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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

#261

Post by Razengan »

hu3 wrote: post #207
7tsfmCAusrQ wrote: post #147

I would love to see a similar list for de-Apple-ing. Apple's anticompetitive and monopolistic practices with the App Store, the terrible direction MacBooks have taken, its price gouging on hardware... the list goes on. Google is saintly by comparison.

Plus Apple makes devices that harm the environment by being hard to repair by design. edit: It's a well known, documented fact that Apple hardware is hostile towards the environment. Your downvote wont change that.

> It's a well known, documented fact that Apple hardware is hostile towards the environment.

Source? Apple is 100% green in some areas and they have good EPA ratings.

https://www.apple.com/environment/

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#262

Post by wintorez »

nuker wrote: post #228
wintorez wrote: post #133

I tried. I failed. I returned. Google is like Gravity. It would be awesome to escape it, but it’s expensive, impractical, and sooner or later, you will be back where you where. :(

> Google is like Gravity. Great comment :) What beats one body gravity is bigger body's gravity. I escaped to Apple few years ago, except search. Safari should have custom search engine setting, though. Is it missing because of the deal with Google for default engine?

My solution is to put my eggs in different baskets as much as possible. Using Chrome on iPhone, backups on Dropbox, etc. Although to be fair, not a lot of baskets has remained these days.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#265

Post by ta17711771 »

prophesi wrote: post #127
ashtonkem wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG works well enough for me on anything but programming. The moment I need to search for anything programming related, Google works much better for me.

I'd recommend StartPage; essentially a proxy for Google.

Love Startpage, and get decent signals from them, but their ownership should be observed closely.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#266

Post by mastazi »

For me the hardest part of avoiding Google is AMP, especially on mobile, where apps like Twitter redirect all links to their AMP equivalent by default.

Does anyone know a good way to avoid AMP reliably on mobile? What I currently do is pretty convoluted (see below).

On my iPhone, I use a DNS-based ad-blocker[2] and I just associate amp.* to 0.0.0.0 so most amp pages will fail. When the page fails to load, in the address bar I edit the URL manually and remove the "amp" portion, and finally I'm redirected to my news article.

Needless to say, sometimes this gets annoying so when I'm in a hurry I might disable this DNS rule temporarily.

On desktop, on the other hand, it's much easier because I use an extension that blocks AMP automatically[1]

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/

[2] the app AdBlock for iPhone/iPad can import "PiHole compatible" lists (such as the ones at https://firebog.net/ ) and it does dns-level content blocking (in addition to that, it also works as a standard ad-blocker within Safari) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock/id691121579

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#267

Post by wyxuan »

_def wrote: post #153
nickelpro wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You could also argue that global warming probably won't affect you in your lifetime. It's a very egocentric way of looking at things.

Global warming is pretty much fact verified by science.

The 1984 scenario claimed by some people on the other hand is a hypothetical, with some more confident than others that it’s going to happen.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#268

Post by bb88 »

kevingrahl wrote: post #259
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…

Here’s an analogy I like to use for people who don’t care about privacy; Its similar to not caring about free speech just because you have nothing to say. It’s not just about you the regular joe who is of no particular interest to companies/governments but about those people who absolutely need it. You not caring about what they do with your data is totally fine but in my opinion you should care that they (in this ca…

> You can influence groups of people like never before. Swing Elections & change governments. Influence public opinion about literally everything to no small degree.

Right, so, has Google done this? Asking because from what I remember the answer has been largely no, but I remember FB selling data to Cambridge Analytica in 2016.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#269

Post by bostonvaulter2 »

nuker wrote: post #228
wintorez wrote: post #133

I tried. I failed. I returned. Google is like Gravity. It would be awesome to escape it, but it’s expensive, impractical, and sooner or later, you will be back where you where. :(

> Google is like Gravity. Great comment :) What beats one body gravity is bigger body's gravity. I escaped to Apple few years ago, except search. Safari should have custom search engine setting, though. Is it missing because of the deal with Google for default engine?

It does have a custom search setting, it's in the settings app.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#270

Post by manigandham »

My biggest usage is Chrome profiles. I use several for various personal and work accounts which means passwords, history, extensions, open sessions, and everything else are all nicely contained under separate Chrome windows.

Nothing else comes close to this kind of convenience and UX, and it's more secure since accounts are not co-mingled.

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