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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

#81

Post by actuator »

gonehome wrote: post #69
actuator wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 something as personal as email, docs or drive, I would trust a big company to keep it safe. Specially one that has historically has had a very good track record of it. Google hires some of the best offensive security guys, some of them you can see in Project Zero.

My experience with DDG hasn't been good at all with anything other than simple term search or website search.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#82

Post by gabruoy »

gonehome wrote: post #72
gabruoy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newpipe has completely replaced my Youtube usage since I mostly use it on mobile, and it lets you save your subscriptions locally. Its actually really nice and imo superior to the dumbed down Youtube app used nowadays anyway. Freetube is the same idea but for desktop, but I've found it to be much buggier in using it, so I occasionally just use youtube in a private tab and directly search for a video on desktop, usual…

It’s less about the product to me and more about the content. YouTube has the content I want to watch, creators that use YouTube rely on it for their revenue and recommendation algorithm. Until that problem is fixed the alternatives won’t work.

Newpipe and Freetube are YouTube frontends, so all the content is there just without having to sign in. If you only really use a subscriptions list and directly related videos as your way to find youtube content, it's a drop in replacement. If you want to use google's recommendation algorithm though,I don't think anyone is going to be able to recreate that experience any time soon.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#83

Post by submeta »

Scarbutt wrote: post #75
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…

Hasn't firefox been defunded and likely to no have a future?

If that was the case I‘d fall back to Safari. Even though my browsing experience wouldn’t be the same anymore (using a dozen addons in Firefox).

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#84

Post by boocoo »

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…

For one, Google could identify you since on Chrome you might have your name, address, and phone number saved for auto-fill, and sell your information to companies. They could sell your information to a certain company if their AI identifies you, for example, as a left-wing elderly male. I think the recent documentary that got deleted off Youtube explains it.

Google also censors results a lot compared to Yahoo and DuckDuckGo so you'll mostly get popular sites. An example is how when I searched "youtube deleted documentary" Yahoo and DuckDuckGo got the right results but Google didn't.

For Youtube, it dominates video uploading so it can delete and censoring things easily and all you can do is complain.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#85

Post by xigency »

Scarbutt wrote: post #75
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…

Hasn't firefox been defunded and likely to no have a future?

As far as I can tell they canned most of the Firefox teams driving new features, so that’s how I read the situation.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#86

Post by nickelpro »

boocoo wrote: post #84
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…

For one, Google could identify you since on Chrome you might have your name, address, and phone number saved for auto-fill, and sell your information to companies. They could sell your information to a certain company if their AI identifies you, for example, as a left-wing elderly male. I think the recent documentary that got deleted off Youtube explains it. Google also censors results a lot compared to Yahoo and Duc…

None of those things affect my life. They may be moral or principle concerns for you, but they're not for me.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#87

Post by jacquesm »

ditonal wrote: post #58
Efuveo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread is filled with juicy dumb comments, but you certainly win.

If you’re going to astroturf don’t use a brand new account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. "

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#88

Post by gonehome »

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 think that’s a reasonable position to take and you won’t find any disagreement from me.

I like supporting software companies where the product is their main focus (I think the ad driven business model is a corrupting influence on design).

It can also be tedious to go through all the settings and make sure things remain the way a user would want them. I like working with a company that has incentives aligned with the user.

On DDG, I would have said the same thing not that long ago. Everyone will have their own threshold for what’s good enough for them.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#89

Post by the_af »

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…

Out of curiosity, what's the benefit of replacing Google Docs with Dropbox? I seem to remember HN's readership is occasionally hostile to Dropbox. Myself, I use it but the same drive that would have me ditch Google would also make me ditch Dropbox... (I haven't reached that point, though)

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#90

Post by gonehome »

the_af wrote: post #89
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…

Out of curiosity, what's the benefit of replacing Google Docs with Dropbox? I seem to remember HN's readership is occasionally hostile to Dropbox. Myself, I use it but the same drive that would have me ditch Google would also make me ditch Dropbox... (I haven't reached that point, though)

I ditched both for similar reasons.

I didn’t have a really strong need for either though and I do use iCloud to sync among my apple devices.

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