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De-Googling: My Progress

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Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#141

My De-Googling process: *Search(1) -> DuckDuckGo *Gmail(2) -> Fastmail *Android -> SailfishOS (https://sailfishos.org/) *Maps -> OpenStreetMaps *Youtube(3) -> Youtube-dl, "subscriptions" with rss-feeds *Drive -> Self-hosted Nextloud & Syncthing *Calendar -> At first Fastmail, but nowadays back to paper calendar *Chrome -> Brave & Firefox (1) When having problems finding I sometimes check Google Search with bangs. (2)…

I'm a big fan of Fastmail.

I agree with your point about YouTube. I'll try out the combo you have.

I like YouTube for the videos on there and nothing else. I hate all the ads and how if you watch one video that is off topic from what you usually watch then the algorithm gets messed up and your recommended videos become way different.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#142

My De-Googling process: *Search(1) -> DuckDuckGo *Gmail(2) -> Fastmail *Android -> SailfishOS (https://sailfishos.org/) *Maps -> OpenStreetMaps *Youtube(3) -> Youtube-dl, "subscriptions" with rss-feeds *Drive -> Self-hosted Nextloud & Syncthing *Calendar -> At first Fastmail, but nowadays back to paper calendar *Chrome -> Brave & Firefox (1) When having problems finding I sometimes check Google Search with bangs. (2)…

Hi. I'm using fastmail (having left Gmail) - can you expand on why you stopped using the calendar?

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#143
Also, if you get a new laptop (or any installation) keep it free of google. Avoid it from the start.

Also, I have a website which isn't precious; I'm going to reject chrome requests, with a message recommending firefox.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#144
I’ve been using DuckDuckGo since it launched. But are we down to two search engine choices now? Google or DDG? What other alternatives are there?

De-Googling services is quite easy for the most part as there are many competing alternatives including good self-hosted options.

As a web user, I block all Google JavaScript that gets embedded in 99% of sites using a combination uBlock, NoScript, and my own DNS. Most sites load fine but some that use the Google API fail to show anything—which is silly when most of them are plain text and image articles.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#145
post #38

After seeing similar threads on HN, I’ve also started a similar journey. I managed to migrate to Firefox with DuckDuckGo as the default search engine. But I’ve also added a shortcut for Google search: if I feel like I am missing something I open a new tab and type “go [keywords]”.

You know you can prefix your ddg search with !g to use Google? Useful for technical searches, where ddg is sadly, not good enough.

You can actually use !g anywhere in the search strings. It's useful when you finish typing your query, you can change your search engine at the last second.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#146

Moving from Google cloud to Apple cloud, from Google messenger to Facebook messenger... What's the point honestly?

Having competition is good if only because it keeps companies thinking about the user.

Note I carefully said user not customer. Except for Spotify (and his email host) he is not the customer he is the product they sell. However in all cases he is a user.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#147

I'm surprised by not seeing more comments against the OP moving from Google to move almost everything to Apple & Facebook. I've also started a similar process but haven't managed to ditch Google completely yet, mainly for convenience. Because my concern was mainly privacy, I started by adding a pi-hole in the home network and that allowed me to block an infinite number of tracking codes and ads. This improved the ove…

Why do you use Telegram if you're concerned about privacy?

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#148
post #106
post #40

I've been de-googled (and de-facebooked) for over a year now. I wrote about it here https://tombh.co.uk/deleting-facebook-and-google My main motivation is slightly different in that being a software engineer I am actually in a unique position to navigate this tricky path and therefore feel a responsibility to tread the de-googled path, so that it might make it easier for others to follow, should they so wish. At the…

> I opt for Signal now, hardly anyone uses it and the UX isn’t as nice, but it uses state of art in encryption. Out of curiosity, what don't you like about the UX? And doesn't it use the same "state of the art" encryption as WhatsApp?

The problem with WhatsApp is that the other participants in a given chat are likely to back up the conversation to Google Drive of iCloud which defeats the purpose of E2E encryption. And, of course, the metadata.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#150
I wonder what people have to think about Outlook (M365) for many of these things (email, calendar, storage, photos)? Assuming people are fine with paid subscriptions. The author himself is using paid services from apple.
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