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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

#241

Post by gerdesj »

the_af wrote: post #89
submeta wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here: Migrated all my gmail accounts to Fastmail. Took me two days. Migrated Google Docs to Dropbox. And replaced Google Sheets and Doc with a Microsoft subscription (MS Word and MS Excel). Then there‘s the search engine. I tried hard to replace Google Search with DDG, but I have to admit that Google gives me better search results. Still I would love to leave this also behind. Finally there is youtube for me. Ai…

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)

Nextcloud is indicated here.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#242

Post by aembleton »

carlinmack wrote: post #140
CameronNemo wrote: post #138

I am currently running a degoogled Android phone. Hardest part has been mapping -- OsmAnd lacks many points of interest as well as Los Angeles street numbers. I am not looking forward to having to go by cross streets and looking up points of interest in a separate app (Acastus Photon).

if you don't already, contributing to OpenStreetMap from your phone is easy and feels very rewarding. I recommend StreetComplete for beginners and OSM Go! once you want to start editing features

I can't find osm go! on the play store. Have you got a link?

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#244

Post by scarface74 »

submeta wrote: post #56
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…

Same here: Migrated all my gmail accounts to Fastmail. Took me two days. Migrated Google Docs to Dropbox. And replaced Google Sheets and Doc with a Microsoft subscription (MS Word and MS Excel). Then there‘s the search engine. I tried hard to replace Google Search with DDG, but I have to admit that Google gives me better search results. Still I would love to leave this also behind. Finally there is youtube for me. Ai…

I’m paranoid about my photos. I have them backed up to:

- iCloud

- iCloud syncs to my Windows PC

- Backblaze backs up my Windows PC

- Google Drive

- One Drive

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#245

Post by bb88 »

mianos wrote: post #238
gonehome wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a MacBook and it’s great, I also have an iPhone. It’s the business model that matters to me more. It’s not a “hate on big companies” thing. In fact the big software companies usually have better security (google included) because they have some of the world’s best security people. I try to avoid companies that have an incentive to collect user information for ad targeting. Apple doesn’t have that (and they’ve…

It seems to me gmail has not changed much in the last few years. Search is much the same but worse. The only change seems to be snippets that, for me, usually host some badly scraped content from another site with wrong answers but more effort on SEO. It seems a bit of a waste of 20% of the page. I wonder what those tens of thousands of people are mainly doing? Maybe working on stuff that we never see, like applying…

I really enjoyed google inbox. Gmail moved a few things over from it, but what I really appreciated was archiving everything older than a month, because usually it was promotional crap anyway.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#246

Post by eckza »

734129837261 wrote: post #239

I think Google is great. It's convenient. Their search results are tailored to my liking, I love Gmail, I adore Google Docs/Sheets, and there are tons of tools I use almost every day as well. Honestly, the "switching away from [nameHere]" trend is so tiresome. Good job, you're a unique little snowflake now. You don't have Facebook, no LinkedIn, you don't use Google but DuckDuckGo, and you're even switching away from…

I'm so glad that you are so happy with your choice of products and services.

For the rest of us, it's very liberating to have some agency over who owns our data. Any agency at all.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#247

Post by liability »

gerash wrote: post #230
simonkafan wrote: post #219

It's interesting to see how Google turned from a respected company everyone wanted to work at to a "persona non grata" within just a few years. I wonder what were the main reasons for this change?

Perhaps heavy negative campaigning previously by Microsoft (Scroogled?) and still by Murdoch's media outlets had at least some effects. Their fail fast, watch growth metics and bad product leadership also don't help

Google has the lion's share of the blame for their negative reputation, not microsoft and fox news.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#248

Post by jrnichols »

mianos wrote: post #238
gonehome wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a MacBook and it’s great, I also have an iPhone. It’s the business model that matters to me more. It’s not a “hate on big companies” thing. In fact the big software companies usually have better security (google included) because they have some of the world’s best security people. I try to avoid companies that have an incentive to collect user information for ad targeting. Apple doesn’t have that (and they’ve…

It seems to me gmail has not changed much in the last few years. Search is much the same but worse. The only change seems to be snippets that, for me, usually host some badly scraped content from another site with wrong answers but more effort on SEO. It seems a bit of a waste of 20% of the page. I wonder what those tens of thousands of people are mainly doing? Maybe working on stuff that we never see, like applying…

I wonder what they're doing, and then I look at the educational space and I realize just what's happening. And I'm kind of alarmed by it, to be honest. Call me paranoid, but we have a growing generation of kids in school that only know Google services. The only web browser is Google Chrome. The only email is Gmail. All word/spreadsheet/etc is Google Docs. School is Google Classroom. Chat is Google Messenger or whatever it it. Google Photos. Google Search. Google Cloud. Google Drive. Google Video or Youtube. ALL they see all day in and out at school are Google properties.

I can't be the only one that has noticed this over the years.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#249

Post by mda »

nickelpro wrote: post #86
boocoo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, Google could identify you since on Chrome you might have your name, address, and phone number saved for auto-fill, and sell your information to companies. They could sell your information to a certain company if their AI identifies you, for example, as a left-wing elderly male. I think the recent documentary that got deleted off Youtube explains it. Google also censors results a lot compared to Yahoo and Duc…

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

Also the claims are mostly BS.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#250

Post by jrnichols »

nickelpro wrote: post #77
XCSme wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest problem is Google becoming a monopoly, when you rely daily on tens of their services. Than, if for some reason, they decide to close your account or use your data to "be evil", there's not much you can do.

Is there a history of Google de-activating accounts arbitrarily? I agree this would be a huge problem, but I'd be similarly devastated if my ISP stopped doing business with me, or any other email provider if I wasn't on gmail. True, if Google deactivated my account I'd lose a little bit more than just gmail, but any company I do business with arbitrarily cutting me off would be on the same magnitude of problematic. T…

There's the issue of them arbitrarily disabling accounts, but also what if someone takes over your account?

You've lost everything at that point.

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