching for the right stuff :P.

I have the same experience. I set DDG as my default search engine on all of my devices, and with maybe 10% of my searches I revert to Google. DDG is adequate for common stuff, but for anything obscure, it doesn't really cut it. These days, I have a pretty good feeling for whether DDG will give me what I want before I search.

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#65

Post by rovr138 »

erinnh wrote: post #17
ipidov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't say they are, but I have a feeling that this is exactly what the original commenter is missing

I have the same issue where DDG sometimes just doesn't give relevant search results. That's when I use Google. But I also use temporary containers and no google accounts, so I'm not getting personalized results and they're still better.

The fact someone doesn’t have an account does not mean they aren’t being tracked or that google (or any platform) can’t create a profile for you.

Not saying it’s effective with the containers you’re using though.

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#66

Post by rovr138 »

distant_hat wrote: post #29
phil9987 wrote: post #3

For a couple of month I have set duckduckgo as my standard search engine, but I often do not get satisfactory results. Is this because I am used to the Google results or does duckduckgo indeed not prioritize in a good way?

I default to DuckDuckGo as my search engine though I use !g for anything it doesn't get right. I was on call with a colleague and we were problem solving and I needed to look up something and I typed it in the search box and a bunch of porn results came up. She just laughed but I knew it was a close shave. DuckDuckGo's image search can come up with porn for rather innocuous terms, e.g., https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sear…

I have seen the same in other queries too. I have started sending them some feedback. They have an option for results.

Haven’t yet noticed an improvement, but I haven’t been saving the queries I’ve sent to double check those.

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#67

Post by Const-me »

distant_hat wrote: post #48
dyukqu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's your DDG "safe search" preferences. There are three options: Strict, Moderate, Off. I clicked the link you provided and not any adult content showed up (it's in "moderate" mode by default). Some adult content appeared in results after I changing it to "off".

OK, yea, my filter is set to off. But still, the search I made was regarding completely innocuous programming related stuff, why should adult results come up that quickly? My Google preferences are also set to no filtering and I looked almost 10 pages deep there (just to check), and no adult results showed up.

You asked “reddit search” and there’s substantial amount of porn on reddit.

The majority of NSFW results in DDG comes from karmadecay.com, it’s a reverse image search engine.

Google doesn’t like that domain, you won’t get images from there even if you’ll search for the domain name. Google will only show result from that domain if you limit search to that domain with “site:karmadecay.com”

Have no idea why Google’s doing that. Could be google breaking antitrust laws (they have a reverse image search as well), or could be purely technical reasons.

Personally, I prefer DDG’s approach. If you’re using DDG in work environment and don’t want NSFW result, just set the safe search preference. Google appears to censor the results even if you explicitly asked not to.

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#68

Post by 0xferruccio »

Not using Google is just the tip of the iceberg!

There’s so much information you leave out there just by browsing the internet ( https://everysiteknows.ferrucc.io ) or clicking on things.

I also don’t see any alternatives to Google Analytics, Google Adsense, Google Fonts and Google DNS. All these services are something most users don’t opt-in for and are the kind of side businesses that feed the data that makes google the best search engine out there

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#69

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

gurusblogger1 wrote: post #55

is it even possible?

There's a continuum. For some people, it's probably virtually impossible. For some people, there's one or two services that don't yet have reasonable replacements. And some people seem to have completely removed it from their lives and are doing fine. Google has so many services that everybody's use will be different.

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#70

Post by SJetKaran »

br0ken_pipe wrote: post #51
phil9987 wrote: post #3

For a couple of month I have set duckduckgo as my standard search engine, but I often do not get satisfactory results. Is this because I am used to the Google results or does duckduckgo indeed not prioritize in a good way?

https://www.startpage.com/ is really good. Google search but anonymized

Yeah, I switched to DDG, but it didn't give me satisfactory results, particularly for debugging searches. Moved to startpage, and am a happy user since two weeks now.
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