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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

#381

Post by efreak »

Zak wrote: post #373
aftbit wrote: post #227

Google Voice is the hardest service for me to replace. I don't see any alternatives on this list. I appreciate that they let me seamlessly send and receive calls and texts from my Android phone or my desktop. I have a hard requirement that my phone should be optional for all parts of my communication workflow.

Google Voice also works if you have internet access, but not mobile network connectivity, and it works while overseas to provide a fully-functional US phone number (you do have to use a standard paid US mobile number to set it up, but do not need to retain it afterward).

> you do have to use a standard paid US mobile number to set it up, but do not need to retain it afterward

If someone else registers Google voice with that number, you're going to have a hard time. It'll be removed from your account, and you can't use Google voice without a US phone number.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#383

Post by cube00 »

bryan_w wrote: post #302
anonymousab wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Genuinely, why should I care? What harm is likely to happen to my life by sticking with Google, a service provider I find convenient? Someone tries to access your account from a random place, or maybe an old camera video you uploaded to youtube gets flagged erroneously by some contentid or appropriate content automation, and an automated system locks your account permanently, with you forever losing access to your e…

Why wouldn't you backup your data periodically? You would if you self hosted, it's the same for online services

You can backup your data but the big fear that caused me to move off was GMail. When Google drops the ban hammer on any of its services (eg. YouTube for using too many emojis) it does it at the Google account level which kills everything. Even worse I've also seen reports Google continues to accept new email and the sender has no knowledge that you're locked out and unable to respond.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#385

Post by cube00 »

eyeball wrote: post #182
nickelpro wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a history of Google de-activating accounts arbitrarily? I agree this would be a huge problem, but I'd be similarly devastated if my ISP stopped doing business with me, or any other email provider if I wasn't on gmail. True, if Google deactivated my account I'd lose a little bit more than just gmail, but any company I do business with arbitrarily cutting me off would be on the same magnitude of problematic. T…

I would be screwed if google deactivated my mail account. So many accounts linked.

There's never been a better time to get your own domain and take back control before it happens.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#386

Post by Obsnold »

I would be happy to pay Google a monthly fee for all their services. Mainly just so I feel like a customer instead of a product and to give me the peace of mind that if something goes wrong I can talk to a person that can help me.

At the moment I'm looking out for whatever service provider will let me have the equivalent of email, drive, calendar, docs and sheets all in one place.

Does anyone know of any that might have slipped under my radar?

Edit: anything comming up that is I can't see anything on the list that does everything. My best bet at the moment is proton will come up with something.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#387

Post by lhomdee »

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…

> The only google service that is really relevant and hard to replace is YouTube.

I would include Maps to this list. Outside of the US (and presumably China although I do not have experience here), Google Maps has no real competitors.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#389

Post by mths »

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…

> On a lot of sites changing email is impossible.

I have this problem on Steam of all places. Way back when, I guess you had to sign up with your email as your username. I've long long since left that email behind, but it's still my username for logging onto Steam.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#390

Post by etse »

switch11 wrote: post #352
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 amoun…

Sure degoogle, but that point about Google earnings from ads having dropped doesn’t seem relevant to Google abusing its power, or being incompetent at its core business. I would be surprised if it wasn’t because of COVID-19 shock and that the larger economy wasn’t also moving similarly.
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