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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

#441

Post by Obsnold »

dontblink wrote: post #391
Obsnold wrote: post #386

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 h…

Then why don't you? GSuite is a thing.

Huh I guess I assumed that was only for businesses and not personal use. Thanks I'll take a look!

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#442

Post by dasb »

aaron_m04 wrote: post #395
switch11 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Trying to find an alternative to Android. Why not use LineageOS with microG? Aurora Store and f-droid for installing apps. It works pretty well for me.

It worked well for me even without MicroG. The only proprietaty app that I need and use is Whatsapp, and it doesn't require Google Play Services.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#443

Post by submeta »

brongondwana wrote: post #423
submeta wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the CEO of Fastmail is responding ;) Let me tell you this: It‘s a beautiful product with a very intuitive UI: Every setting is there where I expect it. Also the support is very responsive and very helpful. Thank you! Keep up the good work.

Yep, I'm a hacker news tragic too :p Thanks for the kind words!

It‘s good to have you here and a good thing when CEOs keep in touch with their customers, listen to them, and eat their own dog food. - Imagine Tim Cook would have used a MacBook Pro (with the miserable key) and/or listened to the complaints. And a thousand more examples I can think of.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#444

Post by rvp-x »

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…

Here's a report that a Googler used their vast data to spy on and harass people, including minors: https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/google-engineer-spying-fir...

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#445

Post by arsenico »

jrnichols wrote: post #248
mianos wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me gmail has not changed much in the last few years. Search is much the same but worse. The only change seems to be snippets that, for me, usually host some badly scraped content from another site with wrong answers but more effort on SEO. It seems a bit of a waste of 20% of the page. I wonder what those tens of thousands of people are mainly doing? Maybe working on stuff that we never see, like applying…

I wonder what they're doing, and then I look at the educational space and I realize just what's happening. And I'm kind of alarmed by it, to be honest. Call me paranoid, but we have a growing generation of kids in school that only know Google services. The only web browser is Google Chrome. The only email is Gmail. All word/spreadsheet/etc is Google Docs. School is Google Classroom. Chat is Google Messenger or whatev…

Pretty much the same as it was with MSFT for a while.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#446

Post by ricardo81 »

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…

One argument I'd make is that it creates a race to the bottom. The fact they have a near search monopoly along with their data collection means they milk the highest amount of revenue per search compared to other search engines by a long margin.

To compete with that, other engines would need to be at least as aggressive in their data collection as well as trying to gain market share.

Obviously any other engine who uses principles like privacy as part of their mission are at an inherent disadvantage. Search engines can return meaningful adverts pretty much based on keywords used and location searched from- there isn't a "need" for all the other tracking and data collection other than profit.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#447

Post by pantulis »

scarface74 wrote: post #244
submeta wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here: Migrated all my gmail accounts to Fastmail. Took me two days. Migrated Google Docs to Dropbox. And replaced Google Sheets and Doc with a Microsoft subscription (MS Word and MS Excel). Then there‘s the search engine. I tried hard to replace Google Search with DDG, but I have to admit that Google gives me better search results. Still I would love to leave this also behind. Finally there is youtube for me. Ai…

I’m paranoid about my photos. I have them backed up to: - iCloud - iCloud syncs to my Windows PC - Backblaze backs up my Windows PC - Google Drive - One Drive

Probably iCloud Photos is the Apple service that most ties me to a Mac hardware.

How's the iCloud syncing to a Windows PC?

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#448

Post by md5person »

To people using custom domains (for email, etc): what is your plan in-case you end up losing the domain name (either temporarily, or otherwise)? How do you prepare for this, reduce the risk, etc?

Losing your domain name can happen due to any number of reasons: hacked account (at the registrar), social engineering, etc. There can also be issues with registrars going bankrupt, increasing fees (see dot-org case), laws changing (especially with ccTLDs - see the dot-EU case with British citizens post-brexit) and much more...

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#449

Post by pyrale »

ekianjo wrote: post #401
throwmeaway2344 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are worried about American intelligence don't use anything based in the US.

You can say the same thing for anything based outside of the US. You think China-based services don't have the CCP spy on their users, like TikTok?

You can't really compare the US, an active empire with documented testimonies of spying on individuals and, e.g. Ireland, Switzerland or most other european countries.

At some point, if China is the comparison point you always cite when someone talks about the US, it starts to seem like they are actually comparable.

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