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

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#171

Post by Razengan » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:46 PM UTC

aitchnyu wrote: post #67

I never considered a Gmail alternative since Gmail has primary/social/promotion/updates tabs and proper threading of replies and almost perfect spam protection. What services do the above things as good?

I have never used Gmail and never needed to. iCloud mail has been good enough for 9 years.

• Does not ask for phone number.

• Allows actual aliases (instead of a self-defeating YourRealAddress+Alias@Gmail.com)

• Does not sneakily sign you into Search and every other Google service when you just want to check your email.

In addition to all the privacy advantages.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#172

Post by ciarannolan » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:46 PM UTC

nickelpro wrote: post #166

raspyberr wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not unique in this regard, therefore it doesn't matter? Is that your argument?

Also, comparing the relative power of newspaper men to Google doesn't make much sense.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#173

Post by chris_f » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:47 PM UTC

john-shaffer wrote: post #142

colordrops wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not sure if this will work. Google results are absolutely horrible for me, but not for my brother. It may be because they don't have a profile on me, but they have years of data on him. Using a proxy search engine may result in degraded results for someone who is currently getting good results from Google search.

>It may be because they don't have a profile on me, but they have years of data on him..."

That might be true, but I'm not sure. Outside of local searching I am skeptical of the benefits of filter bubbling.

I think it is just as likely that you and your brother have different opinions of relevance (even if you were both returned the same exact results unrelated to past activity), and the relevance decisions Google makes more align with your brothers perspective.

I am the creator of one of the search engines [0] named in the post. It will return the same exact organic results no matter who you are or what your prior searches were. Feel free to give it a go with your brother and see how it compares for both of you. For organic results, it works like DuckDuckGo does with Bing, but the difference is the main source of our organic results are actually from Google.

[0] https://www.runnaroo.com/

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#174

Post by ciarannolan » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:48 PM UTC

nickelpro wrote: post #105

jaynetics wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Here's a better search of this stuff:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#175

Post by meabed » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:48 PM UTC

Thinking that other corporates won’t use your data is surprisingly naïve! Apple use privacy as a brand value and not because the company or shareholders really cares, if there business dry out, you think they won’t use your data. same goes for all corporates. I find it most important is you get best service no matter what company is / I wouldn’t mind if company use my data to give me and Other users better service and benefit in the process! You would do the same if you build your own product!

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#176

Post by raspyberr » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:48 PM UTC

nickelpro wrote: post #166

raspyberr wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With standard media because of its mass audience nature, it's easier to see how they influence people. The mass acceptance of the internet has started to push traditional media out but replaced it with incredibly personalised and thus a more effective version that is yet to have proper legal regulations in place.

My personal thing with Google and "convenience" is that the convenience is with just a low barrier to entry. Once you set up your own workflow with "Google alternatives", the convenience factor disappears.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#177

Post by jjoonathan » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:50 PM UTC

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 most tedious part is moving accounts from your gmail

Every time google has done something to piss me off over the last few years, I have channeled that into migrating a few accounts away from google. It's a good way to unwind and has the bonus of being an action that speaks louder than words.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#178

Post by plexiglas » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:50 PM UTC

Several months ago I took small steps towards this direction.

It started with downloading Firefox on desktop and web. I love Firefox mobile. It's performant and supports multiple tabs. Also comes in Dark Mode.

Next came email, which was difficult. I'm still transitioning. Protonmail was my pick because of the price point and ProtonCalendar (currently in beta). Gmail and Gcal are deeply integrated and wanted an alternative that could offer a similar experience. The only con here is that ProtonCalendar is web only (please support on mobile soon, Protonmail!).

Duckduckgo is a solid search alternative. Results are quality. Between these services, browsing is a joy again.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#179

Post by petronio » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:03 PM UTC

blendergeek wrote: post #23

If a company is based in an "X eyes" nation", but the product is A) self-hosted and B) open source, does it matter that the organization the develops it is based in an "X eyes" nation?

The risk is much lesser, but there's the possibility of poisoning the binaries or release package.

There's also the whole "just because open source allows people to review code doesn't mean that they do" problem, but I don't expect that attack vector to be used by state actors because it would make the beneficiary of the attack too obvious to the public.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#180

Post by simplehuman » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

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…

You shouldn't care. Same way I don't care about giving my data to Google. My data is precious though compared to yours, so I value it.