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How to leave Google and why

jach.me

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Re: How to leave Google and why

#31

Post by theshrike79 »

jrib wrote: post #25
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?

Not the parent, but I switched to Fastmail. It was the only one that provided large enough storage quotas for my Gmail inbox at a reasonable price. 5€/month for 30GB of storage + domain aliases + native iOS application.

Protonmail is SuperSecure and all that, but they only have 5GB of storage and for the 4€/month account, getting it close to 30GB would be 6x that. (The quota was much lower when I evaluated the services around 4-5 years ago)

Re: How to leave Google and why

#32

Post by dna_polymerase »

tomaszs wrote: post #27
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 "servi…

See, simple HN comment, solid reasoning, no contradictions. No Google service installed anywhere. Is that so hard?

To a certain point I'd even agree. Google products often lack a certain love for details. Their apps sometimes feel like MVPs that aren't nice to use, which in turn leads to them abandoning them.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#33

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: How to leave Google and why

#35

Post by mastazi »

jrib wrote: post #25
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?

I'm using my own instance of mail-in-a-box, of course this is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, because you basically become your own admin. But personally I enjoy doing that, and the maintenance required is really minimal.

If you are looking for cloud/managed alternatives you can have a look at the list here https://degoogle.jmoore.dev/

Re: How to leave Google and why

#36

Post by Tenoke »

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.

That sounds nice but this approach is unlikely to ever get me off Search, Gmail, Android, Maps, and Chrome and those are also the ones that likely give them the most info about me.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#37

Post by judge2020 »

m_a_g wrote: post #24
superbcarrot wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

At least on a standpoint of what ‘partners’ or ‘developers’ can access, Google hasn’t had a Cambridge Analytica scenario play out (that we know of) so all of the data they have gained via web tracking for the purpose of ads is securely stored in a Google silo.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#38

Post by imiric »

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…

I suggest giving Searx[1] a try.

It returns search results from most search engines, it's highly configurable and trivial to self host. There are some hiccups here and there, but it's well maintained and issues are quickly resolved.

Besides the combined search results, a big positive for me is having a simple and consistent UI, free of A/B tests, ads or the concern that it may change some day because some overpaid design team discovered a change that maximizes engagement.

[1]: https://searx.me/

Re: How to leave Google and why

#39

Post by mastazi »

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…

I use Duckduckgo for most searches, and when it doesn't cut it, I add !sp at the end of the search - this will instruct Duckduckgo to redirect me to that same search on Startpage. Startpage uses Google results without passing your own personal data on to Google (or at least that's what they claim). It's like a proxied version of Google search.
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