Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life • Hacker News Board

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#61

Post by nickelpro » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

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 deliver relevant vacuum cleaner ads, I don't care. I block them anyway.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#62

Post by TheTruth321 » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

awestroke wrote: post #4

The list of alternatives just makes me lose hope of cutting out Google. They are lightyears ahead of the alternatives in so many categories.

I have a hunch your life will improve dramatically if you take a little look at your lack of imagination. No offense.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#63

Post by actuator » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

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…

I know it is easy to hate on big companies but how do you leave them when credible alternatives are not even close in productivity/performance.

I tried leaving Macbook, but whenever I have tried the alternatives(even Thinkpad with Ubuntu), Macbook still seems to be at the sweet spot of life time ownership cost/performance. I do care about repairability, good keyboards etc. but I do have to look at things in balance.

On just principles, I tried switching to DDG, Gmail alternatives like Hey etc, Maps alternatives but they are not even close to making your life easy. At the end of the day, I really don't want to take time categorising every email, handle spam on my own, worrying about data security. Services like Gmail seem far superior to alternatives to me.

Edit: Lastly, I would add one can pay for Gsuite and then Gmail etc. are ad free. I doubt they would be mining paid Gsuite user's data since companies use that.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#64

Post by dheera » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

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…

How do you deal with work situations that want you to use Google Hangouts, Docs, or Calendar?

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#65

Post by maletor » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

This is funny having come from a Google TLD.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#66

Post by marianov » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

Android google maps is what keeps me going back to Google. No other service has all local shops, phone numbers, schedules, etc.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#67

Post by aitchnyu » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 7:17 PM UTC

I never considered a Gmail alternative since Gmail has primary/social/promotion/updates tabs and proper threading of replies and almost perfect spam protection. What services do the above things as good?

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#68

Post by XCSme » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

submeta wrote: post #56

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…

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…

Is Microsoft Office really so much better than Google Docs in terms of privacy? Or is mostly just the "I hate Google, others are probably better" idea?

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#69

Post by gonehome » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

actuator wrote: post #63

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…

I know it is easy to hate on big companies but how do you leave them when credible alternatives are not even close in productivity/performance. I tried leaving Macbook, but whenever I have tried the alternatives(even Thinkpad with Ubuntu), Macbook still seems to be at the sweet spot of life time ownership cost/performance. I do care about repairability, good keyboards etc. but I do have to look at things in balance.…

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 also made privacy a brand thing now so they’re even better than average).

Gmail was great when it came out, but today it’s a pretty mediocre product. Fastmail is actually better and I don’t say that as someone making excuses for non-google services. Their docs and custom domain support are really great. Their support for aliases is also great. They have good fancy workflow options I just don’t need so I don’t use.

DDG was worse for a long time, but for the last year or so it’s become good enough for me to make default. I occasionally g! to run a google query, but that’s probably only 10% of the time (and of those only half are probably actually good).

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#70

Post by XCSme » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

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 think the biggest problem is Google becoming a monopoly, when you rely daily on tens of their services. Than, if for some reason, they decide to close your account or use your data to "be evil", there's not much you can do.