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No More Google

nomoregoogle.com

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Re: No More Google

#361

Post by Fnoord »

dmacvicar wrote: post #207
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 started a De-googling process. I documented how I replaced Search, GMail, Fit, Photos and Drive: https://duncan.codes/posts/2020-10-20-migrating-away-google-... This week I made progress with my phone, now running https://calyxos.org/ and using Google services only via https://microg.org/ for Maps and Cloud messaging. In my case, privacy is a reason, but I also consider a system inherently insecure if your account…

Great post!

For e-mail provider you can also consider Posteo.de, and for e-mail application on Android and AOSP (forks) you can use P=P (a material design K-9 fork with PGP support).

I'm using Soverin, btw. Happy with them.

As for AOSP forks there's a lot of them, not all equally ready. There's CopperheadOS, there's /e/.

There's also PostmarketOS which is like a mobile Linux foundation for other OSes much like Mer was. There's SFOS (SailfishOS) which has Android emulation (if licensed), and all kind of mobile versions of Linux distributions such as Manjaro, Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, PureOS, etc. If you're into that, Pinephone might be interesting. They got 13 OSes ready to be loaded.

Re: No More Google

#362

Post by bellweather49 »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #131
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…

Personal anecdote, software engineer/techie for 25+yrs: I never react immediately. Unless directly affected by an event, I accumulate information over time and it will influence my decision making. Reacting is too disruptive to my own life, and those of the people I support (e.g. family.) Would an article like this make my family change? No. Many don't care; most don't understand the impact on themselves. My De-Googl…

I've been considering getting my own domain for email for some time -- the benefits are obvious. But I have one concern. If I use the address `mail@my-real-name.com`, does this pose a privacy threat? If someone wants to try and track my activities online, they can take that address, which is clearly tied to me (especially if, say, I use that domain for a blog too), and then go to ashleymadison.com (does that still exist?) and try a password reset for that address; many sites poduce differing responses to password reset requests depending on whether or not you have an account there. If the response is "We've sent a password reset link to that address", rather than "There is no account with that address", then people now know I'm a philanderer.

I've even heard of people writing a bot to do this across hundreds of sites; it's very interesting to see which C-level executives have been using their work accounts to access sites they shouldn't have.

The obvious advantage of having a GMail or Outlook address is that only Google or Outlook have to know who you really are; the address could be anything you want and doesn't have to be related to your real name. In addition, you can do as I do and have multiple addresses -- not the "throwaways" which people often speak of, but simply different addresses for different online activities -- so that if an account ever got compromised, there would be no way to link it to any other account.

Email security and privacy is a hard problem to solve.

Re: No More Google

#363

Post by mcovey »

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 several years ago, when they dropped Google Reader. It wasn't about privacy, or the threat of my account being locked. It was just because they killed off a product I loved and depended on. I thought Gmail could be killed off soon too.

I still have my Google account, but when I do a "takeout" there is almost nothing there.

Re: No More Google

#364

Post by sigzero »

mxuribe wrote: post #218
agentdrtran wrote: post #76

Seeing Zoho, the alternative-universe version of Google where it failed at basically everything, as an alternative listed for a lot of these is hilarious.

Does comment include their paid email hosting plan/service? Because i've been testing them out for the last few months, and they've been great! But, if you have stats and/or info to share, I'd love to hear about before i take the plunge. Also, any alternative to zoho that you could recommend would be greatly appreciated! THanks!

The email portion looks fine to me. I don't see any glaring omissions. Have you tested the office suite part (write, sheets, etc.)?

Re: No More Google

#365

Post by mxuribe »

sigzero wrote: post #364
mxuribe wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does comment include their paid email hosting plan/service? Because i've been testing them out for the last few months, and they've been great! But, if you have stats and/or info to share, I'd love to hear about before i take the plunge. Also, any alternative to zoho that you could recommend would be greatly appreciated! THanks!

The email portion looks fine to me. I don't see any glaring omissions. Have you tested the office suite part (write, sheets, etc.)?

I've only been interested in, and have been only testing zoho's paid email service. i have no interest in their other offerings like office suite. That being said, much like your findings @sigzero, I've - so far - found zoho's email to be fine (actually quite excellent when the low cost is factored in). I was asking @agentdrtran if they had any more insight for zoho's email service (other than their coment above), because i'm genuinely interested to learn more - if they had any stats or evidence (or even anecdote/experience) to support their claim.

Re: No More Google

#366

Post by DavideNL »

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…

It worked for me... I've completely de-Googled my life. Every time you read a post like this you learn a few new things.

Re: No More Google

#367

Post by uzakov »

bellweather49 wrote: post #362
jagged-chisel wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal anecdote, software engineer/techie for 25+yrs: I never react immediately. Unless directly affected by an event, I accumulate information over time and it will influence my decision making. Reacting is too disruptive to my own life, and those of the people I support (e.g. family.) Would an article like this make my family change? No. Many don't care; most don't understand the impact on themselves. My De-Googl…

I've been considering getting my own domain for email for some time -- the benefits are obvious. But I have one concern. If I use the address `mail@my-real-name.com`, does this pose a privacy threat? If someone wants to try and track my activities online, they can take that address, which is clearly tied to me (especially if, say, I use that domain for a blog too), and then go to ashleymadison.com (does that still ex…

There are a number of things you can do that can help you with your privacy and security:

1) Have a different online identity for things that can compromise you/you feel uneasy about. We are talking about a "full identity": number, email, maybe even things like Linkedin

2) Perform Threat modelling

3) Getting own domain is always good, as it gives you the control of your life

If you are just starting out, check out "The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy"

Re: No More Google

#369

Post by sm4rk0 »

jsinai wrote: post #253
jagged-chisel wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal anecdote, software engineer/techie for 25+yrs: I never react immediately. Unless directly affected by an event, I accumulate information over time and it will influence my decision making. Reacting is too disruptive to my own life, and those of the people I support (e.g. family.) Would an article like this make my family change? No. Many don't care; most don't understand the impact on themselves. My De-Googl…

One of the best things I did was to use Firefox Focus for all my mobile Google Search queries. This let's me use Google to (most of the time) find what I'm looking for, but without worrying as much about tracking or having a profile on my browser (Focus resets every time you leave the app). I've found that there are few occasions where I actually want to keep a search history. Honestly a browser which kept no history…

I'm also using Focus (Klar, for DE/AT/CH countries - with telemetry disabled by default) as a default browser and combining it with Firefox Lockwise makes it easy to login somewhere temporarily.

But don't feel too safe with it re: tracking, because there's browser fingerprinting that works without cookies: https://panopticlick.eff.org/

Re: No More Google

#370

Post by NetOpWibby »

bntyhntr wrote: post #298
nexuist wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not use Electron? That's managed by Microsoft, not Google.

Electron is based on chromium and I want to give non-chromium based things a fighting chance. It also feels like a memory hog and I like running slack in my browser more than as a separate app. tl;dr nonsensical reasons that don't really stack up but I'm electron free so may as well keep it up

Hear hear!
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