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Alternatives to Google Products

restoreprivacy.com

21–30 of 527 posts

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#21
post #3

Anyone know of an alternative email client that sorts your mail intelligently into promotions, updates, forums, primary like Gmail does? That's had such a positive impact on my productivity I can't leave it behind (I've tried).

Spark for macOS and iOS can do something similar for any mail accessible via IMAP/POP/Exchange.

Spark is notoriously bad for privacy. This is a really poor recommendation given the article.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#22
post #3

Anyone know of an alternative email client that sorts your mail intelligently into promotions, updates, forums, primary like Gmail does? That's had such a positive impact on my productivity I can't leave it behind (I've tried).

It's pretty easy (less than 2 hours work per quarter) to build your own filtering system that works similarly effectively.

Google built a bunch of ML systems that work by default for everyone. Personally, I just have a bunch of filters setup that do the same thing. Has taken minimal effort but some discipline to file incoming emails based on my own patterns.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#24

What's wrong with data collection and tracking? Privacy seems extremely overrated here on HN. Am I missing something? Why would anyone take such efforts to avoid using Google products? That doesn't seem very rational...

Blessed be the sheep, their ignorance is bliss

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#25

What's wrong with data collection and tracking? Privacy seems extremely overrated here on HN. Am I missing something? Why would anyone take such efforts to avoid using Google products? That doesn't seem very rational...

> What's wrong with data collection and tracking? Privacy seems extremely overrated here on HN. Am I missing something? Plenty wrong. It seems you're not new here so I'm amazed you asked that question. Have you been living under a rock in 2013? Just to start, it creates a big power imbalance between consumer and corporations [1] and due to the tightly knit relationship between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley it's als…

Is a power imbalance necessarily wrong? Is it avoidable? Is it suddenly OK if you try to avoid the imbalance but swap one entity for another (dependent on companies versus dependent on your own time/ability to audit code)?

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#26

What's wrong with data collection and tracking? Privacy seems extremely overrated here on HN. Am I missing something? Why would anyone take such efforts to avoid using Google products? That doesn't seem very rational...

I'm actually more worried about Google banning my account and every service along with it, and having no way to get it back or even speak to a human about it because I don't have a large Twitter following or a buddy that works at Google.

That sounds like a reasonable concern. I generally worry more about alternative options being bought by someone else, or languishing / deprecation.

In either case, the subject of a decent article might be: setting up automated exports from service features like Takeout, to mitigate the risk of personal service account closures and disruptions.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#27
post #7

I'm a little discouraged when I see articles like this that seem to be completely tuned for developers or look over completely decent pro-privacy alternatives like Apple. For example, the "best" calendar alternative is Etar which looks to a Github repo. Really? At the very least you could mention Apple Calendar. Is Maps.Me (which uses AdSense) really better than Apple Maps? I'm not a fan of hooktube either - it just…

I thought it was strange bing was not mentioned, even though it has Mozilla's endorsement of having a better privacy policy than Google[0] and is probably the most popular alternative to search in the United States. This far from a complete list of Google alternatives. [0] https://www.pcworld.com/article/184520/mozilla_endorses_bing...

I like/sometimes use Bing, and it's decent, but it's not significantly different than Google in terms of data collection. The biggest difference, arguably, is that they pay you for it via Bing Rewards.

DuckDuckGo uses Bing data and respects your privacy more, and probably the best choice for the privacy-conscious.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#28

Add Safari for browser, iCloud Drive and iCloud for email, to complete the list.

Unless you live in China. In that case the Chinese government has full unfettered access to your iCloud Drive data and iCloud email.

If you live in China its game over anyway :) Get a VPN, somehow, and create non-Chinese iCloud accounts. Always on VPN is actually a good thing everywhere.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's wrong with data collection and tracking? Privacy seems extremely overrated here on HN. Am I missing something? Plenty wrong. It seems you're not new here so I'm amazed you asked that question. Have you been living under a rock in 2013? Just to start, it creates a big power imbalance between consumer and corporations [1] and due to the tightly knit relationship between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley it's als…

Is a power imbalance necessarily wrong? Is it avoidable? Is it suddenly OK if you try to avoid the imbalance but swap one entity for another (dependent on companies versus dependent on your own time/ability to audit code)?

> Is a power imbalance necessarily wrong?

No, it's great, actually! We enjoy it a lot here.

> Is it avoidable?

Yes, yes it is.

> Is it suddenly OK if you try to avoid the imbalance but swap one entity for another (dependent on companies versus dependent on your own time/ability to audit code)?

It's never 'suddenly' OK. More like 'eventually' OK, as you know, you need to take the time to audit code, etc..

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#30
Recently I started shelling out $25 a month for a G-Suite account. I wish I could have kept my @gmail email address, as I think your own vanity URL looks a little tacky, but oh well.

Anyway, for privacy but also security it’s been amazing.

DKIM, DMARC, SPF, and S/MIME for mail. All attachments are executed in a special sandbox before moving to your inbox (delays mail a little bit). None of my personal data / content is scanned or looked at (I think?). Plenty of security rules, alerts, and audits I can set up. Also an actual support phone number I can call for help whenever.

Why can’t Google move to a paid model? It’s worked for both Oracle and Microsoft for the last 40 years.

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