Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No More Google

nomoregoogle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 400 posts

Re: No More Google

#371

Post by NetOpWibby »

tasuki wrote: post #264
stevenhubertron wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved to DuckDuckGo years ago, Firefox a year ago, from GA to Goat Counter for my personal sites and recently from GMail to Fastmail. It has been slow, but certainly deliberate.

Did you have your own email domain? I have an @gmail.com email and can't even begin to imagine how I could migrate. It's my login everywhere...

Before I used a password manager I just looked through my Gmail and logged into every site I had an account with and changed the email address to my personal domain one.

This took about a week of focused effort.

Re: No More Google

#372

Post by selykg »

OJFord wrote: post #324
diarrhea wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works, but wouldn't for me. Discovery is precisely the primary service YouTube does for me. I really only ever click around the top two rows on the main page, all automatic YouTube suggestions. They are relevant and interesting enough for this to work consistently.

Interesting. Mine are awful, spam-level awful. (Even when I had an account and subscriptions.) But I think my point stands - recommendations don't actually need any network effect, or to be done by YouTube itself. You could have a third-party/OSS recommender, it's just pretty niche and probably doesn't exist. IMO YouTube can be used as a dumb content store. It's on the creator side that it has the 'network effect' ha…

Discovery for me is pretty good generally.

I try to watch high quality content on YouTube, or at least high quality for the areas of interest for me.

For that reason it really tends to recommend pretty good stuff for me.

Re: No More Google

#373

Post by mark_l_watson »

tasuki wrote: post #264
stevenhubertron wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved to DuckDuckGo years ago, Firefox a year ago, from GA to Goat Counter for my personal sites and recently from GMail to Fastmail. It has been slow, but certainly deliberate.

Did you have your own email domain? I have an @gmail.com email and can't even begin to imagine how I could migrate. It's my login everywhere...

Once you have your new domain setup on Fastmail, ProtonMail, etc., you can set up a “vacation responder” on gmail so anyone emailing you there will get an email with any message you want to cajole people into updating their address book.

Re: No More Google

#374

Post by alanlovestea »

thesuitonym wrote: post #267
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've partially degoogled, and it was certainly influenced by these kinds of discussions. The most compelling reason I have found for degoogling is to make the question "what happens if they ban me?" get the anwser "nothing much". The next most compelling reason is to protect the world from their influence. i.e. take my influence amongst my family and peers and use it to steer another small part of the world away from…

I wonder if all the people leaving Google for Fastmail will make Fastmail the next Google. It's better to diversify accounts like that, especially in the case of email, which (currently) works across providers, despite attempts by Google and Protonmail to lock users in.

You can get your own domain name (ie: me@myname.com) so that you avoid vendor lock-in and migrate your email account to other service providers.

Re: No More Google

#375

Post by bellweather49 »

uzakov wrote: post #367
bellweather49 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "T…

These are all good points. I guess what I'm getting at is that if you have to have multiple identities to ensure privacy, then you somewhat defeat the point of having your own domain, unless that is, you have multiple domains that you own.

I don't particularly have anything to feel uneasy about. It's more the idea that I don't want one central domain that I use for everything which is tied to my real identity, either through the domain name itself or through the whois record (although I think you can pay to have an anonymous whois). It seems like a central point of failure. There are documented cases of people having their identity stolen and numerous online accounts hacked because they used the same email address to sign into various services. If you know someone's email address and one or two other things about them, social-engineering your way into other services they use seems to be relatively easy for a skilled attacker.

This is all somewhat paranoid thinking, but I don't want to go the hassle and expense of getting my own domain, only to that it is a less secure or private option.

Re: No More Google

#376

Post by charsi »

npteljes wrote: post #239
chiefalchemist wrote: post #140

Of the browsers listed, which if any do multiple users? I silo my clients / projects by giving them their own instance (read: user) of Chrome. If I could get past that then the rest would fall into place.

Firefox can. Type about:profiles in the address bar and try it out!

This is a pretty useful feature and I have know about it for years. But only started using it a couple of years ago. Since the only google service I use is youtube it gets its own profile. Same for work email and teams which I leave signed in. So very useful to have separate silos like this. Firefox should create UI elements to enable easy switching.

Re: No More Google

#377

Post by charsi »

BuckRogers wrote: post #144

In response to how many people are influenced by these sorts of posts, I'm a best of breed person so these articles only inform me further but rarely have much impact. I don't use Google, but that's because Google just isn't the best search engine, DDG is. If I want Google results I use Startpage through DDG since they're anonymous, and will once in a blue moon still tunnel through to Google. I've been meaning to mov…

Same thoughts on youtube being the only hard to replace google service. I have switched to newpipe as the main client for it. It can even mimic chromecast by sending the video to kodi.

Re: No More Google

#378

Post by leokennis »

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…

Moved from Gmail (with my own domain) to Fastmail (with the same domain) I think 4 years ago.

At that same time switched from GDrive to iCloud Drive.

Switched to DuckDuckGo 3 years ago.

What I still use Google for (with a fake account with fake info and a fake e-mail):

- YouTube; there is no alternative

- Google Maps when I need to use maps on my work Windows laptop

Re: No More Google

#380

Post by charsi »

mxskelly wrote: post #179

Some weird ones I'm seeing: Airtable doesn't seem to be an alternative to Google Sheets, it seems like a much different application than a generalized spreadsheet that can do math operations. Vimeo isn't really a replacement for YouTube, it's fundamentally different in the types of content it markets itself as being for. The Google Docs alternatives all seem to be note taking applications (except for Zoho), not docum…

All of these can be a replacement in some situations. Vimeo can be a good idea if you don't care about discoverability and just want to put your video on the internet without self hosting. These are google alternatives not 1:1 replacements in all cases. Deepl.io (translation service) is a one clear replacement and also superior to anything else.
Post reply on HN