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No More Google

nomoregoogle.com

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Re: No More Google

#311

Post by christophilus »

jason0597 wrote: post #34

These anti-Google discussions come and go on the front page of Hacker News, but I'd be curious to know how many people actually degoogle their lives drastically after reading such discussions and articles. I believe it's more of a case of "Oh my god, Google is so disgusting! Shame on Google!", and then people open up a new tab in Chrome to search on Google about their next restaurant destination as if nothing happene…

I de googled around 2 years ago as a result of one of these lockout discussions. So, there’s at least two of us.

Re: No More Google

#312

Post by x87678r »

jason0597 wrote: post #34

These anti-Google discussions come and go on the front page of Hacker News, but I'd be curious to know how many people actually degoogle their lives drastically after reading such discussions and articles. I believe it's more of a case of "Oh my god, Google is so disgusting! Shame on Google!", and then people open up a new tab in Chrome to search on Google about their next restaurant destination as if nothing happene…

I switched to bing a few years ago. Works great. I still use gmail but change emails every few years so dont rely on it.

Re: No More Google

#313

Post by p2t2p »

jason0597 wrote: post #34

These anti-Google discussions come and go on the front page of Hacker News, but I'd be curious to know how many people actually degoogle their lives drastically after reading such discussions and articles. I believe it's more of a case of "Oh my god, Google is so disgusting! Shame on Google!", and then people open up a new tab in Chrome to search on Google about their next restaurant destination as if nothing happene…

I didn't de-google it, I still use the services but I'm no longer data-dependent on Google. My mail comes to personal domain and managed by Fastmail. Gmail is just a POP3 client for reading. My photos are synchronised via PhotoSync to my NAS and then I upload selected albums to Google Photoes for convenience of sharing. I didn't do anything similar with files and Google Drive because File Explorer on iOS can sync with my NAS. Everything is local first.

The result is that I can still enjoy the technology but I can drop it at any moment.

I don't use Chrome browser on iOS because ands blocking doesn't work there.

The plan now is to switch to android phone start supports large SD cards and install syncthing on it to be fully local-first.

Re: No More Google

#314

Post by mdifrgechd »

airstrike wrote: post #10

Saw the alternatives to Google Sheets, clicked on Coda wanting to learn more and guess what I got? Welcome to Coda Coda is an all-in-one doc that brings words, data, and teams together. Sign up to make a doc for free. [Sign up with Google]

Yeah I found it funny that most of the linked sites had "Download the app from the google play store" at the top of their page.

Re: No More Google

#315

Post by judge2020 »

gerash wrote: post #86

The title says "Privacy friendly alternatives that don't track you": Then there are entries for Google authenticator -> Authy, Google weather -> DarkSky (whose Android app was killed), Google Scholar -> Arxiv, etc. I can't take these posts seriously no matter how loud their proponents have become

Google authenticator is an interesting one given that it literally doesn't use your Google accounts at all (no sync or anything) while Authy has a recovery process for retrieving access to your 2fa secrets if you lose your phone.

Re: No More Google

#316

Post by judge2020 »

abeppu wrote: post #151

Some time ago, I switched to google fi. The experience has been pretty positive (monthly bills are low, speeds are decent, the idea of seamlessly switching between networks is appealing). But when I read horror stories of people getting their google accounts terminated, I realize that losing my google account would also remove my ability to receive SMS 2FA codes, and recovering all my accounts would be even more diff…

Hopefully Google gets a better grip on this - they already ban YT channels while leaving the rest of the G account in-tact (including in cases of copyright violation, although limited to YT - G Drive copyright probably still affects your entire account), so it's in their power to ban you only on certain services, it's just a mystery.

Re: No More Google

#317

Post by f0ok »

jason0597 wrote: post #34

These anti-Google discussions come and go on the front page of Hacker News, but I'd be curious to know how many people actually degoogle their lives drastically after reading such discussions and articles. I believe it's more of a case of "Oh my god, Google is so disgusting! Shame on Google!", and then people open up a new tab in Chrome to search on Google about their next restaurant destination as if nothing happene…

I've been doing it for while. For me, "degoogling" was (and still is) a long process. I literally went service by service, testing a new solution online for a while, and when satisfied, I switched. Obviously, I can't reproduce the way everything was integrated to work together, but my other options are still comparable and functional. I feel I've taken back control of my data and how I manage it.

Another aspect is that I have much less trust in any online services - free or not, open source or not. I'm more sensitive of where my data is hosted (politics and privacy), who owns the service, and their reputation. I now have a plan B for those solutions I've switched to, just in case.

For things like backups, passwords, file storage, calendar, I use different systems on a Raspberry Pi that I can access online. When picking an online service, I made an effort to read the EUA and the privacy policy to find out how my data would be used and if/how I would be tracked. In the end, it's very possible to move away from Google and it's working for me, but this will always be an ongoing issue, since companies, like people, will "adjust" their ethics to fit their needs.

Re: No More Google

#318

Post by judge2020 »

jungletime wrote: post #117

Probably the best way to get away from google is to use the Huawei phones which the USA banned from operating, and their version of android has been de-googled, from google services. You will be getting spied on by China. But at least not by google. The P40 has some amazing cameras. https://consumer.huawei.com/ca/phones/

Not sure which is better - the government of China spying on me, or the biggest American tech company which, in return, provides access to immensely valuable services.

Re: No More Google

#319

Post by ZephyrBlu »

enriquto wrote: post #94
forrestthewoods wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Firefox, DuckDuckGo, and Hey (email). There’s no replacement for YouTube. But otherwise I’ve cut it out pretty well. I do have to maintain old gmail accounts as they’re logins for god knows how many sites.

Regardless of Google shenanigans, cutting youtube off your life is a pretty good move (as well as reddit, twitter and the like).

I've found YouTube to be extremely valuable for eductional/informational content that I wouldn't have otherwise had access to.

Ditching YouTube would be a massive net negative for me.

Re: No More Google

#320

Post by macspoofing »

actuator wrote: post #276
macspoofing wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why indeed.

I don't know anything about this but being an engineer myself I am assuming you hit a rate limiting function. I am assuming Gmail caches the images when you upload, image upload being an expensive operation per se; when you uploaded so many at once, it must have triggered a rate limiting mechanism which stopped requests from you until the cooldown window kicked in. Why would they add a rate limiting method? It makes…

I can speculate just as well as the next guy. Their system could have been been rate limiting me, or maybe it decided I was a spammer abusing the system. The point is, there was no transparency.
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