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De-Googling: My Progress

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Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#12

Post by ariejan »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #6

> I’ve already pulled down my 2-300GB Google Photos archive How? I've tried several times and can never complete the download. Wired ethernet, not wifi.

Google Takeout works fine for that. It zips and splits everything in chunks. Didn't have any issue extracting 57GB worth of photos a gew months back.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#13

Post by ariejan »

BerkhanBerkdemi wrote: post #4

I still don't understand why people are moving from G products and use Apple+self-hosted? The author is saying he is hosting the e-mail server but, for example, not an iCal server.

Mail in a box comes with Nextcloud for contacts/calendaring, well, out of the box.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#14

Post by pedroaraujo »

harha wrote: post #8

I actually think the results on DuckDuckGo are better than on google for many topics especially technical: - there’s less ads (you can turn them off completely, but I’ve only seen one ad on the front page at most which is ok for me) - not as SEOed (still not great though) - the box on the side is often more useful, e.g. Wikipedia instead of shopping ads - on mobile Safari I use the bangs [0] which have a sort of Omni…

DDG results are okay until you need to look up something non computer science related, like results for your local country.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#15

Post by harha »

pedroaraujo wrote: post #14
harha wrote: post #8

I actually think the results on DuckDuckGo are better than on google for many topics especially technical: - there’s less ads (you can turn them off completely, but I’ve only seen one ad on the front page at most which is ok for me) - not as SEOed (still not great though) - the box on the side is often more useful, e.g. Wikipedia instead of shopping ads - on mobile Safari I use the bangs [0] which have a sort of Omni…

DDG results are okay until you need to look up something non computer science related, like results for your local country.

Actually that’s better too, I like how it’s possible to switch countries easily to get local results or choose global results.

Some non technical searches are more difficult though.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#17

Post by manigandham »

I have Fastmail and other private email services but I've been unable to really move over because of all the integrations that Gmail has. Automatic email scanning for trip details, calendar integrations, searches from the web also surfacing details from emails, google voice, tons of other apps and extensions.

It would be a nice if there was a way to get all this functionality beyond Gmail.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#18

Post by tommica »

wideasleep1 wrote: post #10

I'd recommend trying these Google Alt's: Protonmail or Fairmail for email. DuckduckGo or Bromite for low-ad/tracker browsing, or button down your Chrome with Umatrix/UBO and a host of other extensions (Privacy Badger, Canvas Blocker, etc.) Been using Protonmail beta's Calender feature with success, can't wait for their Android App. Have begun pulling all my photos off Photos and moving to both local drives and PCloud…

Formatted:

I'd recommend trying these Google Alt's:

Protonmail or Fairmail for email.

DuckduckGo or Bromite for low-ad/tracker browsing, or button down your Chrome with Umatrix/UBO and a host of other extensions (Privacy Badger, Canvas Blocker, etc.)

Been using Protonmail beta's Calender feature with success, can't wait for their Android App.

Have begun pulling all my photos off Photos and moving to both local drives and PCloud, and considering encrypting them at rest there too.

DDG/SearX for Search.

NextDNS for secure and adfree DNS mimicing PiHole (which I have at home) when away.

If you want to keep your awesome Android hardware (OnePlus6T here), you can disable Google Services Framework and neuter everything at will using NetGuard, with the paid version allowing individual link granularity, so you can stop that Facebook link Spotify spawns upon launch, among all others.

This allows you to fine tune each app to comm with only links you allow. FB is particularly pesky..once it fails to connect to it's obvious servers, it spawns other numerical IP's that you have to do lookups on to see where/who they are...often returning to FB, so it's an ongoing task, recommended only for those most commited. I was on this path well before Shoshana's book, but her presentation was reaffirming.

EDIT: of course...Signal, how did I forget that..most used app of all.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#20

Post by phinnaeus »

I started a similar journey a couple of years ago. Honestly the biggest challenge was getting people to use my new email address instead of my Gmail.

I made mostly the same choices, but swapped in:

  * Email/Calendar/Contacts: Fastmail  
  * Docs: I don't use a hosted solution for this  
  * Messaging: iMessage/Signal/Discord  
  * Music: local music library
While I lived in Seattle I was using Apple Maps, but since moving to Sydney I have switched back to Google Maps.

Oh, actually I am a Google Fi customer as well -- it's the cheapest way I've found to keep my US number active.

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