Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life • Hacker News Board

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#131

Post by maps7 » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:02 PM UTC

actuator wrote: post #46

chongli wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use DDG for search full time and I’ve found that I need to use !g less and less often. For the times I do use !g I am finding myself increasingly disappointed in the results. I think Google is losing the war against spamdexing [1] and I think the search industry is ripe for disruptive innovation. I have seen and participated in a number of discussions here on HN about the potential for a new search engine that elim…

Even after using DDG for the last 5-6 years, I find myself always using !g with it. So much that, it has become a muscle memory thing and sometimes I type it involuntarily. Sure, if I just care about US specific results and I am doing an exact term search or maybe StackOverflow result is my target, DDG comes close but Google gets context of things much better. I keep finding much better search results that had more c…

> it has become a muscle memory thing and sometimes I type it involuntarily.

Same. I sometimes even type '!g' into Google itself by mistake

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#132

Post by gonehome » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:03 PM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #110

gonehome wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The fastmail filters are supposedly pretty good, but I can’t personally vouch for them.

I also have a lot of email for record keeping (amazon orders etc.) I just route those to folders myself.

You’re right though that I probably have it easier than most generally.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#133

Post by wintorez » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:04 PM UTC

I tried. I failed. I returned. Google is like Gravity. It would be awesome to escape it, but it’s expensive, impractical, and sooner or later, you will be back where you where. :(

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#134

Post by submeta » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:06 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #90

the_af wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what's the benefit of replacing Google Docs with Dropbox? I seem to remember HN's readership is occasionally hostile to Dropbox. Myself, I use it but the same drive that would have me ditch Google would also make me ditch Dropbox... (I haven't reached that point, though)

I ditched both for similar reasons. I didn’t have a really strong need for either though and I do use iCloud to sync among my apple devices.

I also use iCloud for all my iDevices. It‘s not fast or as flexible as Dropbox but privacy wise I prefer them over any other cloud sync solution.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#135

Post by tzfld » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:06 PM UTC

All these self-hosted platforms would definitely not help an average person in de-googling himself. And these are like 99% of the users.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#136

Post by toastercat » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:07 PM UTC

maps7 wrote: post #126

toastercat wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lots of text on Migadu's site but no pictures of what the inbox looks like

I think they appeal to powerusers that probably already use a client like Thunderbird. :) However, their webmail client is just RainLoop, which you can find a demo of here: https://www.rainloop.net/try-now/

Also, they are currently collaborating with sourcehut to develop a new webmail client to replace RainLoop. For the record, I like RainLoop quite a bit and find it to be very speedy.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#137

Post by djeiasbsbo » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #71

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…

> 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. Try Searx[1]. It's a search engine aggregator that works with DDG, Google, and dozens of other search engines. You can self-host it or use one of the public instances. [1] https://github.com/asciimoo/searx

I use searx and it's great. There are a lot of instances as well, this site has a list: https://searx.space/

There even are some which are accessible over Tor.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#138

Post by CameronNemo » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

I am currently running a degoogled Android phone. Hardest part has been mapping -- OsmAnd lacks many points of interest as well as Los Angeles street numbers. I am not looking forward to having to go by cross streets and looking up points of interest in a separate app (Acastus Photon).

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#139

Post by toastercat » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

hx2a wrote: post #123

toastercat wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How well does Migadu handle spam filtering? I recently switched from Google to AWS Workmail and get spam and junk I never saw before.

Quite well in my experience... sometimes too well. When you sign up with Migadu, you are essentially your own postmaster and can set how aggressive you want to filter spam on the domain level as well as per mailbox.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#140

Post by carlinmack » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:12 PM UTC

CameronNemo wrote: post #138

I am currently running a degoogled Android phone. Hardest part has been mapping -- OsmAnd lacks many points of interest as well as Los Angeles street numbers. I am not looking forward to having to go by cross streets and looking up points of interest in a separate app (Acastus Photon).

if you don't already, contributing to OpenStreetMap from your phone is easy and feels very rewarding. I recommend StreetComplete for beginners and OSM Go! once you want to start editing features