Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

degoogle.jmoore.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 665 posts

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#101

Post by gonehome »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #50
Efuveo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread is filled with juicy dumb comments, but you certainly win.

Seriously? Have you not read any of the snowden leaks?

The leaks suggested the NSA was accessing information via taps between unencrypted data center connections, not via direct support or collaboration from the companies.

After the leaks google encrypted those connections.

The other parts are within FISA and other parts of the law. There may be disagreements with the transparency or way this stuff works, but your first comment was overly broad and mostly inaccurate.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#102

Post by Natsu »

Taek wrote: post #48
aj_nikhil wrote: post #43

I have been using Duck duck go for few months now. Never missed Google. Slowly I will shift other services as well. It's a matter of societal good that we degoogle. Else Google will become strongest company ever created by mankind.

Google has gotten a lot worse over the past 2 years. The SEO spam has outpaced Google's ability to find actually relevant results.

It's not just spam, using Google puts you into a bubble. Now, the search team will tell you they're doing it to curate the results to present high-quality information, but it's still a bubble in the end. It's very harmful if you're trying to understand what other people are thinking and seeing without filters.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#104

Post by npsomaratna »

XCSme wrote: post #98
nickelpro wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a history of Google de-activating accounts arbitrarily? I agree this would be a huge problem, but I'd be similarly devastated if my ISP stopped doing business with me, or any other email provider if I wasn't on gmail. True, if Google deactivated my account I'd lose a little bit more than just gmail, but any company I do business with arbitrarily cutting me off would be on the same magnitude of problematic. T…

I remember seeing a few cases of Google account de-activation every year. Not sure how often it happens, but it does happen. I personally use Gmail and really like it, I don't expect to have any problems with them, but I do know that my account being deleted at some point for no reason is a real possibility. I think that email is a bigger problem as it's the main connection between you and all the other services you…

The risk with Google is that (if you're like most of us), you're likely to be using several of their services. If you're flagged in any one of those services (for whatever reason), you run the risk of losing access to all of their services at once - including Gmail.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#105

Post by nickelpro »

jaynetics wrote: post #99
nickelpro wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a history of Google de-activating accounts arbitrarily? I agree this would be a huge problem, but I'd be similarly devastated if my ISP stopped doing business with me, or any other email provider if I wasn't on gmail. True, if Google deactivated my account I'd lose a little bit more than just gmail, but any company I do business with arbitrarily cutting me off would be on the same magnitude of problematic. T…

> Is there a history of Google de-activating accounts arbitrarily? Yes. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+%22google%2...

Can you be more specific? I see two links that are directly related to account suspension on the front page of DDG. One related to Newpipe, where the comments on HN call it out as a likely troll, and another with a dead link.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#106

Post by jmnicolas »

nickelpro wrote: post #77
XCSme wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest problem is Google becoming a monopoly, when you rely daily on tens of their services. Than, if for some reason, they decide to close your account or use your data to "be evil", there's not much you can do.

Is there a history of Google de-activating accounts arbitrarily? I agree this would be a huge problem, but I'd be similarly devastated if my ISP stopped doing business with me, or any other email provider if I wasn't on gmail. True, if Google deactivated my account I'd lose a little bit more than just gmail, but any company I do business with arbitrarily cutting me off would be on the same magnitude of problematic. T…

> Is there a history of Google de-activating accounts arbitrarily?

Absolutely. And usually the only solution is to make it known virally so that someone that works at Google try to intervene for you.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#107

Post by submeta »

colordrops wrote: post #93
submeta wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here: Migrated all my gmail accounts to Fastmail. Took me two days. Migrated Google Docs to Dropbox. And replaced Google Sheets and Doc with a Microsoft subscription (MS Word and MS Excel). Then there‘s the search engine. I tried hard to replace Google Search with DDG, but I have to admit that Google gives me better search results. Still I would love to leave this also behind. Finally there is youtube for me. Ai…

If it's about privacy, you can still use google search through various proxy search engines as others have mentioned.

That‘s a good perspective. Never thought about it that way.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#108

Post by toastercat »

gonehome wrote: post #17

I dropped all google services and it wasn’t that hard. The most tedious part is moving accounts from your gmail to your new email (I switched to using my own domain backed by fastmail). Even with a password manager and a list of all my accounts this took me an entire day. You also learn how terrible most non-software company account management is. On a lot of sites changing email is impossible. On some it lets you do…

I also moved all my e-mail off Gmail and onto Migadu using my own domains. This ensures that even if Migadu goes under, I could swifty move to another service and keep my same e-mail addresses (for the record, Migadu is awesome).

Like you mentioned in another comment, it did take me some time to move all my accounts over (about 2 days worth), but I'm so happy I did.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#109

Post by gonehome »

neckardt wrote: post #96
gonehome wrote: post #17

I dropped all google services and it wasn’t that hard. The most tedious part is moving accounts from your gmail to your new email (I switched to using my own domain backed by fastmail). Even with a password manager and a list of all my accounts this took me an entire day. You also learn how terrible most non-software company account management is. On a lot of sites changing email is impossible. On some it lets you do…

Is fastmail the best email service provider these days? I switched my own domain to them a while ago, but then abandoned it when I heard about the new laws in Australia.

I treat email as an insecure mostly public form of communication.

This is particularly true when most of the people you’re emailing have gmail anyway.

Things like proton mail make no sense to me in that context.

Fastmail works well and has design incentives aligned with the user, I thought they were the best of the options available when I switched.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#110

Post by mehrdadn »

gonehome wrote: post #94
mehrdadn wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you use complicated Gmail filters? What did you use instead of them after migrating? Also, any Google Apps Scripts?

No google apps scripts for me so I didn’t have to deal with that. My email style is inbox everything and route emails to folders or delete on read. If there’s something I’m always routing without reading then I unsubscribe. Workflow may not be for everyone, but it keeps my email under control and organized.

Ah thanks. Sounds like you had it quite easy to be honest, and you must not get a lot of emails at all. Not every email is an action item for me—many are just for record-keeping purposes and later searchability, though I have certain filters for those to mark the occasional ones that require action. I would go absolutely insane if I had to look for even 0.1 seconds at every email.
Post reply on HN