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Why I’m Worried About Google

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Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#191

Post by m-localhost »

pcpcpc wrote: post #112
CaptainZapp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is fine and DuckDuckGo is good enough by now. Firefox has the added bonus that it doesn't implement a two tier cookie system. Of which one tier cannot be deleted. This, in combination with the new and improved "sign-in-convenience" convinced me that Google is exactly as dirty as any other tech company and should be avoided like the plague, wherever possible.

Using Firefox and DDG daily for personal use. I'm looking to switch off of inbox/gmail, google calendar, etc. but haven't settled on an alternative yet. I've made heavy use of the snoozed notifications in inbox. Any recommendations?

https://www.zoho.com/ has a lot to offer. I use nextcloud for calendar and contacts.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#192

Post by CosmicBagel »

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the side menu to refresh instead of just pulling the page down. It's all small stuff, but it adds up.

But despite this, and the lower quality search results of DDG, I'm still going to push forward with degooglifying my stuff. But I'm in deep. Drive, keep, Gmail, photos, hell I'm even typing this on a pixel 2. It's gonna take a while.

It's been surprisingly difficult finding a good replacement for keep. If anyone has suggestions I'm open. I'll probably make the shift to protonmail to replace Gmail. Not sure what do to about drive at this time.

The issue is that Google's stuff has always been very reliable and performance (well performant enough). For example I'll often ping Google.com for a network test. Google.com is never down, it's always my hardware, or my ISP, never Google.

Im just rambling at this point, but I think somewhere in there is a point about reliability, ease of use, and security that makes Google's products so compelling. Hence why they'll be able to get away with privacy issues like this.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#193

Post by specialist »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #110
gregmac wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing this, but I'm constantly disappointed by the results I get on DDG. Eg, The first page of DDG shows (old) forum posts while Google shows a couple project sites on GitHub and some relevant stack overflow answers. I'm sure some is personalization, but I've also compared results in incognito and Google is still better. I really want to like it, but I'm not going to sabotage my ability to efficiently find t…

To be honest: It works for me > 98% of the time. Usually if the search is highly generic then Google definitely fares better and there's always the !g bang if DDG is not good enough for a specific search.

Thinking out loud here, trying to articulate a notion (complaint).

My two major search use cases are 'technical' (work related, programming, one of my projects) and 'location-based'.

(As a not quite sober news junkie, I'm trying reduce my 'events' search activity.)

Both DDG and Google work fine for technical stuff. Because I already know where to look, how to ask. YouTube is surprisingly (delightfully) great for my DIY projects (eg how to tile my bathroom).

Location based searches still drives me nuts. Both Apple Maps and Google Maps routinely give me ridiculous results. For the love of digital, why aren't closer results ranked higher?

So I end up using Yelp to find local stuff. While I like its 'update search results' as a navigate, their map UI/UX widget is terrible.

I'd probably leave my laptop home if I felt competent using mobile for location-based searches. Now, I'm lugging it every where, and regret it when I don't.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#194

Post by isoskeles »

ekzy wrote: post #131
kvz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try FF recently? It feels as fast as Chrome for me these days! devtools are good and transition was surprisingly frictionless. Bonus: I’m trying Linux and it works/syncs my stuff across Mac/iOS/Ubuntu.

I am on mac, I used FF when they announced their performance improvement last year [1], and it felt fast at the beginning but then it started to get slower. I can't explain why as it was a while ago and I did not look much into it [1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum-era-h...

Same here. The way I noticed the slowness was that I am used to opening up a new tab and immediately typing in my url or search. Whatever speed comes naturally to me, Chrome can handle it. Firefox would lag in ways that resulted in half of what I typed being cut off and other odd behavior. I am positive that Firefox is (or was, when I tried it last year) slower than Chrome in this regard, which was incredibly frustrating and caused me to switch back to Chrome within a week.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#195

Post by macintux »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #170
Angostura wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Bought a personal domain about 10 years ago as piece of mind. Does the job and my registrar handles e-mail forwarding including catchall which is handy for throwaway addresses

That's what I'm considering now, but I'm concerned that I'll forget to update my credit card information or make some other minor mistake with the registrar and lose my domain.

I get hassled via email for months leading up to a renewal, and even if something goes wrong there's a grace period. It's really not a big deal.

Were I smart, I'd set up a calendar reminder each year for my most important domains.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#196

Post by 908087 »

lallysingh wrote: post #51
ataturk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess? An unholy alliance between government and private industry which allows each to get away with things the other can't. For example, squelching free speech can be done by a private company with practically no impediments. Meanwhile, governments want to eavesdrop on everyone and develop dossiers on everyone because that's how you control people. Corporations are doing that for marketing purposes, but the intel…

What CIA connection?

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...

https://pando.com/2015/07/01/cia-foia-google-keyhole/

Search "In-Q-Tel Google" for more.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#197

Post by bjpbakker »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #176
gregmac wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing this, but I'm constantly disappointed by the results I get on DDG. Eg, The first page of DDG shows (old) forum posts while Google shows a couple project sites on GitHub and some relevant stack overflow answers. I'm sure some is personalization, but I've also compared results in incognito and Google is still better. I really want to like it, but I'm not going to sabotage my ability to efficiently find t…

My experience has been the opposite of yours; DDG gets me better, and in particular more up-to-date search results recently.

This is my experience too.

But I hardly ever used Chrome, and wasn't signed in when using Google most of the time. I suspect they don't have a complete profile to improve their results.

Still I would take somewhat worse search results over handing out all of my web usage any day :)

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#198

Post by zbrox »

pcpcpc wrote: post #112
CaptainZapp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is fine and DuckDuckGo is good enough by now. Firefox has the added bonus that it doesn't implement a two tier cookie system. Of which one tier cannot be deleted. This, in combination with the new and improved "sign-in-convenience" convinced me that Google is exactly as dirty as any other tech company and should be avoided like the plague, wherever possible.

Using Firefox and DDG daily for personal use. I'm looking to switch off of inbox/gmail, google calendar, etc. but haven't settled on an alternative yet. I've made heavy use of the snoozed notifications in inbox. Any recommendations?

I've been using FastMail for several years now. The reason I switched was specifically to move away from Google's services and I'm glad I've made the switch. I have recommended FastMail to people over these years and whoever has switched has stayed with them and is pretty glad with them from what I hear.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#200

Post by fokinsean »

CosmicBagel wrote: post #192

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

I'm in fairly deep too, ~3 years of photos in their service. As convenient it is to do search and essentially having a "free" backup, I really need to move off. I'm not worried about moving mail since it's more of an iterative process, but moving photos is going to be a pita.
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