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Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

degoogle.jmoore.dev

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Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#161

Post by jszymborski »

lrissman wrote: post #128
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)

For my use case, I choose to be mostly serverless -- I use Resilio Sync. It's not a perfect solution as they still host the tracker and if one device cannot find another then it routes via their servers, but otherwise all my documents are stored on my devices. Another feature lacking is sharing with a non-resilio user is not possible with Resilio Sync.

You can also try SyncThing, which works in a similar manner, but it's FOSS and you can host your own tracker.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#163

Post by loph »

I use duckduckgo for search, I have the DuckDuckGo privacy extensions installed in Chrome, along with EFF Privacy Badger. I'm not that worried about Google.

I did de-facebook myself. IMHO Facebook is far more invasive, far more harmful than Google.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#164

Post by exlurker »

e40 wrote: post #52
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.

I've been using DDG for more than a year. Just switched back a day or two ago. I just got sick of the terrible results. I don't know if Google got better or DDG/Bing got worse. A few months ago I started comparing search results and the Google ones where better and the other day I just couldn't handle doing double searches anymore. Really sad to me that it came to this.

You can !g google in DDG when you need to. I often have to do, and hopefully DDG picks this up and improves their search.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#165

Post by nickelpro »

_def wrote: post #153
nickelpro wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those things affect my life. They may be moral or principle concerns for you, but they're not for me.

You could also argue that global warming probably won't affect you in your lifetime. It's a very egocentric way of looking at things.

Global warming affects every person on Earth, I don't think Google's data collection negatively affects a single digit percent of their customers, much less the majority. I don't get the comparison.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#166

Post by nickelpro »

raspyberr wrote: post #154
nickelpro wrote: post #61

Genuinely, why should I care? What harm is likely to happen to my life by sticking with Google, a service provider I find convenient? EDIT: I don't want to be accused of fan-boying or astro-turfing. I just see "Avoid Big Company X because they collect your data" a lot and I just can't give a damn about companies collecting my data. Be my guest, if it means I get free stuff. My data is boring tech nerd data, use it to…

Accepting this is setting a precedent that you're happy for companies with a lot of power to have efficient systemic influence. This has already (it's barely been 10/20 years) started to influence the outcome of elections. Literally the cornerstone of a functioning democracy. And you're saying you don't care.

Information distributors do more than influence elections, they completely control them.

Walter Cronkite impeached Nixon, Pulitzer and Hearst started the Spanish-American war, and FAANG companies, directly or indirectly, nudge the needle on elections. I don't see how Google is unique or notable in this regard.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#167

Post by gerash »

I think the mistake Google is making is not charging high prices a la. Apple for their products. It'd result in a big drop in user base initially but over time people will respect it more and stop writing up articles on how to stop using a free ad supported product in favor of a set of random toy projects

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#168

Post by jszymborski »

strangescript wrote: post #129
nickelpro wrote: post #61

Genuinely, why should I care? What harm is likely to happen to my life by sticking with Google, a service provider I find convenient? EDIT: I don't want to be accused of fan-boying or astro-turfing. I just see "Avoid Big Company X because they collect your data" a lot and I just can't give a damn about companies collecting my data. Be my guest, if it means I get free stuff. My data is boring tech nerd data, use it to…

People have been raising flags about this for literally decades now and the other shoe has yet to drop in any kind of meaningful way. Everyone is tracking you online, but for some reason we only care about it when its companies that make good products that we like to use. Would you rather they not target you with ads and sell google searches for a nickel each? Meanwhile, I had an ad in my gmail yesterday for Google F…

No, we care when those companies are giant multinational monopolies.

Think of it this way. I walk into a mom & pop clothing store, and one of the sales people on the floor takes note into a little pad the items of clothing I touched, so that they might optimise their purchasing.

Contrast that to one person from one of the worlds largest companies, following me at home, work, the shops, the pub, the bedroom, tallying up all the things I do so that they might broker that information to commercial interests, or more nefariously, to further cement their choke-hold on the ever-increasing industries which they've a financial stake in.

One of those situations is clever business, the other is an Orwellian hellscape.

I'll take every opportunity I can to rid myself of that second pursuer, thank you very much.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#169

Post by abawany »

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…

The thought of arbitrary shutdown and their 'legendary' customer service got me moving off Google services. I started with Runbox using my own domains, which works well though some emails just never got delivered. I'm now on a combination of Runbox, Mailo, and Mailbox.org with long-term prepaid plans and I'm satisfied - I'll probably prune at some point but the prices are so reasonable that the urgency to do so is not there. Support by Mailo and Runbox has been excellent.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#170

Post by nickelpro »

jszymborski wrote: post #168
strangescript wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been raising flags about this for literally decades now and the other shoe has yet to drop in any kind of meaningful way. Everyone is tracking you online, but for some reason we only care about it when its companies that make good products that we like to use. Would you rather they not target you with ads and sell google searches for a nickel each? Meanwhile, I had an ad in my gmail yesterday for Google F…

No, we care when those companies are giant multinational monopolies. Think of it this way. I walk into a mom & pop clothing store, and one of the sales people on the floor takes note into a little pad the items of clothing I touched, so that they might optimise their purchasing. Contrast that to one person from one of the worlds largest companies, following me at home, work, the shops, the pub, the bedroom, tallying…

In either case I still bought my slacks from the clothing store, my pint from the tavern, and slept soundly in my bed. You object to the company having your information, I object to it being used to impact my life. I don't give a damn about them just having it.

And thus my question, how does this affect my life?

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