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How to leave Google and why

jach.me

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Re: How to leave Google and why

#61

Post by logicchains »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #54
logicchains wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might work for some of those: Maps - They massively hiked API prices a couple years ago, literally by orders of magnitude (a kind of breaking change?). They've also broken a bunch of user-facing features and made it slower; it seems a common complaint here that maps now is a worse product than it was 5 years ago. Search - They seem to have gone all-in on AI, and I've seen a lot of people complaining here that it's…

So what would the solution for Android phone be? Buy a new Android phone or buy an iPhone? They are very similar from the perspective of your data being owned by the phone OS maker.

I thought one of the big selling points of IPhone vs Android was greater privacy protection, and the fact that Apple's business model isn't based around selling user data? There's also the possibility to use a de-Googlified version of Android like https://lineageos.org/.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#62

Post by logicchains »

dnautics wrote: post #59
logicchains wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately the cost of migrating to a competitor is often not much greater than the cost of migrating to Google's newer offering, e.g. Tensorflow->Tensorflow2 vs Tensorflow->Pytorch, or Angular->Angular2 vs Angular->React.

Angular -> React, presumably.

Good catch thanks, fixed that now.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#63

Post by mastazi »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #42
mastazi wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using my own instance of mail-in-a-box, of course this is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, because you basically become your own admin. But personally I enjoy doing that, and the maintenance required is really minimal. If you are looking for cloud/managed alternatives you can have a look at the list here https://degoogle.jmoore.dev/

i am interested in mailinabox. i think next month i am going to take the plunge but i need a webmail. my question, how much of a vps server do you need to set one up? 1Gb ram for miab+roundcube? any better foss webmail like roundcube or squirrelmail? also, have you looked into oracle always free ? would that work?

Regarding the VPS: It requires 512 MB RAM minimum, but 1 GB is recommended, that would be e.g. the $10/month Digitalocean VPS. MIAB will do automated backups of everything that's on the machine, this means that it will use more than double the space on disk (compared to just the space that it would be required to store your email + attachments), that's if you choose to store the backups on local disk (but why would you?). The alternatives are either not doing backups (bad!) or storing backups on a different machine using rsync, or on an S3 bucket. Personally I use DigitalOcean Spaces which is S3 compatible, and I store backups from the last 3 days. The Spaces bucket was an additional $5 in my Digitalocean bill. So you should consider the backup storage cost as well.

Regarding webmail: MIAB includes Roundcube by default, which is OK on desktop but basically unusable on mobile, so on mobile I just use the built in client that came with my iPhone.

Of course you can use whatever webmail client you prefer, you just install it on a different VPS though (because MIAB will pretty much take over the whole VPS for itself; the only thing you can have alongside it on the same VPS, is a purely static website).

MIAB also includes Nextcloud [ * ] where you can add an alternative webmail client [1]. In order to install that client you need to unlock the nextcloud admin by executing a script that is included in MIAB [2].

[*](in MIAB, Nextcloud is intended to manage calendar+contacts but you can also use it to store files or as an additional webmail client, even though those two use cases are not officially supported by the MIAB devs; this means that, if you have an issue related to storage or webmail, you should seek help from the Nextcloud community, not from the MIAB forums).

[1] https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/mail

[2] https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox/blob/master/tool...

Re: How to leave Google and why

#64

Post by AdrianB1 »

The article does not really help me, for example, and this is why:

I never had a Twitter, Reddit, Instagram account. I had a FB one for work opened ~ 2010 for recruiting presence, closed it a few years ago. I have an Android phone that works, like 99.99% of these phones, with a Google account and the article does not help with this. I also have a Google mail account (same) that I use for nothing important, I have a different, non-Google one for personal stuff separate from the work account. So I am fine with Google reading all my useless emails, no problem here.

So, how and what to de-Google? The email ... no need. The phone ... no solution. Photos? Why would I ever put my photos on Internet, am I some kind of moron? Google Drive ... I used it as a dropbox to share a file with someone and delete it (and the file is encrypted if it matters). Waze? Wow, I have no replacement for that and I use it a lot, the traffic in my area is so bad (top 3 in Europe in the bad way) that Waze is essential to know where there are 10 minute standstills and try to go around or leave 15 minutes earlier. What is the replacement for it?

Re: How to leave Google and why

#65

Post by tremon »

superbcarrot wrote: post #14
mastazi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, Google is bad enough on its own, no need to compare. It gets less negative press compared to Facebook, probably because they managed their public relations better, but if you really look, you will find plenty of reasons not to share all your data with them. (Having said that, Facebook is of course just as bad as Google if not worse)

> probably because they managed their public relations better It's not only PR. Google haven't violated their users' privacy to the extent Facebook have, it's not even close.

I'll grant you that Google haven't been caught violating their users' privacy to the same extent, but the rest of your statement is hollow conjecture.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#66

Post by hiq »

amelius wrote: post #46
mastazi wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Duckduckgo for most searches, and when it doesn't cut it, I add !sp at the end of the search - this will instruct Duckduckgo to redirect me to that same search on Startpage. Startpage uses Google results without passing your own personal data on to Google (or at least that's what they claim). It's like a proxied version of Google search.

I would use DDG if they added a "!g" button at the bottom of their first results page.

You can use '?' to edit the search input. So you can type your initial query, scroll down using the arrow keys, and if you're not happy by the end of the page, use '?' and append !g.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#67

Post by ashish1521 »

There are tons of reasons, specific to separate Google products. Leave Google drive for a better solution like FileCloud or may be even Dropbox for the personal use. Leave Google Chrome for browsers like Opera/ FF or Brave, use may be Bing/ Duck duck go instead of Google search. It's a matter of perspective and personal choice, but there are alternates to Google products which are better ofcourse.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#69

Post by wepple »

superbcarrot wrote: post #7

1. The title mentions only Google. 2. The article then talks about both Facebook and Google and links to some of Facebook's most egregious incidents like data sharing, Cambridge Analytica, WhatsApp. 3. The article then proceeds to tell you how to leave Google. It just comes across in a bad way. Don't mix up the two companies - they aren't equivalent. And if you want to give advice on leaving Google, do that instead o…

The article seems to use examples of undeniably bad things Facebook has done to extrapolate to google, without providing any concrete examples.

Stating that FB/G use your data to provide targeted ads isn’t an inherently bad thing: it’s part of the arithmetic of getting incredibly useful tools for free. I’d argue the key piece is what types of ads, and the methods behind delivery are crucial. That isn’t mentioned at all.

Re: How to leave Google and why

#70

Post by cyphar »

robertlagrant wrote: post #57

> Some people say "I have nothing to hide, I don't care" which is essentialy [sic] ignoring basic human right and making this right worthless to you and very precious to others. As ever, this isn't to do with rights. The government isn't forcing you to do this. Neither is Google.

Human rights as a concept exist outside of the US Constitution. Just because something isn't illegal (in the US) doesn't mean it's not morally wrong or something you should not encourage.
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