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Freeing My Phone from Google

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Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#91

Post by MayeulC »

butz wrote: post #55

Any suggestions for Google Keep replacement? I really hate that all reminders end up in Google Calendar. I've already tried almost all Tasks apps from F-Droid, but each has some or other annoyance that prevents me from using it.

Carnet is one I like, though it's quite early in its development cycle (started less than one year ago, I think). Author is supported trough donations. It also syncs with nextcloud (and is available as a webapp --nextcloud or standalone), and explicitly takes google Keep as an inspiration. The desktop version has a barebones google keep import feature.

https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/carnet

https://github.com/PhieF/CarnetDocumentation

https://carnet.live

I've been on the lookout for such an app as well, and after trying a lot of different ones, this is my favorite so far.

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#92

Post by kbit »

maitredusoi wrote: post #88

Wouldn't it be simpler to just use one of this 9 alternatives ??? https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/ By the way PureOS seems a good shot. I just can't understand people claming to run free of Google and stay on Android !!! ;) ;) ;) ;) Good luck with your fight againsn't the Google devil. Me ? I am staying on Apple devil device, but I just take responsibility for that choice.

It's true that Google plays a big role in Android development, but that doesn't mean there's something inherently wrong with Android. It's a good operating system, it's free and open source, and its huge ecosystem and existing userbase (to whom something like LineageOS or Replicant will be immediately familiar) is the reason I stuck to it.

Because it's open source, Google can't put their objectionable code directly into Android - that's what their proprietary apps and services are for, and those are where you begin to lose your freedom and control.

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#93

Post by OrgNet »

kbit wrote: post #92
maitredusoi wrote: post #88

Wouldn't it be simpler to just use one of this 9 alternatives ??? https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/ By the way PureOS seems a good shot. I just can't understand people claming to run free of Google and stay on Android !!! ;) ;) ;) ;) Good luck with your fight againsn't the Google devil. Me ? I am staying on Apple devil device, but I just take responsibility for that choice.

It's true that Google plays a big role in Android development, but that doesn't mean there's something inherently wrong with Android. It's a good operating system, it's free and open source, and its huge ecosystem and existing userbase (to whom something like LineageOS or Replicant will be immediately familiar) is the reason I stuck to it. Because it's open source, Google can't put their objectionable code directly i…

the worst part about android apps is that they are android apps...

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#94

Post by 0815test »

maitredusoi wrote: post #88

Wouldn't it be simpler to just use one of this 9 alternatives ??? https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/ By the way PureOS seems a good shot. I just can't understand people claming to run free of Google and stay on Android !!! ;) ;) ;) ;) Good luck with your fight againsn't the Google devil. Me ? I am staying on Apple devil device, but I just take responsibility for that choice.

> By the way PureOS seems a good shot.

PureOS is not yet ready for prime time, but it will be very interesting to see how it performs compared to AOSP when it's released. And pmOS will most likely manage to support many PureOS components on existing hardware, although obviously at some cost in reliability and privacy compared to running PureOS on Librem's supported platform.

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#95

Post by grumdan »

cameronbrown wrote: post #3

There's two Google apps I just can't live without: YouTube and Google Maps. There's simply no alternative to the amount of value these bring me. OSM is getting good but it's just not there yet. I'm working on this in my area. I'd suggest to anyone worried about Google tracking to use Privacy Guard built into LineageOS, which aims to make each and every request for sensitive permissions explicit. A big benefit of free…

Still not as good as Google Maps, but I find maps.me (also open-source and based on OSM data) significantly nicer than the default OSM client for Android (I think it's called OsmDroid or something similar).

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#96

Post by OrgNet »

commoner wrote: post #15
cameronbrown wrote: post #3

There's two Google apps I just can't live without: YouTube and Google Maps. There's simply no alternative to the amount of value these bring me. OSM is getting good but it's just not there yet. I'm working on this in my area. I'd suggest to anyone worried about Google tracking to use Privacy Guard built into LineageOS, which aims to make each and every request for sensitive permissions explicit. A big benefit of free…

Google Maps is fully compatible with MicroG, a free and open source replacement for the Google Play Services client. MicroG includes UnifiedNlp, which was discussed in the blog post. https://microg.org/ https://lineage.microg.org/ At the moment, I recommend the previous version of MicroG (0.2.6.13280) since the latest version (0.2.7.17455) may have compatibility issues. If you're using LineageOS for MicroG, builds on…

if you tell your web browser to request the desktop version of youtube, it also can be used as a background music player

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#97

Post by yRetsyM »

millstone wrote: post #28
devinl wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's search ads are projected to be one of the largest online advertisers in terms of ads revenue in 2020 (they have larger advertising revenue projections than both snap and twitter). Device sales in general are dropping so they are expected to continue to invest in this area of their business. Given that Apple is a large organization known for their lack of transparency, I would be very surprised if they weren't…

Apple says in their "Approach to Privacy" that Maps usage "can’t be tied to your Apple ID" and that no ads can access data from Maps. These are strong unequivocal statements. We should all be very surprised if they're outright lying.

Can't is the wrong statement. The can be. Whether they choose not to or not is a different conversation, but technically they definitely can tie these together from IP address alone.

I get frustrated with the hoodwink that Apple seems to be playing, as they move to services based revenue I have no doubt these lines are going to get blurrier and blurrier.

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#98

Post by est31 »

kbit wrote: post #92
maitredusoi wrote: post #88

Wouldn't it be simpler to just use one of this 9 alternatives ??? https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/ By the way PureOS seems a good shot. I just can't understand people claming to run free of Google and stay on Android !!! ;) ;) ;) ;) Good luck with your fight againsn't the Google devil. Me ? I am staying on Apple devil device, but I just take responsibility for that choice.

It's true that Google plays a big role in Android development, but that doesn't mean there's something inherently wrong with Android. It's a good operating system, it's free and open source, and its huge ecosystem and existing userbase (to whom something like LineageOS or Replicant will be immediately familiar) is the reason I stuck to it. Because it's open source, Google can't put their objectionable code directly i…

This: Because android has a larger general ecosystem, the open source ecosystem is larger, too.

Also, building independent operating systems that reach as many devices as android or android based distros like LineageOS do is next to impossible because of driver issues. In fact, it's only thanks to standardization pushes by Microsoft that you can build a single ISO and run it on different IBM PC's. There is no such standardization push by Google. They are okay with each vendor forking stuff, changing source code, and then providing their own version of Android instead of requiring one google-built binary for all devices. This has detrimental effects on anyone wanting to build an alternative to android because they need to maintain a large number of kernels sometimes with millions of lines of diff to torvalds mainline. There are some meek pushes by Google and other parties to mainline more stuff to Linux and implement ARM GPU drivers in Mesa, but I doubt that we'll get a situation that's equally nice to the IBM PC situation any time soon.

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#99

Post by yyyk »

izacus wrote: post #22
commoner wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps is fully compatible with MicroG, a free and open source replacement for the Google Play Services client. MicroG includes UnifiedNlp, which was discussed in the blog post. https://microg.org/ https://lineage.microg.org/ At the moment, I recommend the previous version of MicroG (0.2.6.13280) since the latest version (0.2.7.17455) may have compatibility issues. If you're using LineageOS for MicroG, builds on…

MicroG talks to Google servers and uses Google's infrastructure while breaking the terms of service (at least in case of FCM). Same goes with NewPipe - you're using YouTube without actually paying for bandwidth, storage costs or the video author. So you're not actually getting yourself rid of Google or tracking, you're just using their resources without paying the asking price. Use other alternatives instead.

NewPipe is technically no different than using a web browser which isn't Google's to browse YouTube, and that's still allowed. If Google wants to turn YouTube into a closed garden, they can go ahead - I can think of no better move to spur competition.

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#100

Post by SXX »

amelius wrote: post #81
commoner wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps is fully compatible with MicroG, a free and open source replacement for the Google Play Services client. MicroG includes UnifiedNlp, which was discussed in the blog post. https://microg.org/ https://lineage.microg.org/ At the moment, I recommend the previous version of MicroG (0.2.6.13280) since the latest version (0.2.7.17455) may have compatibility issues. If you're using LineageOS for MicroG, builds on…

> Google Maps is fully compatible with MicroG You mean it is still fully compatible with MicroG. Guess what will happen when the OS becomes popular.

MicroG is not an OS, but open source reimplementation of Google APIs and make usage of Google backend optional when possible (e.g push notifications). So unless Google going to drop support for all older Android versions in Maps it's all going to be alright.
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