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Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

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Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#461

Post by volongoto »

petjuh wrote: post #451

Am I the only one left in the world who actually likes Google and has a positive opinion of them? I remember switching from AltaVista to Google and thinking they're much better. I remember a friend forwarding me an invitation to join GMail on its first beta day and how impressed I was with the 2.2 GB storage. I remember switching to Google Chrome when I read about its beta release on Slashdot. It was much faster than…

I'm not young and I remember the times when Google replaced Alta Vista and then Hotmail (and released Wave).

I don't think people forgot about those days, but mostly think that the Google they liked has kicked the bucket. (Google's motto was "Don't be evil" those days, remember? It was removed from the code of conduct in 2018).

I think today, Google (together with Facebook and friends) is actively harming the open internet we loved. So, yes, we see what Google has replaced, but I don't think that is enough to worship a corporation forever.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#462

Post by RonanTheGrey »

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 don't want to be accused of fan-boying or astro-turfing

If you don't want to be, don't post here. Oh, don't like it?

That's what you're telling to the people who are disagreeing with you.

But it doesn't affect you right?

In 7 years this is the first time I've ever seen an honest to god troll on HN. What a first.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#463

Post by lioeters »

actuator wrote: post #81
gonehome wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a MacBook and it’s great, I also have an iPhone. It’s the business model that matters to me more. It’s not a “hate on big companies” thing. In fact the big software companies usually have better security (google included) because they have some of the world’s best security people. I try to avoid companies that have an incentive to collect user information for ad targeting. Apple doesn’t have that (and they’ve…

Well, if business model is what you are worried about. If people are fine with paying for email services, you can even pay for Gsuite and then no ads on even Gmail and even custom domain support. I am not sure on this but I doubt they would be mining any paid Gsuite user's data. Also, even in free you can turn off personalized ads and they would no longer be related to your data. The thing is as you mentioned, with s…

> I doubt they would be mining any paid Gsuite user's data

I use G Suite at work, and I wondered about this. From Google's modus operandi, I assumed they are mining data, for example, of all work emails to and from the accounts - and probably connected to my personal email addresses somehow, as part of a profile to target ads.

Is there a confirmation that this is not (or is) being done? I suppose, from a security/privacy perspective, it's safer to assume that it is, because it's technically possible.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#464

Post by dickdung »

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…

google is well on its way to being dead. their customer service doesn't exist. gcp is a joke -companies either go with smaller cheaper providers or azure/aws. their flagship os is famous only heavily modified on other vendors' phones. for the simple, they get an iphone.

the reason people use their search is that it's default -if it was bing no one will notice. ads? super customized ads are not worth the money to companies, lighter cheaper personalization is available from many vendors.

google literally is yahoo.

to tech people -the ones who made google what they are, google is actively their enemy, and for the regular user, they want an iphone, and they want customer service with a smile -google has none.

me, i never googled-up. zoho for $1 a month, create new aliases for spam and filter them into folders. no gmail needed. maps? apple for iphone is ok, but i just use heremaps. you click a country, click download, and a couole of gig later you have full search offline.

now youtube, that's an interesting product that's only popular because it's popular. and it was popular before google bought it. there are many unpopular competitors. all it takes to take down youtube is an app for another service included by default on samsung and iphone home screens, and youtube is gone.

the same goes for facebook and twitter. myspace, yahoo, aol -all had their 15min of fame, all thought it would last forever. who cares. google is old news.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#466

Post by blntechie »

petjuh wrote: post #451

Am I the only one left in the world who actually likes Google and has a positive opinion of them? I remember switching from AltaVista to Google and thinking they're much better. I remember a friend forwarding me an invitation to join GMail on its first beta day and how impressed I was with the 2.2 GB storage. I remember switching to Google Chrome when I read about its beta release on Slashdot. It was much faster than…

I was a borderline Google fanboy and has come around to avoid them as much as possible. All in a span of about 14 years.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#467

Post by Crash0v3rid3 »

volongoto wrote: post #461
petjuh wrote: post #451

Am I the only one left in the world who actually likes Google and has a positive opinion of them? I remember switching from AltaVista to Google and thinking they're much better. I remember a friend forwarding me an invitation to join GMail on its first beta day and how impressed I was with the 2.2 GB storage. I remember switching to Google Chrome when I read about its beta release on Slashdot. It was much faster than…

I'm not young and I remember the times when Google replaced Alta Vista and then Hotmail (and released Wave). I don't think people forgot about those days, but mostly think that the Google they liked has kicked the bucket. (Google's motto was "Don't be evil" those days, remember? It was removed from the code of conduct in 2018). I think today, Google (together with Facebook and friends) is actively harming the open in…

Don't be evil was never removed from their code of conduct, it's literally the last line: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/

Why does this keep getting spread?

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#468

Post by Crash0v3rid3 »

patd wrote: post #456
petjuh wrote: post #451

Am I the only one left in the world who actually likes Google and has a positive opinion of them? I remember switching from AltaVista to Google and thinking they're much better. I remember a friend forwarding me an invitation to join GMail on its first beta day and how impressed I was with the 2.2 GB storage. I remember switching to Google Chrome when I read about its beta release on Slashdot. It was much faster than…

Most of your positives are more than 10 years old. In the meantime they've remove the "Don't be evil" motto, their Android/Chromebook support is very short lived, they've killed countless services people relied on, ... I don't think Google is evil like Microsoft was in the 90s but I don't blindly trust them as I might have done in the past.

It's really sad how much this misinformation gets spread...

Don't be evil is literally the last line of their code of conduct: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#469

Post by tarasmatsyk »

Perfect timing, was just about to start migration.

My plan so far: - Gmail -> Fastmail + custom domain - GDrive -> Nextcloud + openoffice (it's really nice, includes notes and libreoffice) - Chrome -> Firefox (FF made a tremendous progress in last 5 years) - Google -> DuckDuckGo

No disrespect to Google, the whole platform is very convenient, but it's going to be a fun experiment to use services that are dedicated to one goal (email-only, storage-only b2, search only etc)

The only one I look to stop spending time at is YouTube, hard to replace, however bloggers have to start protecting their value and own their things.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#470

Post by twsted »

petjuh wrote: post #451

Am I the only one left in the world who actually likes Google and has a positive opinion of them? I remember switching from AltaVista to Google and thinking they're much better. I remember a friend forwarding me an invitation to join GMail on its first beta day and how impressed I was with the 2.2 GB storage. I remember switching to Google Chrome when I read about its beta release on Slashdot. It was much faster than…

"Hate" is not the right word here.

Corporations tend to lose the original good feelings of their founders.

On the other end, people is coming to recognize, more and more, the value of privacy. To understand that "I have nothing to hide" is a meaningless phrase in this context.

What can we do?

The primary thing is to always pay attention and be vigilant towards those to whom we give our data. Even if it's very difficult, being the tracking so pervasive nowadays, even for us HN' readers.

Another palliative is to split our data among different cloud vendors, in order not to let anyone have all your information.

In my opinion, at the end, we should use more paid services.

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