6 ms·

We don't need Google

43 points by newsat13 10y ago

Paul-ish 10y ago
I use Android and I'm not interested in messing around with custom ROMs. This really chains me to having a google account unfortunately. I really wish the Firefox phone had worked out. Maybe the Ubuntu phone will succeed there.
- pmontra 10y ago
  You don't have to use that account for anything except Google Play. I use Maps and YouTube without being logged in, no GMail. I use Drive for the customers that use it. I don't use Google Now. I do use Google as search engine but in the browser, either Firefox or Opera.
  - xaqfox 10y ago
    Is it possible to use your phone's GPS without sending all data to Google (i.e. enable GPS without also enabling Google Location Services)?
    - pmontra 10y ago
      I think it depends on the app. I wrote an app that read from the GPS sensor and sent the position to a server of mine. Google didn't get any data. However if you want to use other sources to get a more precise position (example: wifi access points) I think that Google must know.
jiblyyyy 10y ago
Would be an interesting project to follow. An even more interesting journey would be to document the entire process and only use/make open source products as a replacement of each Google product.
- nkkollaw 10y ago
  There are, already. The problem is: how do you make an open source version of YouTube, or even replace it with Vimeo? People publish their stuff to YouTube, you can't force them to use Vimeo...
- dest 10y ago
  check the French non-profit Framasoft with "degooglisons internet": https://degooglisons-internet.org/ https://degooglisons-internet.org/
alanfranzoni 10y ago
Of course you don't strictly need Google. You can live without it. But will the quality of your internet life be the same? Good luck with alternative search engines result quality. And the price? Just the email provider you suggest will cost you $48 a year - vs $0 for Google. Would you like to pay? Fine. The whole point is that Google, in order to provide all those services without paying, actually asks something from you - your data. Just like Facebook and Twitter. Consider G Suite as well, since its privacy guarantees are different from free gmail accounts.
- ams6110 10y ago
  I started using DuckDuckGo a few years ago. Initially, I would find myself using Google at least a few times a day if DDG didn't turn up what I was looking for. As time went on this was less and less the case, and now I hardly ever use Google for web search. DDG results are a lot better than they used to be and almost always as good as Google in my experience.
  - EarthIsHome 10y ago
    I've also had this experience with DDG. Other people I've turned on to DDG have also experienced this. I can't tell whether their search algorithms have gotten better or I've gotten used to DDG results.
  - exergy 10y ago
    This also depends on what you're searching for. If you're hunting for a lot of academic stuff from journals, DDG just isn't good enough. On top of that its agonizingly slow. I try to give it a chance everywhere: phone, office workstation, home laptop. It's just not enough.
- MrZongle2 10y ago
  "But will the quality of your internet life be the same?" Initially? Probably not. But given enough time, I think dependence upon Google and continued contributions of ones personal details will be a major detriment. There is no free lunch.
khana 10y ago
Concur! BTW, why Migadu and not ProtonMail?
osti 10y ago
I do lots of road trips to places I've never been, and I can't imagine doing it without Google Map. No idea how people in the past did it. For me personally, I could maybe do without other Google services, but without Google Map? Forget it. Actually, Google Search seems irreplaceable either.
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  I do lots of road trips to places I've never been, and I can't imagine doing it without Google Map. You've never heard of Bing Maps, or OpenStreetMap? Aside from the fact that before 2005 or so, people used to travel to all kinds of fascinating, exotic places around the world with maps made of... get this... paper.
  - stuckagain 10y ago
    Or a map?
  - osti 10y ago
    The search function on Google Map is really handy for when I need to find food and stuff. And offline maps for when I need to go places with sporadic internet is awesome as well. I know I know, you can actually travel with a paper map. But I'm spoiled, as are most people these days I'm sure. So without a phone app is just too much of a decrease in life quality.
    - wott 10y ago
      Or you could lift your eyes from your bloody phone for a minute while you walk and see that there are signs on or above store fronts which say "grocery" or something like that...
      - osti 10y ago
        Try doing that when the stuff you need to find is at least 100 miles away.
tenkabuto 10y ago
Are any of you familiar with an open source/libre app for public transit routing information that'd replace Google Maps?
- EarthIsHome 10y ago
  OsmAnd~ for Android; it's.. okay.
- logic 10y ago
  If your local transit agencies are supported (or you're able to add them to the upstream library they use to collect this data), Transportr seems like a good choice: https://transportr.grobox.de/ https://transportr.grobox.de/ Sadly, it doesn't cover any of the agencies in the Bay area, so I've had to rely on Transit (transitapp.com) from the Play Store.
iamleppert 10y ago
I also don't like how Google makes all this money from advertising and then dumps into their poorly done Google-X projects. That money would be better off spent in the free market it seems. What is it about Google X that doesn't really lend to either real product development, or even cool tech (of late?). For the amount of money they put into it, I expect a lot more output. At their core they are still a big company and attract the kinds of people who want to work for a big company. Usually, this at direct odds to people who seek out the startup environment. There are some notable exceptions but the basic premise generally holds true.
- scandox 10y ago
  > That money would be better off spent in the free market it What does that mean? Would we all have been better off if Bell Labs hadn't gone off on tangents? Even if Google do it poorly why would you care?
- exergy 10y ago
  Say what? Maps, Android, one of the best Spam filters anywhere, the best search engine, the best image search engine, Youtube, one of the best web browsers... Much of this isn't "pure" Google development, yes. And god knows Google has woeful privacy policies (personally, I use StartPage, and try to use Google services as little as I can) but to think of them as serial-money-wasters is a bit rich. Also, that needless, typical HN, "big companies bad, startups good, free markets GOAT" bit at the end is really wearisome.
- int_handler 10y ago
  Please provide some evidence that the majority of Google X projects are "poorly done." Self-driving cars -> Not only has it become its own company (Waymo) but it also motivated many other companies to tackle the same problem and develop self-driving tech of its own. Life Sciences, Google Contact Lenses -> Now its own company, Verily. Google Brain -> I quote Astro Teller "It would be fair to say Google Brain (now called the Neural Network Project) is producing in value for Google something that would be comparable to the total costs of Google X — just that one thing we’ve spun out." https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/googles-captain-of-moonshots-on-making-profits-at-google-x/?_r=0 https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/googles-captain-of... Hard science and engineering problems take non-trivial amounts of resources to solve. How many start-ups are tackling the kinds of problems that X is trying to solve?
selectnull 10y ago
If someone is interested in kicking Google out of their life, I can recommend reading about how Bryan Lunduke embarked on that mission. He wrote a series of articles in 2015, here are direct links to them: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2940176/opensource-subnet/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-day-1.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2940176/opensource-subne... http://www.networkworld.com/article/2940569/opensource-subnet/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-2-leaving-android-is-not-so-easy.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2940569/opensource-subne... http://www.networkworld.com/article/2941717/opensource-subnet/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-3-a-surprise-android-replacement-emerges.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2941717/opensource-subne... http://www.networkworld.com/article/2942161/opensource-subnet/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-4-goodbye-gmail.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2942161/opensource-subne... http://www.networkworld.com/article/2946696/opensource-subnet/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-5-replacing-google-docs-and-drive.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2946696/opensource-subne... http://www.networkworld.com/article/2949819/opensource-subnet/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-6-why-i-prefer-duckduckgo-for-search.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2949819/opensource-subne... http://www.networkworld.com/article/2971168/linux/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-7-why-i-relapsed-and-will-again-soon.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2971168/linux/kicking-go... http://www.networkworld.com/article/2977884/opensource-subnet/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-8-will-i-ever-go-back.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2977884/opensource-subne...
kafkaesq 10y ago
Some of these services are roughly interchangeable with competitors; others, not so much. Vimeo, for example, has nowhere near the (truly insane) variety and depth of YT, content-wise (such that it doesn't even try to compete with them, on that level). If you think you can decide to just "never open a YouTube video, ever"... you're just not going to see a lot of stuff that's happening in the world. Similarly with Google Docs. Its viability has very little to do with the simple feature of it being a cloud-editable word-like doc -- but rather the fact that it's easily sharable (or "easily enough", provided you have a Google Doc). It's incredibly popular for a whole lot of basic collaboration tasks. If you think you can boycott it... you're just not going to be able to collaborate with a whole lot of people. Network effects (and in particular, lock-in) are very real. Even though you may not like them very much, pretending that you can just make them go away (by using lesser-known alternatives) just isn't going to work.
angryasian 10y ago
I hate this statement " I don't want Google to sell my data so that they can blow the money on half-baked Google X projects" Someone please tell me how can I buy your data and who exactly is google selling my personal data to ? Also google x projects have moved the needle in VR / AR, self driving cars, and in some cities fiber has made a difference. Really I don't get why we'd want to not fund this stuff.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dwaltrip 10y ago
  It's my hunch that having immense data on all humans in one place, along with the potential to take programmatic action based on that data, may significantly increase the risk of massive, harmful affects on society on the decade to century scale. This may involve governments or other powerful entities co-opting the data, which there are increasing hints of. It doesn't even have to be some kind of catastrophy. One scenario I imagine would be something mundane like preventing an alternate future where the majority of people are twice as happy and have twice as much autonomy. Obviously, this can't be proven. But this hunch gives me great pause.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - angryasian 10y ago
    >It's my hunch that having immense data on all humans in one place, along with the potential to take programmatic action based on that data If you understand the Prism program the govt doesn't even need to go to individual companies. They hook directly into the ISP.
- parenthephobia 10y ago
  > Someone please tell me how can I buy your data and who exactly is google selling my personal data to ? You can't. Google aren't selling your personal data to anyone. That's antithetical to their business model, which involves them having all the data. They are selling your eyeballs to advertisers, and using your personal data to enable advertisers to very precisely target the demographics they think want to see their adverts. Not that this works.
whodknee 10y ago
I have recently given up Google and most of it's products. And I find some of the things on this list are not relevant for the average person. Here is my personal list: Google Search (DuckDuckGo) Gmail (ProtonMail) YouTube (There's pretty much nothing because of the networking effect YouTube has. But, if you just want something to share videos, there's Media Goblin) Google Drive (NextCloud) Google Keep (Wallabag/Pocket) Google Maps (OpenStreetMap) Google Calendar & Contacts (NextCloud) Google Docs (LibreOffice Online)
- hlassen 10y ago
  Thanks for the list. Are you running this on a single server and install them manually? How hard do you think this is for the average (somewhat technical) person?
  - whodknee 10y ago
    Sorry for the late response. Nextcloud is super easy to install. It is as simple as extracting the zip file in your web server directory. You don't need more hardware to run it either. I have mine running on a raspberry pi 3.
dwaltrip 10y ago
Why was this flagged? It seems relevant to many here and reasonably written.
- newsat13 10y ago
  Yeah, I don't get why this was flagged. I posted the article. It does a good job pointing out alternatives.
- ebcode 10y ago
  Good question. Seems like people aren't using the flag function responsibly. I would like more transparency on this as well. It would be cool if the mods would add a required text box for stating the reason something is flagged. HN just makes it too easy to flag something you disagree with.
logic 10y ago
I just finished most of this transition for my own purposes, with the main difference that I decided to self-host most of the services I was previously using Google for. Some highlights: * Android: if you really want to divest yourself from Google, Android is going to be a showstopper for any but the most committed people. I'm running LineageOS (nee CyanogenMod) without gapps, using microG as a collection of play services API replacements. While that keeps me from adding a google account to the phone (which is the main thing I'm trying to avoid), I still end up needing something like Yalp Store (available from F-Droid) to download and update Play Store apps, because there are a few I actually can't get by without a huge level of inconvenience. I did all this because I enjoyed the challenge of it; for normal people who aren't intrinsically motivated by this stuff, I suggest buying an iPhone and saving yourself the headache. Seriously. * Email was the easiest thing to move, and the hardest to get right. I remember when I originally moved my email to Gmail, and noted a marked increase in spam; the same thing happened when I moved off of Gmail last month. A combination of postfix, dovecot, spamassassin, and a lot of tweaking has me mostly back to the point where I was when I was with Google. I've been using Rainloop for a use-anywhere web UI, although I've used Roundcube in the past and was pretty happy with it. On mobile, I'm actually using k9mail, despite how dated it is, because it actually gets IMAP right; both the stock "Email" app and Gmail had sporadic issues with IMAP that I got tired of dealing with. * Meanwhile, calendaring was the messiest part of the move, mostly because CalDAV is a bit of a mess, and both client and server implementations leave a lot to be desired. I ended up using sabre/dav on the backend because I could tweak and extend it quite a but to do what I need, and because it had baked-in support for CalDAV scheduling, which is something I can't really live without. I'm using DAVdroid on Android for both calendar and contact sync, which is great except for scheduling, which I can't really use. (A combination of what looks to be some misbehavior in davdroid, and android limitations in the calendar API.) * More calendaring: are you used to having your calendar invites just magically show up in your calendar? Yeah, that's probably not going to work anymore. I'm been writing an itip milter that scans for text/calendar mime parts in incoming email and shoves them in an appropriate caldav store, but it's going to be pretty hacky even if I finish it. ;) If you're looking for better integration here, look at something like Zimbra; it's a huge pain in the ass to run, and it's resource-heavy, but when it's running well it's amazingly polished from the end user's perspective. Or give FastMail some money, because they've been doing this for a long time, and do it really well. * Docs, photos, file syncing in general: There's a bunch of options here. I almost ended running an instance of NextCloud (nee OwnCloud) for this, because it would cover a few different use cases (document storage, photos, calendaring, contacts, etc), but settled on Syncthing as a general file synchronization tool. I'm hosting a cloud instance that my laptop, mobile devices, etc. can all talk to, as well as an instance on a machine at home, giving me pretty good coverage for on-demand backups. I try to avoid working in heavyweight document formats for personal stuff (markdown and a text editor works for my use case most of the time); for things I have to share or where I need more powerful tools, LibreOffice. I don't have a good photo management solution right now beyond "directory full of photos synced from my phone and camera". * Books: I had bought a bunch of books on the Play Store. This was a painful lesson in how bad the state of DRM in ebooks is, especially if you don't have a Windows machine lying around. I ended up having to install Adobe Digital Editions under Wine, then used a Calibre plugin to automatically convert DRM'd ebooks via ADE when I have it import them. I share the Calibre collection to my tablet via syncthing, so changes, read positions, etc. sync nicely. (I don't mean to pick on Google on this one; the DRM issue seems to be a mess with every bookseller right now.) * Music: Exported my music using Music Manager, sync with Syncthing, and access streaming music with Spotify. Done, easy. * Maps: I use Google Maps, logged out (it's one of the few Google apps that continues to function properly even without a Google account on the device). OsmAnd~ is a great idea, and I use it as a fallback when I'm outside of cell coverage, but I find it almost impossible to use in a day-to-day context (if you have it open gmaps links/intents, it almost never figures out the address I'm looking for, and I've had terrible luck relying on it for navigation). Note that without logging in, you cannot save Google Maps data offline, because apparently gmaps engineers are a little bit spiteful. * Search: I've defaulted to DuckDuckGo for years. Yes, sometimes I hit "!g" to search Google, but I don't default to them, and haven't for a long time. Also, shock of shocks, bing is getting pretty good. * Android Pay: I opted out. I have credit and debit cards, and I have cash. Some people might find this to be a deal breaker, I find it hasn't changed my life in any significant way. * Browsing: Firefox. Not really a change for me. There's a bunch of smaller one-off services that I've used over time, but those are the big ones from a personal perspective. For some folks, a large chunk of these can be handled by running an instance of NextCloud, and you'll get a polished, fairly integrated experience for the parts they can cover. At some point, I should probably write this up with more details about the tradeoffs I made with each piece.
joemi 10y ago
Not that Google definitely won't decide to shut down their services (I still remember you, Google Reader!), but I'm extremely hesitant to commit to some alternate services. I've been burned so many times when thinking "ah, what a great service!" and then it vanishes after I've grown used to it an can't imagine my life without it. I'd much rather move to self-hosted for as much as possible. But then that leads to the bother of installing and maintaining things. And then I'm back to being lazy and sticking with Google services. It's my eternal cycle.

43 points by newsat13 10y ago

I use Android and I'm not interested in messing around with custom ROMs. This really chains me to having a google account unfortunately. I really wish the Firefox phone had worked out. Maybe the Ubuntu phone will succeed there.

pmontra 10y ago
You don't have to use that account for anything except Google Play. I use Maps and YouTube without being logged in, no GMail. I use Drive for the customers that use it. I don't use Google Now. I do use Google as search engine but in the browser, either Firefox or Opera.
- xaqfox 10y ago
  Is it possible to use your phone's GPS without sending all data to Google (i.e. enable GPS without also enabling Google Location Services)?
  - pmontra 10y ago
    I think it depends on the app. I wrote an app that read from the GPS sensor and sent the position to a server of mine. Google didn't get any data. However if you want to use other sources to get a more precise position (example: wifi access points) I think that Google must know.

jiblyyyy 10y ago

Would be an interesting project to follow. An even more interesting journey would be to document the entire process and only use/make open source products as a replacement of each Google product.

nkkollaw 10y ago
There are, already. The problem is: how do you make an open source version of YouTube, or even replace it with Vimeo? People publish their stuff to YouTube, you can't force them to use Vimeo...
dest 10y ago
check the French non-profit Framasoft with "degooglisons internet": https://degooglisons-internet.org/ https://degooglisons-internet.org/

alanfranzoni 10y ago

Of course you don't strictly need Google. You can live without it. But will the quality of your internet life be the same? Good luck with alternative search engines result quality. And the price? Just the email provider you suggest will cost you $48 a year - vs $0 for Google. Would you like to pay? Fine. The whole point is that Google, in order to provide all those services without paying, actually asks something from you - your data. Just like Facebook and Twitter. Consider G Suite as well, since its privacy guarantees are different from free gmail accounts.

ams6110 10y ago
I started using DuckDuckGo a few years ago. Initially, I would find myself using Google at least a few times a day if DDG didn't turn up what I was looking for. As time went on this was less and less the case, and now I hardly ever use Google for web search. DDG results are a lot better than they used to be and almost always as good as Google in my experience.
- EarthIsHome 10y ago
  I've also had this experience with DDG. Other people I've turned on to DDG have also experienced this. I can't tell whether their search algorithms have gotten better or I've gotten used to DDG results.
- exergy 10y ago
  This also depends on what you're searching for. If you're hunting for a lot of academic stuff from journals, DDG just isn't good enough. On top of that its agonizingly slow. I try to give it a chance everywhere: phone, office workstation, home laptop. It's just not enough.
MrZongle2 10y ago
"But will the quality of your internet life be the same?" Initially? Probably not. But given enough time, I think dependence upon Google and continued contributions of ones personal details will be a major detriment. There is no free lunch.

khana 10y ago

Concur! BTW, why Migadu and not ProtonMail?

osti 10y ago

I do lots of road trips to places I've never been, and I can't imagine doing it without Google Map. No idea how people in the past did it. For me personally, I could maybe do without other Google services, but without Google Map? Forget it. Actually, Google Search seems irreplaceable either.

kafkaesq 10y ago
I do lots of road trips to places I've never been, and I can't imagine doing it without Google Map. You've never heard of Bing Maps, or OpenStreetMap? Aside from the fact that before 2005 or so, people used to travel to all kinds of fascinating, exotic places around the world with maps made of... get this... paper.
- stuckagain 10y ago
  Or a map?
- osti 10y ago
  The search function on Google Map is really handy for when I need to find food and stuff. And offline maps for when I need to go places with sporadic internet is awesome as well. I know I know, you can actually travel with a paper map. But I'm spoiled, as are most people these days I'm sure. So without a phone app is just too much of a decrease in life quality.
  - wott 10y ago
    Or you could lift your eyes from your bloody phone for a minute while you walk and see that there are signs on or above store fronts which say "grocery" or something like that...
    - osti 10y ago
      Try doing that when the stuff you need to find is at least 100 miles away.

tenkabuto 10y ago

Are any of you familiar with an open source/libre app for public transit routing information that'd replace Google Maps?

EarthIsHome 10y ago
OsmAnd~ for Android; it's.. okay.
logic 10y ago
If your local transit agencies are supported (or you're able to add them to the upstream library they use to collect this data), Transportr seems like a good choice: https://transportr.grobox.de/ https://transportr.grobox.de/ Sadly, it doesn't cover any of the agencies in the Bay area, so I've had to rely on Transit (transitapp.com) from the Play Store.

iamleppert 10y ago

I also don't like how Google makes all this money from advertising and then dumps into their poorly done Google-X projects. That money would be better off spent in the free market it seems. What is it about Google X that doesn't really lend to either real product development, or even cool tech (of late?). For the amount of money they put into it, I expect a lot more output. At their core they are still a big company and attract the kinds of people who want to work for a big company. Usually, this at direct odds to people who seek out the startup environment. There are some notable exceptions but the basic premise generally holds true.

scandox 10y ago
> That money would be better off spent in the free market it What does that mean? Would we all have been better off if Bell Labs hadn't gone off on tangents? Even if Google do it poorly why would you care?
exergy 10y ago
Say what? Maps, Android, one of the best Spam filters anywhere, the best search engine, the best image search engine, Youtube, one of the best web browsers... Much of this isn't "pure" Google development, yes. And god knows Google has woeful privacy policies (personally, I use StartPage, and try to use Google services as little as I can) but to think of them as serial-money-wasters is a bit rich. Also, that needless, typical HN, "big companies bad, startups good, free markets GOAT" bit at the end is really wearisome.
int_handler 10y ago
Please provide some evidence that the majority of Google X projects are "poorly done." Self-driving cars -> Not only has it become its own company (Waymo) but it also motivated many other companies to tackle the same problem and develop self-driving tech of its own. Life Sciences, Google Contact Lenses -> Now its own company, Verily. Google Brain -> I quote Astro Teller "It would be fair to say Google Brain (now called the Neural Network Project) is producing in value for Google something that would be comparable to the total costs of Google X — just that one thing we’ve spun out." https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/googles-captain-of-moonshots-on-making-profits-at-google-x/?_r=0 https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/googles-captain-of... Hard science and engineering problems take non-trivial amounts of resources to solve. How many start-ups are tackling the kinds of problems that X is trying to solve?

selectnull 10y ago

If someone is interested in kicking Google out of their life, I can recommend reading about how Bryan Lunduke embarked on that mission. He wrote a series of articles in 2015, here are direct links to them: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2940176/opensource-subnet/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-day-1.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2940176/opensource-subne... http://www.networkworld.com/article/2940569/opensource-subnet/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-2-leaving-android-is-not-so-easy.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2940569/opensource-subne... http://www.networkworld.com/article/2941717/opensource-subnet/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-3-a-surprise-android-replacement-emerges.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2941717/opensource-subne... http://www.networkworld.com/article/2942161/opensource-subnet/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-4-goodbye-gmail.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2942161/opensource-subne... http://www.networkworld.com/article/2946696/opensource-subnet/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-5-replacing-google-docs-and-drive.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2946696/opensource-subne... http://www.networkworld.com/article/2949819/opensource-subnet/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-6-why-i-prefer-duckduckgo-for-search.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2949819/opensource-subne... http://www.networkworld.com/article/2971168/linux/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-7-why-i-relapsed-and-will-again-soon.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2971168/linux/kicking-go... http://www.networkworld.com/article/2977884/opensource-subnet/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-8-will-i-ever-go-back.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2977884/opensource-subne...

kafkaesq 10y ago

Some of these services are roughly interchangeable with competitors; others, not so much. Vimeo, for example, has nowhere near the (truly insane) variety and depth of YT, content-wise (such that it doesn't even try to compete with them, on that level). If you think you can decide to just "never open a YouTube video, ever"... you're just not going to see a lot of stuff that's happening in the world. Similarly with Google Docs. Its viability has very little to do with the simple feature of it being a cloud-editable word-like doc -- but rather the fact that it's easily sharable (or "easily enough", provided you have a Google Doc). It's incredibly popular for a whole lot of basic collaboration tasks. If you think you can boycott it... you're just not going to be able to collaborate with a whole lot of people. Network effects (and in particular, lock-in) are very real. Even though you may not like them very much, pretending that you can just make them go away (by using lesser-known alternatives) just isn't going to work.

angryasian 10y ago

I hate this statement " I don't want Google to sell my data so that they can blow the money on half-baked Google X projects" Someone please tell me how can I buy your data and who exactly is google selling my personal data to ? Also google x projects have moved the needle in VR / AR, self driving cars, and in some cities fiber has made a difference. Really I don't get why we'd want to not fund this stuff.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dwaltrip 10y ago
It's my hunch that having immense data on all humans in one place, along with the potential to take programmatic action based on that data, may significantly increase the risk of massive, harmful affects on society on the decade to century scale. This may involve governments or other powerful entities co-opting the data, which there are increasing hints of. It doesn't even have to be some kind of catastrophy. One scenario I imagine would be something mundane like preventing an alternate future where the majority of people are twice as happy and have twice as much autonomy. Obviously, this can't be proven. But this hunch gives me great pause.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- angryasian 10y ago
  >It's my hunch that having immense data on all humans in one place, along with the potential to take programmatic action based on that data If you understand the Prism program the govt doesn't even need to go to individual companies. They hook directly into the ISP.
parenthephobia 10y ago
> Someone please tell me how can I buy your data and who exactly is google selling my personal data to ? You can't. Google aren't selling your personal data to anyone. That's antithetical to their business model, which involves them having all the data. They are selling your eyeballs to advertisers, and using your personal data to enable advertisers to very precisely target the demographics they think want to see their adverts. Not that this works.

whodknee 10y ago

I have recently given up Google and most of it's products. And I find some of the things on this list are not relevant for the average person. Here is my personal list: Google Search (DuckDuckGo) Gmail (ProtonMail) YouTube (There's pretty much nothing because of the networking effect YouTube has. But, if you just want something to share videos, there's Media Goblin) Google Drive (NextCloud) Google Keep (Wallabag/Pocket) Google Maps (OpenStreetMap) Google Calendar & Contacts (NextCloud) Google Docs (LibreOffice Online)

hlassen 10y ago
Thanks for the list. Are you running this on a single server and install them manually? How hard do you think this is for the average (somewhat technical) person?
- whodknee 10y ago
  Sorry for the late response. Nextcloud is super easy to install. It is as simple as extracting the zip file in your web server directory. You don't need more hardware to run it either. I have mine running on a raspberry pi 3.

dwaltrip 10y ago

Why was this flagged? It seems relevant to many here and reasonably written.

newsat13 10y ago
Yeah, I don't get why this was flagged. I posted the article. It does a good job pointing out alternatives.
ebcode 10y ago
Good question. Seems like people aren't using the flag function responsibly. I would like more transparency on this as well. It would be cool if the mods would add a required text box for stating the reason something is flagged. HN just makes it too easy to flag something you disagree with.

logic 10y ago

I just finished most of this transition for my own purposes, with the main difference that I decided to self-host most of the services I was previously using Google for. Some highlights: * Android: if you really want to divest yourself from Google, Android is going to be a showstopper for any but the most committed people. I'm running LineageOS (nee CyanogenMod) without gapps, using microG as a collection of play services API replacements. While that keeps me from adding a google account to the phone (which is the main thing I'm trying to avoid), I still end up needing something like Yalp Store (available from F-Droid) to download and update Play Store apps, because there are a few I actually can't get by without a huge level of inconvenience. I did all this because I enjoyed the challenge of it; for normal people who aren't intrinsically motivated by this stuff, I suggest buying an iPhone and saving yourself the headache. Seriously. * Email was the easiest thing to move, and the hardest to get right. I remember when I originally moved my email to Gmail, and noted a marked increase in spam; the same thing happened when I moved off of Gmail last month. A combination of postfix, dovecot, spamassassin, and a lot of tweaking has me mostly back to the point where I was when I was with Google. I've been using Rainloop for a use-anywhere web UI, although I've used Roundcube in the past and was pretty happy with it. On mobile, I'm actually using k9mail, despite how dated it is, because it actually gets IMAP right; both the stock "Email" app and Gmail had sporadic issues with IMAP that I got tired of dealing with. * Meanwhile, calendaring was the messiest part of the move, mostly because CalDAV is a bit of a mess, and both client and server implementations leave a lot to be desired. I ended up using sabre/dav on the backend because I could tweak and extend it quite a but to do what I need, and because it had baked-in support for CalDAV scheduling, which is something I can't really live without. I'm using DAVdroid on Android for both calendar and contact sync, which is great except for scheduling, which I can't really use. (A combination of what looks to be some misbehavior in davdroid, and android limitations in the calendar API.) * More calendaring: are you used to having your calendar invites just magically show up in your calendar? Yeah, that's probably not going to work anymore. I'm been writing an itip milter that scans for text/calendar mime parts in incoming email and shoves them in an appropriate caldav store, but it's going to be pretty hacky even if I finish it. ;) If you're looking for better integration here, look at something like Zimbra; it's a huge pain in the ass to run, and it's resource-heavy, but when it's running well it's amazingly polished from the end user's perspective. Or give FastMail some money, because they've been doing this for a long time, and do it really well. * Docs, photos, file syncing in general: There's a bunch of options here. I almost ended running an instance of NextCloud (nee OwnCloud) for this, because it would cover a few different use cases (document storage, photos, calendaring, contacts, etc), but settled on Syncthing as a general file synchronization tool. I'm hosting a cloud instance that my laptop, mobile devices, etc. can all talk to, as well as an instance on a machine at home, giving me pretty good coverage for on-demand backups. I try to avoid working in heavyweight document formats for personal stuff (markdown and a text editor works for my use case most of the time); for things I have to share or where I need more powerful tools, LibreOffice. I don't have a good photo management solution right now beyond "directory full of photos synced from my phone and camera". * Books: I had bought a bunch of books on the Play Store. This was a painful lesson in how bad the state of DRM in ebooks is, especially if you don't have a Windows machine lying around. I ended up having to install Adobe Digital Editions under Wine, then used a Calibre plugin to automatically convert DRM'd ebooks via ADE when I have it import them. I share the Calibre collection to my tablet via syncthing, so changes, read positions, etc. sync nicely. (I don't mean to pick on Google on this one; the DRM issue seems to be a mess with every bookseller right now.) * Music: Exported my music using Music Manager, sync with Syncthing, and access streaming music with Spotify. Done, easy. * Maps: I use Google Maps, logged out (it's one of the few Google apps that continues to function properly even without a Google account on the device). OsmAnd~ is a great idea, and I use it as a fallback when I'm outside of cell coverage, but I find it almost impossible to use in a day-to-day context (if you have it open gmaps links/intents, it almost never figures out the address I'm looking for, and I've had terrible luck relying on it for navigation). Note that without logging in, you cannot save Google Maps data offline, because apparently gmaps engineers are a little bit spiteful. * Search: I've defaulted to DuckDuckGo for years. Yes, sometimes I hit "!g" to search Google, but I don't default to them, and haven't for a long time. Also, shock of shocks, bing is getting pretty good. * Android Pay: I opted out. I have credit and debit cards, and I have cash. Some people might find this to be a deal breaker, I find it hasn't changed my life in any significant way. * Browsing: Firefox. Not really a change for me. There's a bunch of smaller one-off services that I've used over time, but those are the big ones from a personal perspective. For some folks, a large chunk of these can be handled by running an instance of NextCloud, and you'll get a polished, fairly integrated experience for the parts they can cover. At some point, I should probably write this up with more details about the tradeoffs I made with each piece.

joemi 10y ago

Not that Google definitely won't decide to shut down their services (I still remember you, Google Reader!), but I'm extremely hesitant to commit to some alternate services. I've been burned so many times when thinking "ah, what a great service!" and then it vanishes after I've grown used to it an can't imagine my life without it. I'd much rather move to self-hosted for as much as possible. But then that leads to the bother of installing and maintaining things. And then I'm back to being lazy and sticking with Google services. It's my eternal cycle.