How to leave Google and why • Hacker News Board

Re: How to leave Google and why

#21

Post by dna_polymerase » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 11:17 AM UTC

ElectricMind wrote: post #19

dna_polymerase wrote: post #15

I've read many stupid posts about de-googling for various reasons. Mostly by people who also want me to follow them on social media platforms, whose data collection obviously doesn't matter, because... But this one really amazes me: > Recently Google changed their policy for storing photos. Starting from July 2021 you won't have unlimited High Quality storage as before rather than 15GB limit. This is still okay in te…

Please don't shoot the messenger. Many stupid posts earlier doesn't mean this one is also. You know he is salty? Any evidence? "some rambling ?" who decides? "Entitlement is strong" or your need to judge is stronger? "privacy arguments are BS" again where is reasoning?

> "some rambling ?"

Yes the part "Why?", which should explain this motivation uses two paragraphs about unrelated stuff, like Cambridge Analytica, which was Facebook's problem not Google's.

> "Entitlement is strong"

Yes, complaining about someone not giving you something for free is entitlement. In its purest form.

> "privacy arguments are BS"

They obviously aren't. But in this context they are. Either you care about privacy or you continue to use Google products, like Google fonts. This just shows, what the author is "salty" about, which is Google charging for their products. Because he continues to use their free offerings.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#22

Post by ForHackernews » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 11:17 AM UTC

znpy wrote: post #2

One of the biggest problems is probably that there's almost no way of using an android phone and purchase apps without a google account (which will be then linked to purchases and activities).

https://e.foundation/ is an Android/Lineage fork that removes Google services. It comes with its own app store (mix of F-Droid and Play store APKs, from what I can tell)

It's not perfect, but works well enough for daily use in my experience.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#23

Post by creato » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 11:17 AM UTC

It hasn't been even 1 day since a nearly identical thread was on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25823645

And I'm pretty sure we're averaging at least a few of these per week.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#24

Post by m_a_g » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 11:18 AM UTC

superbcarrot wrote: post #14

mastazi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, Google is bad enough on its own, no need to compare. It gets less negative press compared to Facebook, probably because they managed their public relations better, but if you really look, you will find plenty of reasons not to share all your data with them. (Having said that, Facebook is of course just as bad as Google if not worse)

> probably because they managed their public relations better It's not only PR. Google haven't violated their users' privacy to the extent Facebook have, it's not even close.

Can you elaborate on how you made that conclusion?

Re: How to leave Google and why

#25

Post by jrib » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 11:19 AM UTC

mastazi wrote: post #10

I recently closed my Google account after a few months of an automated message informing anyone that the address would be closed soon (using the "Vacation responder" functionality from Gmail settings). In the meantime, I started using my new email address for all my online accounts and I passed it on to all my contacts. Another thing I did, was to download all my Google data (I saved the archives on my NAS at home an…

What did you end up using for email?

Re: How to leave Google and why

#26

Post by xyproto » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 11:21 AM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #18

How to leave Google as a developer, the easy way: 1. Any time Google deprecates a service/library you're using or breaks it with backwards-incompatible changes, move to a non-Google equivalent. 2. Don't adopt any new Google services/libraries. And viola, before you know it you'll be Google free.

3. Goto 1

Or you'll be stuck with broken services.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#27

Post by tomaszs » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 11:25 AM UTC

dna_polymerase wrote: post #15

I've read many stupid posts about de-googling for various reasons. Mostly by people who also want me to follow them on social media platforms, whose data collection obviously doesn't matter, because... But this one really amazes me: > Recently Google changed their policy for storing photos. Starting from July 2021 you won't have unlimited High Quality storage as before rather than 15GB limit. This is still okay in te…

I am moving away from Google also. But not because I don't want to pay. I have been paying Google for services for several years. I am moving away because Google services are lame.

For example Google Music was closed. Google moved my playlist to Google YouTube Music without keeping order of songs and loosing a lots of them in the process. Replacing my songs with completely different ones. I was paying for that "service" and got screwed by Google.

Another example is Google Photos. It does not have basic functionalities expected from a service to store photos. I can not easily organize my photos in folders because of whatever reason Google decided. But the thing that me decide is that after carefully choosing 1500 photos to move to a "separate" folder, it told me I can not move that many photos at once.

Google services are lame. I'd rather pay companies who care about my data and provide what I need.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#28

Post by alkonaut » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 11:29 AM UTC

How many times do you google something? 100 times per day? 200? I'm certainly in that neighborhood on most days. If the search results are even just slightly worse, say costing a second more to scan, or - worse - you spend time visiting irrelevant results before finding what you are after, that's an enormous time sink.

Throwing out any other google service but search is easy. Yet there is basically nothing that google can do in terms of business practices, that would make me go "that's it, I'll just have to settle for these worse search results". So while I usually tend to argue the importance of integrity, it turns out I'm not ready to give up even a few minutes every day for this cause.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#29

Post by logicchains » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 11:29 AM UTC

xyproto wrote: post #26

logicchains wrote: post #18

How to leave Google as a developer, the easy way: 1. Any time Google deprecates a service/library you're using or breaks it with backwards-incompatible changes, move to a non-Google equivalent. 2. Don't adopt any new Google services/libraries. And viola, before you know it you'll be Google free.

3. Goto 1 Or you'll be stuck with broken services.

Fortunately the cost of migrating to a competitor is often not much greater than the cost of migrating to Google's newer offering, e.g. Tensorflow->Tensorflow2 vs Tensorflow->Pytorch, or Angular->Angular2 vs Angular->React.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#30

Post by randomguy404 » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 11:33 AM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #28

How many times do you google something? 100 times per day? 200? I'm certainly in that neighborhood on most days. If the search results are even just slightly worse, say costing a second more to scan, or - worse - you spend time visiting irrelevant results before finding what you are after, that's an enormous time sink. Throwing out any other google service but search is easy. Yet there is basically nothing that googl…

Try startpage, it uses google results, but with no tracking whatsoever