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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

#351

Post by jeffbee »

Sebb767 wrote: post #347
the_af wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

> Out of curiosity, what's the benefit of replacing Google Docs with Dropbox? [...] the same drive that would have me ditch Google would also make me ditch Dropbox They're both for-profit US companies saving your data overseas, so yes, for your last point it doesn't matter much. However, there are two advantages: 1) You're giving your data to a company aiming to sell you storage space vs a company which tries to make…

> selfhosting surely is the superior solution.

You go on to partly refute this, but not strongly enough. Self-hosting is clearly inferior in major objective measures: availability, durability, and security. Unless you spend all of your time managing your personal storage solution, self-hosting will be far inferior in these respects, and probably also in cost if a true accounting of time is included.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#352

Post by switch11 »

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…

Kudos

absolutely great to see you do this

I moved off Google after they started doing some strange things with our adwords accounts

Anyways

Agree with you on this -> The only google service that is really relevant and hard to replace is YouTube.

Google's earnings from ads went down last quarter. First quarter that has ever happened

They are definitely at risk of becoming Yahoo 2.0. The only thing is the immense amount of spying on the world and American citizens they provide to Intelligence agencies. They will stay relevant/be too big to fail because of that

Search -> Use Bing, then DuckDuck Go, and if still not good results, then Google

Admittedly Google Search is still ahead of everyone

Browser - never touched Chrome. Use Epic and Edge. Mobile use UC Browser (possibly even worse for privacy than Google, owned by Tencent), and on iOS use Safari

Never used gmail so avoided that entirely. Use outlook, however, it is pretty bad. USe internal email server for work. Rainloop. Don't recommend that either

avoid all google services as mucha s possible

Trying to find an alternative to Android. Have an Apple iPhone, however, also wants a non Apple alternative to play Android Games

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#353

Post by AlchemistCamp »

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…

What was your replacement for YouTube?

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#354

Post by wpdev_63 »

erdaniels wrote: post #350

Ignoring reasons why I try to avoid Google, the following has worked well for me: Mail - FastMail (spam detection not great but still works) Search - StartPage (still google but proxied since DDG results are inferior in my experience) Browser - Firefox (syncs to all my devices) Maps - keyworded bookmark on Firefox to go to DDG maps powered by Apple Maps. Otherwise on phone it’s Apple Maps Storage - Dropbox Docs - loc…

dtube is an interesting alternative to youtube. It's a youtube clone built on ipfs. The only problem it doesn't have the same amount of content as youtube - nobody does.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#355

Post by jeffbee »

chris_f wrote: post #173
john-shaffer wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if this will work. Google results are absolutely horrible for me, but not for my brother. It may be because they don't have a profile on me, but they have years of data on him. Using a proxy search engine may result in degraded results for someone who is currently getting good results from Google search.

>It may be because they don't have a profile on me, but they have years of data on him..." That might be true, but I'm not sure. Outside of local searching I am skeptical of the benefits of filter bubbling. I think it is just as likely that you and your brother have different opinions of relevance (even if you were both returned the same exact results unrelated to past activity), and the relevance decisions Google ma…

You can use a pejorative if you want, but context is quality. Context-free searching is dumb and the results are bad. An example: if I search for "2020 Honda Insight EX" on Google, I see some mixed bag of stuff about my car. If I then search for "tires" -- no other terms, just tires -- Google shows me shopping results for 195 50/16 car tires, the right size for my car. There are important inputs to my search result that I didn't have to type.

Now go to DDG and search for "tires". Useless results only. All advertisements and commercial results, but nothing relevant to me. "Getting out of my filter bubble" did not help me in this use case.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#357

Post by [deleted] »

hu3 wrote: post #308
Razengan wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/

I like that your source is from Apple. Is that a joke? Took me 5 seconds on first Google page to confirm what is common sense: "Apple's horrid repair policies are forcing shops to destroy stacks of MacBook Pros" https://www.inputmag.com/culture/apples-repair-policies-are-...

[deleted]

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#358

Post by nickelpro »

RonanTheGrey wrote: post #323
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…

I wonder - Do you wear your COVID mask? Why? How do you feel when others don't - or openly refuse to?

I do, and think people who don't are morons. COVID represents a clear and present danger, what's the clear and present danger of Google is the nature of my question.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#359

Post by nuker »

strangescript wrote: post #129
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…

People have been raising flags about this for literally decades now and the other shoe has yet to drop in any kind of meaningful way. Everyone is tracking you online, but for some reason we only care about it when its companies that make good products that we like to use. Would you rather they not target you with ads and sell google searches for a nickel each? Meanwhile, I had an ad in my gmail yesterday for Google F…

> has yet to drop in any kind of meaningful way.

Minority Report? Just give it some time.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#360

Post by nickelpro »

jszymborski wrote: post #225
nickelpro wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In either case I still bought my slacks from the clothing store, my pint from the tavern, and slept soundly in my bed. You object to the company having your information, I object to it being used to impact my life. I don't give a damn about them just having it. And thus my question, how does this affect my life?

Alphabet uses this information to expand its influence, be it soft power, political power, or economic power. For strong democracies to flourish, you can't have one corporation control the way its citizens access all information, from sea cables to browsers to proxying all the web through AMP. The impact of these things on your life are major, disproportionately so according to your privilege and station, but the cau…

> Alphabet uses this information to expand its influence, be it soft power, political power, or economic power.

All companies do this, not just Alphabet, all large companies have PR guys, all large companies have lobbyists.

>For strong democracies to flourish, you can't have one corporation control the way its citizens access all information, from sea cables to browsers to proxying all the web through AMP.

AMP and all of the other Google servies don't control access to information, they just collect it. You can find every political view under the sun on Google, and if you don't like that for some reason you can use Bing or DDG or whatever floats your boat. But with the exceptions of platforms with explicit moral agendas like DDG, all those other service options are collecting your data too.

>But eventually, your needs, or the needs of someone you care for will be at a cross-roads with Alphabets best interest. Feeding them the information and critical mass they need to continue to exist now is what will allow them to take advantage of you in the future.

I'm deeply unconvinced of this, corporations are made up of regular ol folk just like you and me. I've worked for the government and corporations, and underneath the politics and the branding they're all just people. I would need someone to demonstrate a clear motivation and mechanism for why and how the people at Google are going to start harming others.

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