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No More Google

nomoregoogle.com

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Re: No More Google

#121

Post by meerita »

jason0597 wrote: post #34

These anti-Google discussions come and go on the front page of Hacker News, but I'd be curious to know how many people actually degoogle their lives drastically after reading such discussions and articles. I believe it's more of a case of "Oh my god, Google is so disgusting! Shame on Google!", and then people open up a new tab in Chrome to search on Google about their next restaurant destination as if nothing happene…

Once I buy the iPhone 12 mini I have prepared everything to de-google the last bit of it. I will only keep the old gmail address but not for logins anymore and i will erase every bit of the info. It is the last thing I want to do to be complete google free.

Re: No More Google

#123

Post by taldo »

I (Xoogler) personally don't think Google is as evil as they color it. But the risk of The Algorithm locking me out on a whim is definitely scary. That's why I'm following more of a "have a backup plan" strategy: mostly just making sure I have copies of all I care about in other places. Gmail, Drive, Photos, etc. Sure, changing workflows and stuff would be painful, but not as much as all that PLUS losing all my data.

Sure, my gmail address is still the primary (possibly only) contact on many many places, but I think that risk would be outweighed by my domain registration accidentally lapsing, or my servers getting spamlisted, or smaller providers going out of business. Again, it would be infuriating and bothersome, but not the end of the world.

That said, I try to keep my personal account for personal stuff, and whenever I want to try something out of the "ordinary layman user" realm, like trying out dev tools or APIs, cloud products, you name it, I'll use a secondary unrelated account just in case The Algorithm finds that odd and ban-worthy.

Re: No More Google

#124

Post by pb7 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #120
pb7 wrote: post #84

Hacker News is incredibly biased against Google. There was recently an informal survey[0] in "Tech Twitter" (i.e. other technical people) regarding opinions about the top tech companies and Google scored second highest overall behind Apple, with something like 85-90% positivity overall across different questions. Facebook, for reference, was something like 35-40%. [0] https://coda.io/@sriram-krishnan/2020-state-of-th…

>93% are in tech industry. no offense but is it surprising that the people who likely draw paychecks from those companies like them? The question is framed as "does tech company X do good for the world?" Presumably if you're working in tech you're already self-selected to agree with that question or you're likely hypocritical enough to answer yes anyway. Seems like asking people in the oil industry if oil company X i…

Did you actually look at the data? Quite a few of the big companies received very negative opinions, much more negative than I would have blindly guessed.

Vast majority of people on Hacker News also draw paychecks from these companies or similar and the sentiment is vastly different.

Re: No More Google

#126

Post by meerita »

pb7 wrote: post #84

Hacker News is incredibly biased against Google. There was recently an informal survey[0] in "Tech Twitter" (i.e. other technical people) regarding opinions about the top tech companies and Google scored second highest overall behind Apple, with something like 85-90% positivity overall across different questions. Facebook, for reference, was something like 35-40%. [0] https://coda.io/@sriram-krishnan/2020-state-of-th…

Common people have not the time to de-google, nor the interest. Privacy is only a techies concern.

Re: No More Google

#127

Post by forrestthewoods »

enriquto wrote: post #94
forrestthewoods wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Firefox, DuckDuckGo, and Hey (email). There’s no replacement for YouTube. But otherwise I’ve cut it out pretty well. I do have to maintain old gmail accounts as they’re logins for god knows how many sites.

Regardless of Google shenanigans, cutting youtube off your life is a pretty good move (as well as reddit, twitter and the like).

Yup. Wise words.

I miss pre-2015 Twitter. I interacted with a lot of fellow devs across the world. Who I would often meet IRL at conferences. It was super enjoyable and valuable. Alas I unfollowed everyone and only open Twitter a couple of times a year.

FB I stopped using many many years ago which was easy. I do use Instagram for sharing vacation and new puppy photos privately. But I easily go months without checking it most of the time. I never scroll.

I go through phases on Reddit. I like r/rust and get a lot of my Rust education from posts there. Which sucks me back in, unfortunately.

I've never gotten pulled into the YouTube rabbit hole. I just click links that happen to be hosted there from time to time. I don't subscribe to much other than SmarterEveryDay and a handful of similar channels. An alternatively would be nice. I wouldn't feel bad about my YouTube usage if it wasn't Google.

Re: No More Google

#128

Post by OJFord »

diarrhea wrote: post #83
selykg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only solution I don't have an alternative for is YouTube. Too many of my favorite content creators are only on YouTube. But I don't use Google search, gmail, photos, maps, or a ton of other things. It's just YouTube that I use it for.

Exactly! With mail, search, maps and various others, there is no community lock-in. Who cares who else uses their same mail provider? YouTube is the only thing where I do not see an alternative, simply because that website is not about the product itself, but about the people who use it. Replacing the product is easy-ish, but the people are impossible to.

Discovery aside (not a big deal for me personally, most recent recommendations have come from HN & channels I already watched) you can just 'subscribe' with some other tool, and download or watch on youtubenocookie, or just use the site not logged in?

I suppose it just depends what you're trying to achieve by 'degoogling'.

Re: No More Google

#129

Post by jakelazaroff »

jason0597 wrote: post #34

These anti-Google discussions come and go on the front page of Hacker News, but I'd be curious to know how many people actually degoogle their lives drastically after reading such discussions and articles. I believe it's more of a case of "Oh my god, Google is so disgusting! Shame on Google!", and then people open up a new tab in Chrome to search on Google about their next restaurant destination as if nothing happene…

The point isn't for people to read these things once and then take drastic measures. It's to slowly build up awareness of alternative services and the number of people who choose them. It's a lot easier to ignore one lonely person calling for something than it is to ignore a thousand.

Re: No More Google

#130

Post by diarrhea »

101008 wrote: post #49
Igelau wrote: post #8

Anyone using any of these email services? I'm not looking for a workplace product, I just want to be able to get myself out of Gmail reliance and gradually get my family away from it too.

My main concern is that people who have my email from years ago now try to contact me and they find I've changed my email address. Is there anything to do to avoid that?

As another commenter noted, the key is to have your own domain. Get that set up, then forward all of Gmail to your new domain and mail provider. If you are deeply dependent on Gmail, this transition can take years to finally pull the plug on it.

The best time to do this was yesterday, but the second best is right now!

It's not gonna get better otherwise.

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