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De-Googling: My Progress

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Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#191

Post by ocdtrekkie »

RealStickman_ wrote: post #28
louismerlin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has no problem browsing through your data to serve you "better" advertisement, while Apple claims to respect your privacy (I would be tempted to believe them).

Note that Apple respecting your privacy only applies in countries where they can continue to do business after refusing government requests.

Perhaps, but then we can characterize the following, considering Google's aggressive opposition to GDPR and CCPA:

Apple respects your privacy everywhere they're legally able to.

Google violates your privacy everywhere they're legally able to.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#192

Post by mrwesleycrusher »

yachtman wrote: post #181

Firefox is now objectively better than Chrome in every way. I would recommend switching moral reasons aside. Chrome's memory management is abysmal. I now get the same shudder when I see someone with chrome on their machine that I used to get when I saw someone running Internet Explorer (which may even be better than chrome now too).

Before I say this, I would just like to say I run Firefox as often as I can and love love love it, but chrome is better, due entirely to the market share of the Blink web engine. Microsoft Teams' webapp only works in Blink. Hulu bitches about widevine until Firefox gives me the notification to enable it. Canvas (that thing all us students use) gets random rendering errors on gecko that makes the UI malfunction a lot.

People mention that more people should use Firefox because google controls the Blink engine and Gecko is the only real competitor, and if Blink has too high of market share, than google can add exclusive functionality to blink for developers to use, edging all other browsers out of the market.

Congrats, we live in that future.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#193

Post by mark_l_watson »

cyrialize wrote: post #139

I have mostly de-googled myself. For search I mainly rely on DuckDuckGo, but as many people have pointed out sometimes DuckDuckGo doesn't cut it. When that happens I either use Google or Startpage. I usually use Google when I want information about a business near me. I haven't tested this thoroughly but I think Google does a better job of getting and presenting phone numbers, accurate store hours, etc. For email I'm…

I have a quick suggestion for you, re: using Linux: rely on web apps. iCloud.com works fine on my Linux laptop using FireFox. Same with a Microsoft Office 365 (web apps, not native apps). I am a million miles away from being a security expert, but in my non-expert opinion, I feel safer using web apps than native apps, especially on my iPhone. I hate installing apps, and always resent prompts like “install our f@cking app...”

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#194

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

I understand the reasoning and I applaud the effort. As the author correctly identified he loses people by switching from Google to Apple, since ,when it comes to cell phones, it seems like choosing a lesser evil at best.

edit: clarity

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#195

Post by mrwesleycrusher »

brabel wrote: post #59
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…

As much as I would like to agree, as a user who has DDG as the default search engine, this is not my experience... DDG consistently gives me useless results when I search for less popular languages results (searching Dart, or the search-friendly dartlang, gives me crap every time, while Google finds stuff easily... sure, Dart is by Google, that may be a factor, but if I remember correctly, results for Groovy and very…

I just searched for "dart" on ecosia and the programming language showed up on the first page of results. I also have bad luck with duck duck go, but I think ecosia proves that the only reason bing is bad is because Microsoft is incompetent

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#196

Post by ocdtrekkie »

noisem4ker wrote: post #119
kortilla wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What privacy issues do you think the iPhone has?

Perhaps most of the apps that you install from the store, which are just as riddled with analytics and tracking as their Android counterparts.

iOS provides a lot less ways for third party apps to dig into the OS and interact with other apps. The same thing Android fans hate about it, the lock-in and lack of customizability, offers it a lot of additional privacy protection.

In general though, regardless of your phone ecosystem: Remove as many apps as you can from your device. Only install the ones you need and remove ones you don't frequently.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#197

Post by ajayyy »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #190
ekianjo wrote: post #24

> Iphone: But I think this really helped cut my reliance on Google and I feel a lot less reliant on any particular phone OS. You just became reliant on the iOS system instead of the Google on. Hardly an improvement.

You can use an Apple phone without using a lot of Apple services and contributing a lot to a cloud profile of you. Given how many apps on the Android ecosystem depend on Play Services to function, it's nearly impossible to do this with Android. I have a Brave Heart Edition PinePhone, and I'm hoping to switch to a real Linux phone soon, but for now, carrying an iPhone as a pretty basic phone is still a big privacy imp…

MicroG

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#198

Post by tasty_freeze »

manuelmagic wrote: post #167
aembleton wrote: post #108

What are you using instead of Google maps?

I'm using Here Maps[1] since 2013, both on PC and mobile. [1] https://wego.here.com/

Wow, this is the first time trying this. Very responsive, and has real-time traffic information, which was the killer feature of google maps for me.

Maps and youtube are the two google features I routinely use. I'll have to install this on mobile and see how it goes.

Thanks for the tip!

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#199

Post by ajayyy »

glogla wrote: post #96
DeathArrow wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only way to not share you every living moment with google while still having a snartphone is to have an iphone. Not really. You can install LineageOS an many Android phones. LineageOS is a de-googled Android. And the latest Huawei Android devices are also Google-free.

That's what I meant by "generally" usable. You can install Lineage. I can as sell. But most people can't. But the worst thing is that to get most use of Android, you have to have Play store and attached surveillance services. There's a lot of cool stuff on fdroid, but your city's public transport? Your bank's app? Your local taxi's app? Your city's meal delivery app? You're not getting that without Google Play. You c…

Lineage OS has auto updates. As well, APK Mirror does test the checksum, so it will contain no malware that isn't on the play store.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#200

Post by ocdtrekkie »

ajayyy wrote: post #197
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use an Apple phone without using a lot of Apple services and contributing a lot to a cloud profile of you. Given how many apps on the Android ecosystem depend on Play Services to function, it's nearly impossible to do this with Android. I have a Brave Heart Edition PinePhone, and I'm hoping to switch to a real Linux phone soon, but for now, carrying an iPhone as a pretty basic phone is still a big privacy imp…

MicroG

MicroG still sends all of your data to Google! The only thing MicroG is doing is making the Google API client code on your phone open source. But it's not really protecting you from sending your data to Google.
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