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Is signing up for an account really that big of a deal to you?
Did you even read the post? This is about avoiding tracking. And yes, signing up for accounts can be grueling. Try making a google account without submitting a blood sample.
That said, I think that one of the big mistakes that these initiatives make is trying to solve all of the problems that Google solves, under one roof. It's impossible. The only way Google is able to manage it is that they are an absolutely huge software organization. No free, or even smaller-but-still-not-open-source, alternative is going to be able to match the sheer number of services.
But I also don't think they have to. Instead it should be tackled in a decentralized way, which is much easier—one company or organization focusing on beating Google (or whichever monopoly) at exactly one of their products, by offering a better experience, or an equivalent experience with more freedom.
It makes me wonder whether a viable alternative approach as a consumer might be to use "best in class, but not necessarily FOSS" solutions from many different providers. For example, you could use...
- DuckDuckGo for search, an easy enough switch.
- Fastmail for email, which is very similar and an easy enough switch as well.
- Dropbox Paper for documents and notes, which is arguably a better, simple experience for most peoples's simple use cases.
- Microsoft Office365 for spreadsheets, since it's very hard for FOSS alternatives to be good and interoperable.
- Facebook for social messaging and events.
- Spotify for music.
- etc.
You end up with lots of different closed-source, for-profit companies in the list, but none of your data is concentrated in any one large player. At most you'd have to "rebalance" your portfolio when big acquisitions or shutdowns occur.
I'd be curious: If anyone is much more aware of privacy issues , could you weigh in on whether this approach would help? It might not help with government-actor spying, but it might help with lots of the other monopolistic issues?
Why doesn't google offer a paid version which encrypts your data and takes all manors of privacy measures? I would go for that
Only a niche crowd would select this option, so the revenue they'd potentially gain is much less than what they put at risk with the change in messaging.
Why doesn't google offer a paid version which encrypts your data and takes all manors of privacy measures? I would go for that
It would be nice if Google offered a paid set of services that: 1) Would use a public cryptography key to encrypt for storage any messages sent to you in the clear. 2) Not index or advertise to you (since you're now a customer). 3) Provide some reasonable support. 4) Have 'opt out' for ads elsewhere in their networks too. 5) Provide access to a fully anonymous (globally shared profile, no search/user matching logs of…
2. Email isn't scanned and ads aren't presented within Gmail (Search still has them)
3. Limited support
The rest can be self-fulfilled by running an ad blocker, and using Incognito/Privacy mode for searches. Granted, these are annoying .
All Google accounts can disable indexing for advertisement, and can opt out of using web history to "improve" ad placement.
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Generally yes. I default to DDG, but I when I don't find what I want I often just add the '!g' to the search. The only issue I have with Google search (aside from privacy concerns and the like) is the frequency to which the results don't actually contain any of the search terms I use. This functionality is fine for general use, but when I'm actually looking for something very specific the guesses Google makes often m…
Do you have any examples of queries which google doesn't return any results with the search terms used? I can't even remember the last time this has happened to me so I'm curious.
The arguments feel disingenuous. A start-up is much less likely able to fight a subpoena for user data. A start-up is much more likely to disappear. The only real case I see is an argument against ads, though I don't see any disclaimer that the service will then need to be a paid service. Disclaimer: I work at a big company. I also worked at a small start-up in the past.
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alternativeto is great if you are looking for a software. degooglisons-internet.org is a non-profit that aims at hosting software for people who do not have the skill to host it themselves.
which completely defies the points they're making against google. all the cloud business runs on trust, and giving all data to newcomers doesn't sound a good plan. I can reliably find my emails from ten years ago in Google and there is no end in sight. this other service runs on donations and expects me to believe they'll have comparable lifetime?
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A blood sample? The only fields they ask for that might be too much for someone is a phone number and prior email, and neither is required to make an account. I take my privacy very seriously and understand a lot of the apprehension about Google's tracking, but I think you are being a little ridiculous.
I've never been able to sign-up for a google account without entering a valid phone number. Even typing 555-5555 it will state it needs a valid phone number.