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I'm tired of Google's business products

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Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#151

I hate Google Workspace so much. Not because of the product, which seems fine. But because 10 years ago I signed up for google apps. It was marketed as a way to have a vanity gmail domain. Free forever up to 10 users. I thought it was cool, was a huge Google fan at the time, and created a custom domain for myself and another one for my grandparents. Now, 10 years later they are holding my online persona hostage in a…

> Now, 10 years later they are holding my online persona hostage in a shameless cash grab to try and make Workspaces more profitable. I'm in the same boat, but since ~2006 when I started my first company (dont recall exactly when I set up my google apps account though). I have to chose whether to move my account (which thanks to sign in with google is attached to more places than I can even remember), or pony up $6/m…

Will all those people lose their email when something happens to you?

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All I ever wanted was my own Gmail domain You don't need Workspace to use the Gmail UI with your custom domain. All you need is a regular free @gmail.com account. First switch your domain to an email hosting service that provides SMTP and IMAP, you probably get one free from your domain registrar. In Gmail settings for your @gmail account, add your custom domain as an alternate address for sending mail, using your…

You are trivializing a migration that involves more than ten times as many components. Here's my todo list for the same problem: - gmail - drive storage - calendar - contacts - keep - photos - music - domains - Pay - adsense - webmaster tools - analytics - authenticator - Home - maps - chrome - youtube - Play - email at external sites Can you explain your idea about using Cloud Identity Free Edition in order to allow…

You don't have to transfer ownership of the apps. I'm not 100% certain but I believe that you can just login to the phone with both your real account and the Cloud Identity account, install the apps from the Play Store using the Cloud Identity account, and once they're installed you can use them with either account. That's how it works with other Google accounts. And of course you only need to do this with paid apps previously owned by the Cloud Identity account. New apps or free apps you can just get in your real account.

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#153
It’s complete BS and between the forced upgrade to a paid account for the same email I’ve used for about 10 years AND the lack of response to an Adsense issue where I could not run ads for a YEAR because Google thought a JPEG was malicious software, I’m moving everything I own away from Google. Already moved the email and domains, working on the drive stuff now.

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#154
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I am confident that these things are not for any kind of advertising purposes. When your proof is "I trust Google", it doesn't really feel like you're acting in good faith here. It costs Google time and money to scan your email and extract and store your purchase receipts --- and you think their only motivation was to be nice? Wow! But assuming your interpretation agrees with Google's legal team ... where do you…

Presumably from applications like Search, Chrome, YouTube, Android, Ads, Play Store, Assistant, Translate, News, Maps, Podcasts, Shopping, Google TV, Discover, etc. (That list based on the sources that show up for me https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols ; your mileage will probably vary.) But not from the productivity apps, which is what you were complaining about. > When your proof is "I trust Google", it…

Presumably from applications like Search, Chrome...

And presumably Google Docs and Google Sheets --- which are productivity apps. Basically any of their "free" services.

What do you think the reactions from various regulators around the world would be if these statements turned out to be blatant lies like you suggest?

They're not blatant lies. I showed you above, Google is perfectly OK with you interpreting things in a way that differs from the legally plausible argument they will put forth in a legal setting.

Your TOS quotes are from their paid "premier" products. These are not their only productivity apps.

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#155
My main struggle is more broad: I dislike modern crappy and archaic IT toolchains. For instance I see no points in using Meet/Teams/Zoom when we can do the same without a central service, but so far beside few limited software like Jami or classic, buggy and expensive stuff (classic VoIP gears) there is almost nothing and more important nothing spread so even if that's theoretically perfectly possible avoid those modern platforms I simply can't: being able to talk to myself alone is not much interesting.

Similarly I hate when people send .docx instead of a pdf with proper forms (and when people print then scan documents, or take photos of their screen to send them instead of a screenshot) etc...

Google by itself does not sell anything more crappier then it's competitors, so I "hate" them equally seeing not much differences between them. Beside that in corporate terms, it's not only a matter of internal choices stakeholders choices have to be taken into account and in the present time it's no less tedious avoiding Alphabet than using it, unfortunately...

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#156

I created a small ad campaign to advertise a side project. The projects makes no money, has no plan for monetization, does not use passwords. The only personal data it collects is an email address. I bought $50 worth of ads using my credit card. My account was immediately suspended for suspicious payment. I appealed, noting the card was mine, and I bought the ads. The appeal was rejected. I have occasionally tried to…

If Google trusts their AI that much, I hope they make the precognitive step of replacing their CEO with an AI. Other companies will and survive, whereas the Google AI will never recorrect itself and subsidize their stock at an exponential level.

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#157
post #112

The primary reason I don't use Adsense is the risk that I'll be locked out of my Google account for unknown reasons. I've heard the same advice here on HN: if you're using Google tools for anything, do not use Adsense.

This is something that has worried me somewhat as well. Is there any sort of workaround? Can you use a burner Google account for it?

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#158
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably from applications like Search, Chrome, YouTube, Android, Ads, Play Store, Assistant, Translate, News, Maps, Podcasts, Shopping, Google TV, Discover, etc. (That list based on the sources that show up for me https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols ; your mileage will probably vary.) But not from the productivity apps, which is what you were complaining about. > When your proof is "I trust Google", it…

Presumably from applications like Search, Chrome... And presumably Google Docs and Google Sheets --- which are productivity apps. Basically any of their "free" services. What do you think the reactions from various regulators around the world would be if these statements turned out to be blatant lies like you suggest? They're not blatant lies. I showed you above, Google is perfectly OK with you interpreting things in…

> And presumably Google Docs and Google Sheets --- which are productivity apps.

No. I did not include them in that list for two reasons. First, as has been demonstrated Google is incredibly explicit about data on Drive (which Docs and Sheets are) not being used for ad targeting. There is no ambiguity there. Second, because those apps are not listed on that activity page. Nor are the other apps where Google is making explicit statements about the data not being used for advertising purposes, e.g. Gmail, Photos, Chat.

Again, they're pretty open about the apps whose data can be used for ad targeting. There is no misdirection there, there is no hiding of them from the list of data that they have. If you were correct and they were just blatantly lying, why not do it for all products?

> Your TOS quotes are from their paid "premier" products. These are not their only productivity apps.

The initial submission was about Workspace, so of course I linked to those. But when you moved the goalposts, I posted additional links that were about consumer services (Gmail, Drive). But here's one more. The page for with the account privacy settings says the following, whether you have ads personalization turned on or off, and even for a consumer account:

https://myaccount.google.com/u/1/data-and-privacy

Content from Drive, Gmail and Photos is never used for any ads purposes.

There is just no ambiguity here.

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an in-depth howto guide to do this?

FWIW, this is literally exactly how my product PretzelBox ( https://pretzelbox.cc ) works. We are looking for beta users, if you care to take it for a spin.

A few issues:

- The braced hamburger menu — your logo, actually, on your blog home page redirects to bulma.io.

- There’s no way to switch from the "Very Cool" template back to the original.

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#160

I hate Google Workspace so much. Not because of the product, which seems fine. But because 10 years ago I signed up for google apps. It was marketed as a way to have a vanity gmail domain. Free forever up to 10 users. I thought it was cool, was a huge Google fan at the time, and created a custom domain for myself and another one for my grandparents. Now, 10 years later they are holding my online persona hostage in a…

> Now, 10 years later they are holding my online persona hostage in a shameless cash grab to try and make Workspaces more profitable. I'm in the same boat, but since ~2006 when I started my first company (dont recall exactly when I set up my google apps account though). I have to chose whether to move my account (which thanks to sign in with google is attached to more places than I can even remember), or pony up $6/m…

I know it’s not the same thing but Cloudflare just released a new product for email that’s free. It just forwards any email from your domain in cloudflare. I already use cloudflare and instead of paying google apps for it, I just forward * to my gmail account. Thought it may be of some use if you’re not actively responding from them.
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