18 ms·

How to Live Without Google

327 points by janober 9y ago

wolfi1 9y ago
it would be sufficient for me, if there was a firebase replacement, but it seems push messages are only possible via firebase
romanovcode 9y ago
In my experience once you leave Android living without google is a lot easier then it sounds.
- phoe-krk 9y ago
  And go for which OS on mobile? On iOS, you fall into Apple's hands, Windows Mobile is dead, and other OSes are relatively non-existent.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - bjpbakker 9y ago
    Purism's Librem 5 [1] looks like a very nice mobile phone alternative. It's highly privacy minded, at least. [1] - https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
    - enobrev 9y ago
      This looks great! I hope they can build what they're pitching. I look forward to buying one of these (or something like it) should it ever make it to market.
    - r3bl 9y ago
      ...and they're still crowdfunding it and don't expect the deliveries before 2019. Presumably, the question "go for which OS on mobile" refers to now, so Librem's definitely not an answer to the question above, even though it's a marvelous goal.
  - tnova 9y ago
    Yeah, providing iOS as the "privacy alternative" to Android seems quite ridiculous.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Windows Mobile is honestly still (for the short term while it exists) still a very solid option. I used to try to do the Android-without-Google thing, and it was nearly unmanageable, since pretty much every app on the platform depends on Play Services. (Most location-enabled apps won't work without Google Location Services on, for instance.) I actually have more apps available to me on a Windows 10 Mobile device than an Android device with Play disabled. And I'm able to do most everything I need to while sending drastically less information to my Microsoft account than I ever did to Google. Microsoft still updates every Windows 10 Mobile device monthly with security updates, direct from them, on the second Tuesday of every month. (I got an update for my 2014-era Windows Mobile phone on the 12th, for instance.) In many ways, this means Windows Mobile is still a more secure choice than most Android phones. Microsoft releases the update to all devices on the same day, regardless of OEM. I can say my phone isn't vulnerable to the BlueBorne thing that came out this week, but most Android users won't be able to speak to that.
    - r3bl 9y ago
      While your comment does apply to the large majority of Android users, there are some things worth keeping in mind: * It applies to non-Nexus/Pixel lines (before you say that this is an invalid argument, most of the Windows devices sold are Lumia devices, so presumably, yours is too). * It applies to people who don't change phones every six months (the amount of people I've witnessed updating Galaxy phones every year is equal to the amount of people I've seen upgrading iPhones every year). * It applies to people not using a relatively recent Samsung (https://security.samsungmobile.com/workScope.smsb https://security.samsungmobile.com/workScope.smsb) or LG (https://lgsecurity.lge.com/security_updates.html https://lgsecurity.lge.com/security_updates.html) phones. The only valid security argument is that Windows phones and iPhones have longer support than Google (two years for upgrades to newer versions + one additional year of security updates). That's it. The rest is to blame solely on companies that make Android phones. Google is the only one out of all three that actually gives everyone a chance of using their OS. Microsoft (from what I could find) is only giving Windows Mobile free to some mobile companies. Apple is not providing that option to anyone. If the rest of the companies didn't actually try really hard to stand out from the rest of the Android crowd by modifying vanilla Android, we would have a completely different situation. ...which is another reason why I blame OEMs, not Google.
  - pdimitar 9y ago
    > On iOS, you fall into Apple's hands This is ridiculuous and if you're over 16, you should be ashamed of yourself. Frequenting HN and using such teen/vague talk is not constructive. iCloud is not secure. That's an accepted fact by now. If you don't sync stuff to iCloud, your iPhone's local data is much more secure than in any Android device. This is also a fact. Reference: the "Storage" permission in Android; once you give it to an app, it can scan your entire device; as a comparison, an iDevice storage permission only allows it access to its sandboxed storage).
    - yoz-y 9y ago
      > iCloud is not secure. That's an accepted fact by now. Is it? (accepted as fact)
      - pdimitar 9y ago
        Apple is quick to hand over iCloud backups, even in the famous iPhone 5c case when they refused to unlock the device itself. Doesn't that make it an accepted fact?
        yoz-y 9y ago
        Ok by this definition I agree. (I would not say that apple was "quick" to handover the data but that is beside the point).
        pdimitar 9y ago
        Doesn't "The Fappening" count as well? That case when several celebrities got their photos leaked. I mean, I do maintain Apple is more privacy-friendly than Google but IMO iCloud leaves a lot to be desired still.
        alphabettsy 9y ago
        They were phished.. I can see how that somewhat falls on Apple, but it’s absolutely possible of any service if the users gives away their password.
- swalladge 9y ago
  Yeah sadly even though you can install a rom like Lineageos, many apps require the google play services installed, which then requires the Gapps to be flashed. Which kinda defeats the purpose... :'(
  - franga2000 9y ago
    Google Play Services really isn't that bad. Sure it's annoying and proprietary, but it doesn't give them any more control than what Apple has by default on their devices.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    > install a rom like Lineageos And you have to trust a binary from a "nightly" build hosted on who knows where for your model - There's so much possibility for stuff to happen I'm not sure it's even a good recommendation to make.
    - swalladge 9y ago
      Yeah you're right... :( At least it gives a better user experience because there isn't all the pre-installed bloatware.
    - rphlx 9y ago
      It's possible to build a lineageos ROM from source, mostly. There are still some binary blobs and it's true that virtually no one has the time to rigorously audit the entire source tree themselves anyway, but technically you do not absolutely have to trust a giant ROM binary that their auto-builder spit out.
wheresvic1 9y ago
I've been using DDG for about 2 years now and have rarely needed to resort to a google search in this time. A few of the cases for google were funnily were when I was trying to lookup someone and get their email address. I do full-stack programming: java, Node.js react, angular, redux for my day job and dabble in a bit of C++ outside of work as well.
- DavideNL 9y ago
  ... and in cases where DDG fails, you can fall back to https://www.startpage.com/ https://www.startpage.com/ which shows Googles results but strips Googles tracking.
  - mrmondo 9y ago
    It seems to be /very/ slow to load, google and ddg both seem to load in < 1s where startpage averages around 3-5 seconds, I wonder if it provides any advantages over say using a grease monkey userscript to strip the tracking?
  - ourmandave 9y ago
    As a paranoid my first thought was, what is startpage.com doing with my information and searches?
    - jqs79 9y ago
      Which is the right reaction, but you can read up on them; what other source of knowledge can we depend on other than that of people articulating their cause and others who substantiate those claims?
  - vollmond 9y ago
    Interesting. Looks like DDG has a bang for it, too: https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=startpage https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=startpage
    - r3bl 9y ago
pvinis 9y ago
Most of these are fine replacements, but some are not, and that's the reason I, and I imagine many more people, stay with google. google maps is great. apple maps is much worse with searching, and shops etc, especially outside the US. openstreetmap is very cool and I use it every now and then, and I wish it becomes the standard online map, but it needs more care or something, I don't know.
- deep_attention 9y ago
  For car navigation I use HERE WeGo (traffic info), never looked back. On foot/bike openstreetmap is the best.
  - usuallymatt 9y ago
    Which android app do you use for OpenStreet map?
- makecheck 9y ago
  I agree but I wish "quality of results" and "quality of UI" were not intimately linked in software. Google has NO idea how to do UI these days. To simply plot a course to one of my designated "favorite" places (i.e. probably what I need most often), I counted: FIVE taps, interspersed with staring at menus to find what to tap, before the driving directions appear. In a maps app. Frankly the quality of their mapping is the only compelling thing these days.
- rmc 9y ago
  > openstreetmap is very cool and I use it every now and then, and I wish it becomes the standard online map, but it needs more care or something, I don't know. So the obvious open source answer: Why not help make it good yourself! Add data! More serious response: What do you find "missing" in OSM?
josefresco 9y ago
The article leads with "Google trackers" but there's no mention of how to block Google's tracking services... I get it's somewhat outside the scope of the article but seems relevant.
- GCU-Empiricist 9y ago
  Do you have a good article to share for this, or is it generally infeasible?
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    First step would be to block Google Analytics using an ad blocker.
    - rypskar 9y ago
      I don't want to directly block ads, only tracking, so I use ghostery instead of an ad-blocker. Most ads are also blocked, but it is because the sites chose to use ad networks that also track me, not because I am trying to take away their way of making money
      - ekianjo 9y ago
        You can block Google Analytics using NoScript. Which is not an adblocker.
  - josefresco 9y ago
    Do you mean feasible to block Google tracking, or feasible for Google to track you via it's analytics and sharing tools? If it's the former, Ghostery and other similar browser extensions/addons will suffice.
ekianjo 9y ago
> Android -> iOS this one surprised me to say the least. It's like jumping from the dragon's mouth into the lion's pit. Both are not good options for privacy, you have no knowledge of what Apple collects and what it does with your data either and it basically requires you to have an iTunes account. At least on Android you can install other app stores like Freedroid which are not linked to any major vendor.
- r3bl 9y ago
  Well, the article in question is "life without Google". iOS is not Google's. Therefore, it satisfies the point of this article. While I do agree that Apple is no better at preserving privacy, it doesn't fit the scope of this article.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    This is not the point. The reason why they don't want you to use Google is based on privacy reasons. Quote from the beginning of the article: > This means they are not only tracking what you search for, they're also tracking which websites you visit, and using all your data for ads that follow you around the internet Apple may be doing the exact same thing as well, so they should not recommend Apple on the same principle. Otherwise it's just preposterous.
    - r3bl 9y ago
      Well, I can guarantee you that Apple doesn't follow you all over the Internet like Google does (edit: and Facebook with its like buttons and commenting platform, probably to lesser extent than Google's analytics and ads). Presumably they're also not making money from your traffic (we can't prove it neither way). I've gone very far in limiting what Google has on me. But if my goal was simply to ditch Google completely, iOS is a completely valid point. So is Vimeo.
      - ekianjo 9y ago
        You are aware that Apple is selling your search requests to Google right? https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billion-to-remain-default-search--bernstein.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billio... It seems that you are hardly going out of the loop by searching for stuff on an iOS device. Google still ends up serving the results and collecting information on you. And by default Safari does not block ads that track you either.
swalladge 9y ago
Disappointed this list doesn't include Matrix/Riot as an alternative to Hangouts/Allo. Also there are many Google Drive alternatives including Syncthing (p2p), Dropbox, Nextcloud/Owncloud (selfhosted), Sugarsync, SpiderOak, etc.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  Disappointed it does not mention people should NOT be using Chromebooks either. It's become quite prevalent these days.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    If you're buying a Chromebook because of the low price point, there is a way out. Many (not all) of them can be reflashed with a ROM that allows for a mainstream Linux distro to be installed. https://johnlewis.ie/custom-chromebook-firmware/rom-download/ https://johnlewis.ie/custom-chromebook-firmware/rom-download...
    - bgrohman 9y ago
      What about the chroot/Crouton route?
      - tyingq 9y ago
        Crouton leaves ChromeOS in place and running, so I assumed it was out of place for this discussion. I don't know how much the chroot does to mitigate that. I assume, for example, it's still Google's kernel in place?
        bgrohman 9y ago
        Yes, it's still using the same kernel.
  - tortasaur 9y ago
    People shouldn't use ChromeOS, but Chromebooks are fine.
d_theorist 9y ago
I like DDG, but I find in general that there are two main problems: 1. It's still much slower than google. 2. The results are still sometimes lacking. I could probably live with the slowness if the results were more consistently high quality. For example, just the other day I was searching for some specific error message in DDG and it returned 1 (irrelevant) result. Google returned hundreds of good results. In that case it seemed to me that google had indexed a lot of IRC archives and mailing list archives that DDG had not.
- vollmond 9y ago
  I think DDG must be improving. I used to multiple times a day finish a DDG search by adding "!g" to my terms to see if Google was better. Now it's maybe once a week, maybe even less.
  - dhimes 9y ago
    I agree. For pretty much anything I do I'm using it without another thought. Even the error messages are coming back well (but I am probably searching simple error messages and not edge-case stuff). Also, hobby (sailing) and around-the-house stuff is coming up great. I still don't understand their business model though.
ekianjo 9y ago
> Ghost (paid) This is inaccurate as this is not the only option. You can still download the source and run an instance on your own server. https://docs.ghost.org/docs/hosting https://docs.ghost.org/docs/hosting
- bovermyer 9y ago
  I think the point was that you can have completely free WordPress (hosted on wordpress.com), compared to Ghost, which costs money either for your own hosting or for hosted Ghost.
  - pgeorgi 9y ago
    Running Ghost on your own system doesn't cost a cent, eg through https://hub.docker.com/_/ghost https://hub.docker.com/_/ghost
madshiva 9y ago
but I don't want too. I was using and supporting Google with Maps since the beginning I contribute to Google Maps with Local Partners. I contributed to Google Maps by creating 3D Building with Sketch up. I will not spit on my own soup. It's almost always a win-win, that I can't get with any other service (Facebook, apple) on Internet, I still believe in a good way with Google, they made so many thing freely for us, like Books research, Google Ngram Viewer, Google Analytics, etc. Almost everything are free, ok there's some targeting, etc that could be bad but the product produced by Google had real impact on the day to day life. Like no one BIG company product did. (Facebook, twitter, didn't change the world for me.) Please Google, I want a job in your company. I can do anything. PS: Why I'm downvoted? Apple fanboy argue a little please I know you don't have brain. Too easy to go down, never go up
- jpkeisala 9y ago
  I am quite depended on Google and it does not bother me at all. Very much similar way as I was depended with Microsoft years ago (Windows, Office, .NET etc...). I did not love them (in fact I though Bill Gates was quite evil guy) but with tools from Microsoft I was able to do my job just like now I do with different tools from Google. Today, if Google would suddenly disappear it would affect to my life much more than any other technology company.
- beauzero 9y ago
  I always tell my children "...there is nothing free on the internet."
  - madshiva 9y ago
    yeah Wikipedia is not free... Linux is not free. My comment are free. I still can't compare Facebook to Google about targeting, ads, or other things that people tell about Google. Facebook give you what? Google always fight for giving product utility. Like Google Maps, they had the balls to change the world. Google earth / Google moon someone? someone us it? yeah but spit on your soup.
    - 9y ago
insickness 9y ago
If you're looking for another reason to live without Google, look into their demonetization of youtube videos on political lines. This includes the thoughtful Dave Rubin who recently had most of his videos demonetized. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=19&v=q4D0TBPd3JU https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=19&v=q4D0TBPd3JU
franga2000 9y ago
I really don't see switching to iOS an improvement. Not only is it insanely expensive, it's not even necessary. Android can be used without Google very easily. You can even get one of the hundreds of chinese phones that don't have any Google software whatsoever. Try using an iPhone without an Apple account.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  > I really don't see switching to iOS an improvement. And you can't technically "switch" to iOS. You have to buy a new device for that, a new phone. On a PC, you can tell people to "switch to Linux" because it does not cost them anything, but phones being what they are now, there is close to no Freedom left to the user to install a different OS.
  - throwawayaway12 9y ago
    While this is true, I think (but do not know the stats) that people buy/replace phones more often than they buy PCs.
- blub 9y ago
  It is an improvement, because Google is one of the greatest privacy offenders. Almost any company except Facebook and the other tracking-people-for-money would be better than them. Android is a hopeless cause. If the platform developer's goal is to get all information about you that it can, it's pointless to try software workarounds. And recommending software developed by Chinese companies for privacy purposes must be a joke.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    This is what pushed me to iOS primarily. The simple fact is Google is incentivized directly to spy on you, and (increasingly) Apple is using the fact that they do not spy on you as a differentiator. They make their money on the hardware and via iTunes; they don't sell your data, and oftentimes don't even have access to your data by their own design. Apple doesn't have 100% of my trust but of the OEM phone makers out their right now, I think by a wide margin they're the most trustworthy.
weberc2 9y ago
I moved away from Chrome and Firefox since both Google and Mozilla have unapologetically fired employees for thought crimes. Apple's posturing hardly seems better. (I imagine this will resonate more with some than others, so please note that I'm only adding this to explain why Firefox and safari weren't options for me). I tried Brave, but it was too buggy. Finally, I switched to Opera which seems to rival Chrome in most regards while feeling more polished and blocking ads by default.
- staticelf 9y ago
  I use Vivaldi, it is awesome.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    I've not heard of that; I'll check it out. Are you being downvoted as well? I assume people really hate Opera. ;)
    - tortasaur 9y ago
      If they're being downvoted, it's likely because Vivaldi is closed source.
- turk184 9y ago
  Brave may be buggy, but I think often it is because it has very strict settings that you can adjust. I was having trouble with it on some sites and tweaked the settings and was all better. It's amazing how much web bug crap and janky javascript is on sites these days!
bgrohman 9y ago
Interesting that the article offers no alternatives to Google Photos. I know there are options, but they all seem to be far behind in terms of features. Plus, migrating all of my photos out of Google Photos would be pain.
- fwn 9y ago
  > migrating all of my photos out of Google Photos would be pain You can export them (incl. meta data) through the regular Google Takeout. From there you just have to upload them again to your new, preferred cloud provider.
  - bgrohman 9y ago
    I've tried Google Takeout, but I have several hundred gigs of photos, so uploading them elsewhere will be a pain. Plus, wherever I do upload them will be lacking many of the features from Google Photos.
    - TheTruestKyle 9y ago
      This is my problem. I have hundreds of thousands of photos and takeout is quite a pain to deal with. Anyone know of an alternative to takeout that allows syncing perhaps?
- on_and_off 9y ago
  Well, all the neat features of Google Photo rely on ML and swath of data to work. Photo seems to be part of takeout : https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout I have not tried it for photo but it seems like you can download all your albums. One thing that Google is exemplary at in my experience is in providing an easy way to export all your data if you want to.
alexsleepy 9y ago
I'm trying to minimize my interaction with google, but I still use google maps and google translate. Unfortunately Open Street Maps is nearly impossible to use. And I didn't find any alternatives to translate at all
- justinclift 9y ago
  Yandex's version seems to work decently, even in cases where Google's doesn't: https://translate.yandex.com https://translate.yandex.com It defaults to translating to Russian, which is a bit annoying as it adds an extra step. But still, seems ok.
  - alexsleepy 9y ago
    I'd rather use google than yandex. I don't trust russian companies because of political reasons and their laws about data
    - justinclift 9y ago
      Use it through Tor then? :) Though I suppose "Google through Tor" is pretty similar.
- jraby3 9y ago
  Morfix is just as good as google translate - perhaps a bit slower but the quality of the translation is on par.
  - alexsleepy 9y ago
    Is it only for English -> Hebrew translation, or am I missing something?
- bmking 9y ago
  DeepL translator (https://www.deepl.com/translator https://www.deepl.com/translator) could be a nice alternative; but the number of languages is more limited.
beegeezuz 9y ago
Of course it can be done, it's whether you want to do it or now. I use kolabnow which replaces google docs, calendar, gmail, google drive for me. I use Opera with Duckduckgo instead of Chrome and google.com. Of course it's not as pretty and fancy and you have to PAY for it, but it solves my problem. I don't get these articles, it's not rocket science. It's actually very easy to do. It's just a matter of preference.
diegoperini 9y ago
> Google Chrome -> Safari (free), Firefox (free) No.
- tellmewhassup 9y ago
  Care to provide any reasoning for why you disagree? I think of the three it's fairly obvious that Chrome is the worst offender, if I'm not mistaken anything that is typed into the search bar is fair game to be sent to Google for analysis.
- Helloworldboy 9y ago
  Safari is so much better than chrome. Especially when using a MacBook if you want more than 1.5hrs of battery life.
harel 9y ago
Sounds like this is just to spite Google. Moving from one beast (google) to another (apple) seems unreasonable.
staticelf 9y ago
What about if you're a site owner and want analytics but not from Google?
- phireal 9y ago
  Piwik seems to work OK for me.
  - bovermyer 9y ago
    I'll second Piwik. It's not difficult to set up and offers feature parity for the most important things.
mhd 9y ago
I tried most of that a few months ago. The problems, as many others pointed out, is that instead of being eaten by one monster, you're being nibbled at by a few. Stuff that worked: - gmail/calendar -> fastmail. I still miss a few features of the gmail web interface, but in general I'm very happy with the switch. - reader -> feedbin. Yeah, as if I had a proper choice. Partial success: - search -> DuckDuckGo: I find myself hitting !g often enough for more "fuzzy" searches, or ones where I'm looking for German content. Which happens often enough, as I've had wikipedia/imdb shortcuts for ages and so don't need to google that only to click on the first link popping up. - maps -> Bing/OpenStreetMap: I'm mostly a desktop user when it comes to maps, and find myself using the !bm tag in DDG more and more. Directions are good and it zooms faster on my Linux desktop. Mobile situation ain't that great. Failed: - mobile -> LineageOs: I got my old Nexus 4 and put LineageOs on it. But it's hard to get by just with F-Droid apps alone. As a compromise, I'm using a cheap iPhone 5c for most stuff these days. I'm seriously considering ditching smartphones altogether and lugging my Sony reader, Sansa Fuze and an old Nokia flip phone around again...
- detaro 9y ago
  For mobile maps, have you tried https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=net.osmand.plus https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=net.osmand.plus ? I'm not sure how good navigation is in there (never tried), but having local OSM maps is great
  - mhd 9y ago
    Yes, I used that. It worked pretty well and the map download features was rather convenient on vacation. Still got lost in Venice, but I won't blame that on the app...
  - DaveWalk 9y ago
    I love OSM (I contribute whenever I can!), and navigation on OsmAnd~ is possible, but Google Maps is far, far easier to use. I really struggle with a Google Maps replacement; I've also tried "Here We Go" but it doesn't hold a candle to GMaps unfortunately
alexsleepy 9y ago
BTW can Chromium count as an alternative to Chrome? I know it's still google, but it's open source and lacks some google api integrations
- zeratax 9y ago
  You maybe want to checkout ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
uisjum 9y ago
I have switched most of my phn usage to laptop. Populate the host file with any number of decent blacklists available on github. Install noscript in Firefox and use it in private mode. With zeal docs and kiwix a lot of time I spent online has also reduced. And oh yes all news sites have been blocked as they are total waste of my time. I check the reddit most read articles about once or twice a week and that's about it. It's not hard to keep things private if you want too.
xxdesmus 9y ago
new title - replace one brand with another brand. This article seems more like a blog post of just personal preferences.
marvinpinto 9y ago
I had never heard of Resilio Sync before today, looks pretty neat. Anyone have experience with it?
- c0wb0yc0d3r 9y ago
  I've used it, and it works. However I ran into an issue where I couldn't use it at my parents' house so I ultimately switched to Syncthing. The biggest differences are Syncthing isn't built directly on top of bittorrent, and opensource.
zeratax 9y ago
I guess I can't recommended everyone my setup since it's pretty time consuming, but I started hosting most google services I use myself. I don't really see a huge difference in using Apple or Google in the end. I used to just have a Nextcloud setup, which already lets you sync files/contacts/calendar and with additional apps even rss feeds extremely easily. https://nextcloud.com/ https://nextcloud.com/ But always sending my stuff across the entire Internet seemed rather unnecessary when my server is in the same Network. So now I've switched to Syncthing, which worjs pretty much lije Resilio Sync But to be fair the experience of using syncthing is still far from comparable to nextcloud or gdrive. As soon as you want to share single files you end up having to write regex based ignore files and you can't just give someone a link to something. https://syncthing.net https://syncthing.net Then for contacts/calendar I use radicale a tiny python script. http://radicale.org/ http://radicale.org/ For rss feeds I've decided to use selfoss https://selfoss.aditu.de/ https://selfoss.aditu.de/ A small raspberry pi seems so far good enough for that. For messenging I use Matrix/Riot but hosting that on my rpi is probably too much. Riot allows to use jitsi video conference widgets now aswell. https://riot.im https://riot.im https://matrix.org https://matrix.org I'd also check out yunohost that should allow you to host these things as one click apps and has a complete ldap setup built in. https://yunohost.org/ https://yunohost.org/ Also interesting is searx, which describes itself as a privacy-respecting, hackable metasearch engine. You could easily host this yourself or use one of the many instances. https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/ https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/ I personally settled for android with lineageos without gapps. I think that android open source apps have come along way and with fdroid they are just as convenient to use (arguably even better than) gstore. And you could still always install yalp, which allows you to download the apk from the gstore without the need of an account, or even with your account to get previously bought apps and update them. I still use YouTube, but I sync my channel subscriptions over rss feeds and use newpipe on android to watch videos (it even has a picture in picture or play audio in background mode) or on my pc with mpv/youtube-dl (shift - t makes a video stay on top) Getting to this pointed definitely took time and you need to be somewhat tech savvy. In the end I still have to rely on nonfree apps like whatsapp since matrix still has no real bridge and probably never will due to the walled in nature of WhatsApp for better or worse. Oh one last thing, if you really need to track your websites's users behavior I would check out Piwik. I persobally don't have trouble with analytics and definitely understand that there is often no way around it. But I think as long as you are the only one I have to trust with that data I can accept that. Everything else gets blocked with umatrix/ublock https://piwik.org/ https://piwik.org/
phatbyte 9y ago
I live fine without FB, Twitter etc.. But I can't find any good replacement for Google services unfortunately. Tried Duck Duck Go for a full month, but the returned results weren't as accurate as Google, I missed some of functionalities the search automatically gives to you. I could switch to bing, although I don't know if that would make a huge difference, privacy wise.
- brightball 9y ago
  I've been researching the Swiss based options personally. Kolab (open source, hosted and enterprise options) and Proton Mail both look like solid options if you don't mind paying a little.
  - pgeorgi 9y ago
    > Swiss based options Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG#Compromised_machines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG#Compromised_machines?
- driverdan 9y ago
  When was the last time you used DDG? It used to be worse but it's roughly on par now.
  - lh7777 9y ago
    Not the OP, but I try it every year or so and always give up after a few weeks. I've been using DDG again for about a week or so, and the results are still about as bad as I remember. It's fine for really common searches such as finding a company's website that I don't remember the domain name for or getting quick info about popular places or things, but anything even slightly obscure (like "how do I do x with y?") is almost always useless. I very quickly get into the habit of adding "!g" to the majority of my searches. That said, I'm going to try to keep using DDG this time. Although most of my "important" searches are still going to Google, at least they're not seeing absolutely everything I search for.
- milcron 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
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chrishynes 9y ago
The one thing keeping me on Google is Google Voice. I have yet to find another solution that allows calling and SMS in/out on desktop and mobile all from the same number. What I need is simple, a single VOIP number linked to: - Calling/SMS on the desktop (Windows/Linux) and on the phone - Shared contacts and call/sms history on all devices - When I call out/text on any device, show the VOIP number in caller ID not the device number - When I receive a call, ring all devices I don't need any fancy handoff from device to device, or IM integration, or anything else. Just ring all my damn devices and let me pick up one. Ideally it would have an API that allows IM clients to integrate with it as a protocol, but hell, at this point I'd go for a black box app if it could do what I want. Is there an app for that? I'm not sure its even possible on iPhone unless you're iMessage, but of course that doesn't work if your desktop is non-Apple. Seems like it would be fairly simple. Tempted to build something out myself, but that's a lot of ongoing support. Twilio -- that'd make a great showcase app and it's something I'd personally pay for. Any chance you guys might pick that up?
- EADGBE 9y ago
  Apple has all this; if you play in their court. But that's who they are. Everything is set up to "synchronize" with one number. If my phone rings, my watch also does (when it's on my wrist, no cellular required), so does my iPad. I can answer on these devices. I can also make calls on them from my iPhone number. I don't have a mac at home (because, why desktop?) but If I did it would also ring and allow me to make calls from it too. iMessages and text messages work the same way, alerts and ability to reply on the watch, synchronization with my iPad and iPhone, and the Messaging app on OSX.
  - chrishynes 9y ago
    Yep, but only if you play in their sandbox. I'm not going to jump from one walled garden to another, particularly when it's going from GV which is at least cross platform to a Apple only solution. I'd be tempted if they ever had a Windows app that actually worked and was supported, but they've killed off everything. Or if they had an API for iMessages so third parties could access it.
hzhou321 9y ago
To live without google is not hard. But the question is not about can or cannot, it is about will or will not. It is about will you deliberately choose less ideal products simply out of an idea. It is about how much, really, do you buy into that idea. Essentially, it is a crusade, honorable but hardly workable. Don't just to avoid google for the pure idea's sake, try truly see and understand the factors that google controls or limits or annoys you. If you don't have any, then don't bother. But if you notice it, you'll desire the otherwise freedom. When you desire the freedom, you'll find the small inconvenience worthwhile.
wu-ikkyu 9y ago
For anyone who still wants to use google search, but doesn't want their searches tied to their identity, check out GoogleSharing (originally developed by Moxie) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/googlesharing/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/googlesharing...
dna_polymerase 9y ago
Nope, Google Search is not the easiest. DuckDuckGo is not even close to Google Search by any means. Last time I tried to switch I did not even last a week. Maybe, instead of writing such articles you guys should hire some additional engineers to make your search results better. iOS is not an option for people preferring privacy. Cyanogen without Google Packages is.
- grimgrin 9y ago
  It's really pretty true. It's very hard for me to adapt to DDG style of searching. A comment I said recently highlights one specific area: Those who use DDG, do you miss dates in results? Having a date present definitely helps me think about the results: https://www.google.com/search?q=dcss+branch+order https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dcss+branch+order This isn't a case where I _know_ I only want 2017 results, and so I do the syntax to filter it down automatically. I want all results, but I want to be aware of the timeline of whatever I'm going to click.
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
This list is mediocre. You want people to switch and recommend a paid service? Good luck! For e-mail, outlook.com is a much better alternative. It has a modern interface and spam filtering works reasonably well. Yes, you get tracked by MS instead of another company, but at least you can use your e-mail account without worrying about payments. (Yes, I've used FastMail and I think it's great.)
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
I think quoting Resilio as an alternative to Google Drive is completely wrong. You just handle your own important data to another company. Why should you do that? For these purposes you should set up a self-hosted solution such as ownCloud or one of its clones. Otherwise your data only changes hands.
- lh7777 9y ago
  Resilio Sync is peer-to-peer, so if you believe their marketing copy, you're not handing your data over to anyone -- it only syncs between your authorized devices. Since Sync is proprietary software, it's a valid concern that Resilio could be making copies of your data without your knowledge. I use Resilio myself, but I'd rather use free software for this sort of thing. Syncthing looks great aside from the lack of iOS support.
goosh453 9y ago
these are mostly bad advices. google to vimeo, google to apple. move from one unfree proprietary service to another.. archive.org for video-upload instead of youtube/vimeo is an option. searx instead of google search. for smartphone you have to dig deeper ;)
teekert 9y ago
Nextcloud should be on there, you can run it from your basement, it syncs contacts, calendar and files (like drive), it even has a mail client which can turn your cheap imap provider into nice webmail. Not to mention that it can replace Google docs as well using https://www.collaboraoffice.com/nl/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/nl/
blubb-fish 9y ago
I totally second the basic idea here. I also try to avoid abusive monopolists where I can. I never order at Amazon, I deleted my FB account, I switched from GMail to FastMail and try to use DDG instead of Google. Having said that - the problem with Google is that it provides really useful services and it is really difficult to actually argue that Google is bad. They are doing lots of good stuff. They "abused" their monopoly to push SSL/HTTPS, they recklessly improve web advertisement and so on. Still FB is measurably bad for people's wellbeing, Amazon is treating their workers badly and their customer service gets shittier with every year. Google is just too big. And too much power in one hand is never beneficial in the long run. Just saying. PS: deepl.com is actually better than Google Translate for several languages - so you can start with that and even benefit :)
- RationalMoose 9y ago
  > the problem with Google is that it provides really useful services and it is really difficult to actually argue that Google is bad. They are doing lots of good stuff That's how i feel about Amazon.
  - XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago
    Yeah, I have so far settled for trying competitors from time to time and trying to keep up to date with amazon and google's overreaches so I can switch when they do overstep.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  it is really difficult to actually argue that Google is bad. They are doing lots of good stuff. They "abused" their monopoly to push SSL/HTTPS, they recklessly improve web advertisement and so on. As they have become part of the business establishment, they have been moving this attitude into politics. That's when it gets scary.
- remir 9y ago
  Just tried deepl.com and wow! Impressive for a small company!
bambax 9y ago
This is just a big product placement from DuckDuckGo, which should be hosted on their website instead of "spreadprivacy".
SippinLean 9y ago
None of this addresses the main problem: all of Google's apps are so well integrated that I'm locked in. My Google Calendar appointments appear on my Google Maps the day they're occurring. When I get a flight confirmation in GMail it's added to my Google Calendar. That doesn't work with Fastmail and Open Street Maps.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
chrisper 9y ago
I am in the process of replacing Google services that could badly affect me if Google chooses to ban my account. Like Gmail and Google drive. Maps and such still can be used without an account.
- caseysoftware 9y ago
  Don't forget to update all those places you did a social auth "Sign in with Google!" For me personally, that include Stack Overflow with 7+ years of history. That's one of the things that concerns me about losing my Google or Twitter accounts.
  - hexis 9y ago
    You can have multiple social logins on SO (including any arbitrary OpenID provider), so you can be very safe on that site.
tjr 9y ago
Any good alternative for Google Docs?
- gaplus 9y ago
  dropbox paper?
  - sluggg 9y ago
    I use dropbox paper as well, and I have not looked back
- Endy 9y ago
  I use Zoho for that.
  - sluggg 9y ago
    Zoho is a pain to use
    - Endy 9y ago
      Can you explain that in more detail? I quite like it, and it takes less resources than GDocs.
avinassh 9y ago
I have a question, is it really possible to get out of Gmail? I may switch to Fastmail or other alternatives, but all the people I know only use Gmail, so my all my emails will still be present on Google's Servers. Or am I missing something?
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  This is more or less the case, an article about someone who bothered to count is here, though it's a few years dated now (2014): https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all-of-yours https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-be... Also, bear in mind while reading the rest of this comment, that Google claims it no longer scans Gmail account content for ad targeting purposes: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-gmail/google-to-stop-scanning-gmail-for-creating-targeted-ads-idUSKBN19E2C7 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-gmail/google-to-... The big question is, if you don't have a Google account attached to that mail, can Google still profile you with it? Does Google relate all of the emails people across their products get from you? If you aren't logged into a Google account when browsing, does it help them target you with ads? Can the government get a portion of your email by requesting Google give them a copy of all emails from your non-Gmail account to Google servers? These are probably the key questions on how much of an issue this is. I also think there's probably a significant benefit from Google not having access to information in your email that wouldn't come from Gmail users. For example, if you don't have Gmail, Google can't know what you bought on Amazon or who you're friends with on Facebook.
jqs79 9y ago
Unfortunately, Firefox for example does precious little to impede Google. Everything from search to "safebrowsing" to geolocating to their own forums runs through Google servers. The quote that "Google trackers have been found on 75% of the top million websites" must be a huge underestimate, at least for the top few thousands of websites; it would be surprising if more than 10 of the top 1000 websites did not call some Google server on page load, and most will use 5 or 10 Google services. Here in Canada, it's a very rare government website that does not use Google services (American government sites are actually a little better in this regard). My public library's website (bibliocommons) sends every book I look up to Google. Efforts like deleting browser cookies, while certainly a good policy, are probably futile in light of all the ways that Google can track and identify browsers; ip address, stored data, fingerprinting (see: panopticlick), canvas fingerprinting, identification through network card timing, etc. During the past few years, Google has been making a concerted attempt to make website functionality dependent on interaction with Google services: ampproject, googletagservices and googleapis (e.g. jquery) all freqently break websites when browsers block these Google services. For years now Google has been getting a free pass from governments, the media, and most egregiously, developers, who should know better (nobody else knows what 'HTTP' and 'packet' mean!). This is not to say that Google is evil; they're just a unbelievably huge and powerful corporation that is not accountable to anyone, and knows more about most people in the world than they know about themselves, by most measures, and is rapidly developing technology that will be able to make automated, qualitative judgments of people based on this knowledge.
WindowsFon4life 9y ago
I got rid of both my Iphone and Android. Moved over to a couple of inexpensive Windows 10 mobile phones, and have not looked back. Lack of apps? Edge, for all other cases, write your own. It's not hard to port apps, or to write your own for remote apis. Never thought I would ever support Windows. Given how many times I've wanted BG taken out for how bad it was. But I must admit, the Windows lifestyle is pretty nice. Share all my devices on one account, and it may not be up to par with Apple Lifestyle, but it's pretty good.
WindowsFon4life 9y ago
The key is ensuring that choice exists. It's easy to jump on the 'Must have Apple!' or the latest Google Nexus. We create the very monster we complain about when it gets TOO popular. This is very much inline with Southpark and Walmart...
galantbutterfly 9y ago
A few years ago I might have thought this impossible. There's a lot of competition on just about all of their services nowadays though. I think the only real thing stopping me from jumping ship is just the convenience of using the same login on all and having them cross compatible.
graphememes 9y ago
You want to know how to truly live without google? Build and run your own systems. That is the only way.
rukenshia 9y ago
I have a G Suite account mainly to have email addresses across different domains using the routing google provides. Is this possible with Fastmail too? If not, is there any other service out there that would provide this?
fasdfdsafas 9y ago
Is this some type of apple advertisement?
turk184 9y ago
Brave browser is built off of Chromium or whatever Google's engine is called. That said, it's very good.
peterwwillis 9y ago
For a Google Maps alternative on mobile, Maps.me works better than anything I've found, including Google Maps. Its offline support is great, it takes up very little space, and you can even load mapped out itineraries via KML (though you might have to pay for that).
xiaoma 9y ago
There's a much cleaner solution. Just live in China and don't use a VPN. Unless you stay in an expat bubble, you likely won't even hear about Google very often.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Jsmth 9y ago
I can live without Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon. But I can't live without Google. That is the reality.
_tulpa 9y ago
There are a crapload of alternatives, switching in a meaningful way is hard: 1) You have to give up convenience (and/or money), nowadays the alternatives have caught up to where this is kinda the only point of difference but you still have to give up something more tangible than your digital privacy and some data you didn't even know existed. 2) You have to convince other people to use whatever messaging app you've switched to. My social bubble pretty much only uses Facebook for that, nobody is changing any time soon and I'm the only one even thinking about it. I'm like a week into my goal of a month without google and ideally owning as much . I have firefox, a non-gmail email account, Syncthing in place of google drive (luckily I don't need the documents part of it), and LineageOS with FDroid and no google play services (and 3-4x the battery life). What I don't have is p2p calendar/contacts sync, which is pretty annoying.
- qbaqbaqba 9y ago
  I really really miss times when google talk, facebook messenger and a bunch of other lesser known chat apps used xmpp! For p2p syncing you may want to have a look at https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/ - however, you must use apps that allow plain text export - and they are surprisingly hard to find!
  - _tulpa 9y ago
    I do use syncthing, but like you say there are hardly any apps which can use it. There's OwnCloud (or *DAV servers) but I think it's a bit silly requiring a server to host data which I'm only going to sync over 5 devices tops.
hobarrera 9y ago
I've found here maps to be far superior to apple maps. Apple Maps are still awful (I once wanted to go about 5 blocks from home, walking, and the app decided that the destination was cross the atlantic. Lots of things alike). DDG works great, and fastmail is fabulous. their UI/UX is years ahead of Gmail's!
- DaveWalk 9y ago
  I've had nothing but trouble with Here maps (now HERE WeGo), in the eastern USA at least. Its UI/UX is sadly far behind GMaps. I would love an alternative...
  - hobarrera 9y ago
    Yeah, each app varies a lot depending on where you live. HERE works fine in Argentina, but Apple maps will constantly send you to other continents (even if clicking on a contact's address that already has a preview of the map only a few miles away). I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened to others in other regions. As for GMaps, I find their UX/UI awful and too complex. They really need to go back to the old-school google that did simple things.
okjdjd 9y ago
Google are too political to be trusted. Sad they couldn't take the high road that they pretend to take.
epynonymous 9y ago
in china, google services have been blocked by the gfw for some time now, after a few months of requiring vpn just to access gmail and websites, i decided to switch to other products, for example, outlook.com for email. in china, life is fine without google, i use baidu maps, youku/iqiyi video, outlook.com for email, i'm already using an iphone so the lack of a play store is irrelevant. i imagine this would be worse for places where there aren't local solutions where google is the best or only solution for things like maps.
bukgoogle 9y ago
This should be warning to all people. Specially when company dump people with different political opinions out. Delete accounts from people who do not fit they template ? Ask yourself, is it "Evil" behaviour? Facebook, Google, Twitter all same CIA orchestrated company model. Please listen CIA whistleblowers, they will tell you what these companies are doing with you and your information. Listen Alex Jones, they have talked this now 10 years !

327 points by janober 9y ago

it would be sufficient for me, if there was a firebase replacement, but it seems push messages are only possible via firebase

romanovcode 9y ago

In my experience once you leave Android living without google is a lot easier then it sounds.

phoe-krk 9y ago
And go for which OS on mobile? On iOS, you fall into Apple's hands, Windows Mobile is dead, and other OSes are relatively non-existent.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- bjpbakker 9y ago
  Purism's Librem 5 [1] looks like a very nice mobile phone alternative. It's highly privacy minded, at least. [1] - https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
  - enobrev 9y ago
    This looks great! I hope they can build what they're pitching. I look forward to buying one of these (or something like it) should it ever make it to market.
  - r3bl 9y ago
    ...and they're still crowdfunding it and don't expect the deliveries before 2019. Presumably, the question "go for which OS on mobile" refers to now, so Librem's definitely not an answer to the question above, even though it's a marvelous goal.
- tnova 9y ago
  Yeah, providing iOS as the "privacy alternative" to Android seems quite ridiculous.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Windows Mobile is honestly still (for the short term while it exists) still a very solid option. I used to try to do the Android-without-Google thing, and it was nearly unmanageable, since pretty much every app on the platform depends on Play Services. (Most location-enabled apps won't work without Google Location Services on, for instance.) I actually have more apps available to me on a Windows 10 Mobile device than an Android device with Play disabled. And I'm able to do most everything I need to while sending drastically less information to my Microsoft account than I ever did to Google. Microsoft still updates every Windows 10 Mobile device monthly with security updates, direct from them, on the second Tuesday of every month. (I got an update for my 2014-era Windows Mobile phone on the 12th, for instance.) In many ways, this means Windows Mobile is still a more secure choice than most Android phones. Microsoft releases the update to all devices on the same day, regardless of OEM. I can say my phone isn't vulnerable to the BlueBorne thing that came out this week, but most Android users won't be able to speak to that.
  - r3bl 9y ago
    While your comment does apply to the large majority of Android users, there are some things worth keeping in mind: * It applies to non-Nexus/Pixel lines (before you say that this is an invalid argument, most of the Windows devices sold are Lumia devices, so presumably, yours is too). * It applies to people who don't change phones every six months (the amount of people I've witnessed updating Galaxy phones every year is equal to the amount of people I've seen upgrading iPhones every year). * It applies to people not using a relatively recent Samsung (https://security.samsungmobile.com/workScope.smsb https://security.samsungmobile.com/workScope.smsb) or LG (https://lgsecurity.lge.com/security_updates.html https://lgsecurity.lge.com/security_updates.html) phones. The only valid security argument is that Windows phones and iPhones have longer support than Google (two years for upgrades to newer versions + one additional year of security updates). That's it. The rest is to blame solely on companies that make Android phones. Google is the only one out of all three that actually gives everyone a chance of using their OS. Microsoft (from what I could find) is only giving Windows Mobile free to some mobile companies. Apple is not providing that option to anyone. If the rest of the companies didn't actually try really hard to stand out from the rest of the Android crowd by modifying vanilla Android, we would have a completely different situation. ...which is another reason why I blame OEMs, not Google.
- pdimitar 9y ago
  > On iOS, you fall into Apple's hands This is ridiculuous and if you're over 16, you should be ashamed of yourself. Frequenting HN and using such teen/vague talk is not constructive. iCloud is not secure. That's an accepted fact by now. If you don't sync stuff to iCloud, your iPhone's local data is much more secure than in any Android device. This is also a fact. Reference: the "Storage" permission in Android; once you give it to an app, it can scan your entire device; as a comparison, an iDevice storage permission only allows it access to its sandboxed storage).
  - yoz-y 9y ago
    > iCloud is not secure. That's an accepted fact by now. Is it? (accepted as fact)
    - pdimitar 9y ago
      Apple is quick to hand over iCloud backups, even in the famous iPhone 5c case when they refused to unlock the device itself. Doesn't that make it an accepted fact?
      - yoz-y 9y ago
        Ok by this definition I agree. (I would not say that apple was "quick" to handover the data but that is beside the point).
        pdimitar 9y ago
        Doesn't "The Fappening" count as well? That case when several celebrities got their photos leaked. I mean, I do maintain Apple is more privacy-friendly than Google but IMO iCloud leaves a lot to be desired still.
        alphabettsy 9y ago
        They were phished.. I can see how that somewhat falls on Apple, but it’s absolutely possible of any service if the users gives away their password.
swalladge 9y ago
Yeah sadly even though you can install a rom like Lineageos, many apps require the google play services installed, which then requires the Gapps to be flashed. Which kinda defeats the purpose... :'(
- franga2000 9y ago
  Google Play Services really isn't that bad. Sure it's annoying and proprietary, but it doesn't give them any more control than what Apple has by default on their devices.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  > install a rom like Lineageos And you have to trust a binary from a "nightly" build hosted on who knows where for your model - There's so much possibility for stuff to happen I'm not sure it's even a good recommendation to make.
  - swalladge 9y ago
    Yeah you're right... :( At least it gives a better user experience because there isn't all the pre-installed bloatware.
  - rphlx 9y ago
    It's possible to build a lineageos ROM from source, mostly. There are still some binary blobs and it's true that virtually no one has the time to rigorously audit the entire source tree themselves anyway, but technically you do not absolutely have to trust a giant ROM binary that their auto-builder spit out.

wheresvic1 9y ago

I've been using DDG for about 2 years now and have rarely needed to resort to a google search in this time. A few of the cases for google were funnily were when I was trying to lookup someone and get their email address. I do full-stack programming: java, Node.js react, angular, redux for my day job and dabble in a bit of C++ outside of work as well.

DavideNL 9y ago
... and in cases where DDG fails, you can fall back to https://www.startpage.com/ https://www.startpage.com/ which shows Googles results but strips Googles tracking.
- mrmondo 9y ago
  It seems to be /very/ slow to load, google and ddg both seem to load in < 1s where startpage averages around 3-5 seconds, I wonder if it provides any advantages over say using a grease monkey userscript to strip the tracking?
- ourmandave 9y ago
  As a paranoid my first thought was, what is startpage.com doing with my information and searches?
  - jqs79 9y ago
    Which is the right reaction, but you can read up on them; what other source of knowledge can we depend on other than that of people articulating their cause and others who substantiate those claims?
- vollmond 9y ago
  Interesting. Looks like DDG has a bang for it, too: https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=startpage https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=startpage
  - r3bl 9y ago

pvinis 9y ago

Most of these are fine replacements, but some are not, and that's the reason I, and I imagine many more people, stay with google. google maps is great. apple maps is much worse with searching, and shops etc, especially outside the US. openstreetmap is very cool and I use it every now and then, and I wish it becomes the standard online map, but it needs more care or something, I don't know.

deep_attention 9y ago
For car navigation I use HERE WeGo (traffic info), never looked back. On foot/bike openstreetmap is the best.
- usuallymatt 9y ago
  Which android app do you use for OpenStreet map?
makecheck 9y ago
I agree but I wish "quality of results" and "quality of UI" were not intimately linked in software. Google has NO idea how to do UI these days. To simply plot a course to one of my designated "favorite" places (i.e. probably what I need most often), I counted: FIVE taps, interspersed with staring at menus to find what to tap, before the driving directions appear. In a maps app. Frankly the quality of their mapping is the only compelling thing these days.
rmc 9y ago
> openstreetmap is very cool and I use it every now and then, and I wish it becomes the standard online map, but it needs more care or something, I don't know. So the obvious open source answer: Why not help make it good yourself! Add data! More serious response: What do you find "missing" in OSM?

josefresco 9y ago

The article leads with "Google trackers" but there's no mention of how to block Google's tracking services... I get it's somewhat outside the scope of the article but seems relevant.

GCU-Empiricist 9y ago
Do you have a good article to share for this, or is it generally infeasible?
- ekianjo 9y ago
  First step would be to block Google Analytics using an ad blocker.
  - rypskar 9y ago
    I don't want to directly block ads, only tracking, so I use ghostery instead of an ad-blocker. Most ads are also blocked, but it is because the sites chose to use ad networks that also track me, not because I am trying to take away their way of making money
    - ekianjo 9y ago
      You can block Google Analytics using NoScript. Which is not an adblocker.
- josefresco 9y ago
  Do you mean feasible to block Google tracking, or feasible for Google to track you via it's analytics and sharing tools? If it's the former, Ghostery and other similar browser extensions/addons will suffice.

ekianjo 9y ago

> Android -> iOS this one surprised me to say the least. It's like jumping from the dragon's mouth into the lion's pit. Both are not good options for privacy, you have no knowledge of what Apple collects and what it does with your data either and it basically requires you to have an iTunes account. At least on Android you can install other app stores like Freedroid which are not linked to any major vendor.

r3bl 9y ago
Well, the article in question is "life without Google". iOS is not Google's. Therefore, it satisfies the point of this article. While I do agree that Apple is no better at preserving privacy, it doesn't fit the scope of this article.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  This is not the point. The reason why they don't want you to use Google is based on privacy reasons. Quote from the beginning of the article: > This means they are not only tracking what you search for, they're also tracking which websites you visit, and using all your data for ads that follow you around the internet Apple may be doing the exact same thing as well, so they should not recommend Apple on the same principle. Otherwise it's just preposterous.
  - r3bl 9y ago
    Well, I can guarantee you that Apple doesn't follow you all over the Internet like Google does (edit: and Facebook with its like buttons and commenting platform, probably to lesser extent than Google's analytics and ads). Presumably they're also not making money from your traffic (we can't prove it neither way). I've gone very far in limiting what Google has on me. But if my goal was simply to ditch Google completely, iOS is a completely valid point. So is Vimeo.
    - ekianjo 9y ago
      You are aware that Apple is selling your search requests to Google right? https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billion-to-remain-default-search--bernstein.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billio... It seems that you are hardly going out of the loop by searching for stuff on an iOS device. Google still ends up serving the results and collecting information on you. And by default Safari does not block ads that track you either.

swalladge 9y ago

Disappointed this list doesn't include Matrix/Riot as an alternative to Hangouts/Allo. Also there are many Google Drive alternatives including Syncthing (p2p), Dropbox, Nextcloud/Owncloud (selfhosted), Sugarsync, SpiderOak, etc.

ekianjo 9y ago
Disappointed it does not mention people should NOT be using Chromebooks either. It's become quite prevalent these days.
- tyingq 9y ago
  If you're buying a Chromebook because of the low price point, there is a way out. Many (not all) of them can be reflashed with a ROM that allows for a mainstream Linux distro to be installed. https://johnlewis.ie/custom-chromebook-firmware/rom-download/ https://johnlewis.ie/custom-chromebook-firmware/rom-download...
  - bgrohman 9y ago
    What about the chroot/Crouton route?
    - tyingq 9y ago
      Crouton leaves ChromeOS in place and running, so I assumed it was out of place for this discussion. I don't know how much the chroot does to mitigate that. I assume, for example, it's still Google's kernel in place?
      - bgrohman 9y ago
        Yes, it's still using the same kernel.
- tortasaur 9y ago
  People shouldn't use ChromeOS, but Chromebooks are fine.

d_theorist 9y ago

I like DDG, but I find in general that there are two main problems: 1. It's still much slower than google. 2. The results are still sometimes lacking. I could probably live with the slowness if the results were more consistently high quality. For example, just the other day I was searching for some specific error message in DDG and it returned 1 (irrelevant) result. Google returned hundreds of good results. In that case it seemed to me that google had indexed a lot of IRC archives and mailing list archives that DDG had not.

vollmond 9y ago
I think DDG must be improving. I used to multiple times a day finish a DDG search by adding "!g" to my terms to see if Google was better. Now it's maybe once a week, maybe even less.
- dhimes 9y ago
  I agree. For pretty much anything I do I'm using it without another thought. Even the error messages are coming back well (but I am probably searching simple error messages and not edge-case stuff). Also, hobby (sailing) and around-the-house stuff is coming up great. I still don't understand their business model though.

ekianjo 9y ago

> Ghost (paid) This is inaccurate as this is not the only option. You can still download the source and run an instance on your own server. https://docs.ghost.org/docs/hosting https://docs.ghost.org/docs/hosting

bovermyer 9y ago
I think the point was that you can have completely free WordPress (hosted on wordpress.com), compared to Ghost, which costs money either for your own hosting or for hosted Ghost.
- pgeorgi 9y ago
  Running Ghost on your own system doesn't cost a cent, eg through https://hub.docker.com/_/ghost https://hub.docker.com/_/ghost

madshiva 9y ago

but I don't want too. I was using and supporting Google with Maps since the beginning I contribute to Google Maps with Local Partners. I contributed to Google Maps by creating 3D Building with Sketch up. I will not spit on my own soup. It's almost always a win-win, that I can't get with any other service (Facebook, apple) on Internet, I still believe in a good way with Google, they made so many thing freely for us, like Books research, Google Ngram Viewer, Google Analytics, etc. Almost everything are free, ok there's some targeting, etc that could be bad but the product produced by Google had real impact on the day to day life. Like no one BIG company product did. (Facebook, twitter, didn't change the world for me.) Please Google, I want a job in your company. I can do anything. PS: Why I'm downvoted? Apple fanboy argue a little please I know you don't have brain. Too easy to go down, never go up

jpkeisala 9y ago
I am quite depended on Google and it does not bother me at all. Very much similar way as I was depended with Microsoft years ago (Windows, Office, .NET etc...). I did not love them (in fact I though Bill Gates was quite evil guy) but with tools from Microsoft I was able to do my job just like now I do with different tools from Google. Today, if Google would suddenly disappear it would affect to my life much more than any other technology company.
beauzero 9y ago
I always tell my children "...there is nothing free on the internet."
- madshiva 9y ago
  yeah Wikipedia is not free... Linux is not free. My comment are free. I still can't compare Facebook to Google about targeting, ads, or other things that people tell about Google. Facebook give you what? Google always fight for giving product utility. Like Google Maps, they had the balls to change the world. Google earth / Google moon someone? someone us it? yeah but spit on your soup.
  - 9y ago

insickness 9y ago

If you're looking for another reason to live without Google, look into their demonetization of youtube videos on political lines. This includes the thoughtful Dave Rubin who recently had most of his videos demonetized. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=19&v=q4D0TBPd3JU https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=19&v=q4D0TBPd3JU

franga2000 9y ago

I really don't see switching to iOS an improvement. Not only is it insanely expensive, it's not even necessary. Android can be used without Google very easily. You can even get one of the hundreds of chinese phones that don't have any Google software whatsoever. Try using an iPhone without an Apple account.

ekianjo 9y ago
> I really don't see switching to iOS an improvement. And you can't technically "switch" to iOS. You have to buy a new device for that, a new phone. On a PC, you can tell people to "switch to Linux" because it does not cost them anything, but phones being what they are now, there is close to no Freedom left to the user to install a different OS.
- throwawayaway12 9y ago
  While this is true, I think (but do not know the stats) that people buy/replace phones more often than they buy PCs.
blub 9y ago
It is an improvement, because Google is one of the greatest privacy offenders. Almost any company except Facebook and the other tracking-people-for-money would be better than them. Android is a hopeless cause. If the platform developer's goal is to get all information about you that it can, it's pointless to try software workarounds. And recommending software developed by Chinese companies for privacy purposes must be a joke.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  This is what pushed me to iOS primarily. The simple fact is Google is incentivized directly to spy on you, and (increasingly) Apple is using the fact that they do not spy on you as a differentiator. They make their money on the hardware and via iTunes; they don't sell your data, and oftentimes don't even have access to your data by their own design. Apple doesn't have 100% of my trust but of the OEM phone makers out their right now, I think by a wide margin they're the most trustworthy.

weberc2 9y ago

I moved away from Chrome and Firefox since both Google and Mozilla have unapologetically fired employees for thought crimes. Apple's posturing hardly seems better. (I imagine this will resonate more with some than others, so please note that I'm only adding this to explain why Firefox and safari weren't options for me). I tried Brave, but it was too buggy. Finally, I switched to Opera which seems to rival Chrome in most regards while feeling more polished and blocking ads by default.

staticelf 9y ago
I use Vivaldi, it is awesome.
- weberc2 9y ago
  I've not heard of that; I'll check it out. Are you being downvoted as well? I assume people really hate Opera. ;)
  - tortasaur 9y ago
    If they're being downvoted, it's likely because Vivaldi is closed source.
turk184 9y ago
Brave may be buggy, but I think often it is because it has very strict settings that you can adjust. I was having trouble with it on some sites and tweaked the settings and was all better. It's amazing how much web bug crap and janky javascript is on sites these days!

bgrohman 9y ago

Interesting that the article offers no alternatives to Google Photos. I know there are options, but they all seem to be far behind in terms of features. Plus, migrating all of my photos out of Google Photos would be pain.

fwn 9y ago
> migrating all of my photos out of Google Photos would be pain You can export them (incl. meta data) through the regular Google Takeout. From there you just have to upload them again to your new, preferred cloud provider.
- bgrohman 9y ago
  I've tried Google Takeout, but I have several hundred gigs of photos, so uploading them elsewhere will be a pain. Plus, wherever I do upload them will be lacking many of the features from Google Photos.
  - TheTruestKyle 9y ago
    This is my problem. I have hundreds of thousands of photos and takeout is quite a pain to deal with. Anyone know of an alternative to takeout that allows syncing perhaps?
on_and_off 9y ago
Well, all the neat features of Google Photo rely on ML and swath of data to work. Photo seems to be part of takeout : https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout I have not tried it for photo but it seems like you can download all your albums. One thing that Google is exemplary at in my experience is in providing an easy way to export all your data if you want to.

alexsleepy 9y ago

I'm trying to minimize my interaction with google, but I still use google maps and google translate. Unfortunately Open Street Maps is nearly impossible to use. And I didn't find any alternatives to translate at all

justinclift 9y ago
Yandex's version seems to work decently, even in cases where Google's doesn't: https://translate.yandex.com https://translate.yandex.com It defaults to translating to Russian, which is a bit annoying as it adds an extra step. But still, seems ok.
- alexsleepy 9y ago
  I'd rather use google than yandex. I don't trust russian companies because of political reasons and their laws about data
  - justinclift 9y ago
    Use it through Tor then? :) Though I suppose "Google through Tor" is pretty similar.
jraby3 9y ago
Morfix is just as good as google translate - perhaps a bit slower but the quality of the translation is on par.
- alexsleepy 9y ago
  Is it only for English -> Hebrew translation, or am I missing something?
bmking 9y ago
DeepL translator (https://www.deepl.com/translator https://www.deepl.com/translator) could be a nice alternative; but the number of languages is more limited.

beegeezuz 9y ago

Of course it can be done, it's whether you want to do it or now. I use kolabnow which replaces google docs, calendar, gmail, google drive for me. I use Opera with Duckduckgo instead of Chrome and google.com. Of course it's not as pretty and fancy and you have to PAY for it, but it solves my problem. I don't get these articles, it's not rocket science. It's actually very easy to do. It's just a matter of preference.

diegoperini 9y ago

> Google Chrome -> Safari (free), Firefox (free) No.

tellmewhassup 9y ago
Care to provide any reasoning for why you disagree? I think of the three it's fairly obvious that Chrome is the worst offender, if I'm not mistaken anything that is typed into the search bar is fair game to be sent to Google for analysis.
Helloworldboy 9y ago
Safari is so much better than chrome. Especially when using a MacBook if you want more than 1.5hrs of battery life.

harel 9y ago

Sounds like this is just to spite Google. Moving from one beast (google) to another (apple) seems unreasonable.

staticelf 9y ago

What about if you're a site owner and want analytics but not from Google?

phireal 9y ago
Piwik seems to work OK for me.
- bovermyer 9y ago
  I'll second Piwik. It's not difficult to set up and offers feature parity for the most important things.

mhd 9y ago

I tried most of that a few months ago. The problems, as many others pointed out, is that instead of being eaten by one monster, you're being nibbled at by a few. Stuff that worked: - gmail/calendar -> fastmail. I still miss a few features of the gmail web interface, but in general I'm very happy with the switch. - reader -> feedbin. Yeah, as if I had a proper choice. Partial success: - search -> DuckDuckGo: I find myself hitting !g often enough for more "fuzzy" searches, or ones where I'm looking for German content. Which happens often enough, as I've had wikipedia/imdb shortcuts for ages and so don't need to google that only to click on the first link popping up. - maps -> Bing/OpenStreetMap: I'm mostly a desktop user when it comes to maps, and find myself using the !bm tag in DDG more and more. Directions are good and it zooms faster on my Linux desktop. Mobile situation ain't that great. Failed: - mobile -> LineageOs: I got my old Nexus 4 and put LineageOs on it. But it's hard to get by just with F-Droid apps alone. As a compromise, I'm using a cheap iPhone 5c for most stuff these days. I'm seriously considering ditching smartphones altogether and lugging my Sony reader, Sansa Fuze and an old Nokia flip phone around again...

detaro 9y ago
For mobile maps, have you tried https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=net.osmand.plus https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=net.osmand.plus ? I'm not sure how good navigation is in there (never tried), but having local OSM maps is great
- mhd 9y ago
  Yes, I used that. It worked pretty well and the map download features was rather convenient on vacation. Still got lost in Venice, but I won't blame that on the app...
- DaveWalk 9y ago
  I love OSM (I contribute whenever I can!), and navigation on OsmAnd~ is possible, but Google Maps is far, far easier to use. I really struggle with a Google Maps replacement; I've also tried "Here We Go" but it doesn't hold a candle to GMaps unfortunately

alexsleepy 9y ago

BTW can Chromium count as an alternative to Chrome? I know it's still google, but it's open source and lacks some google api integrations

zeratax 9y ago
You maybe want to checkout ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

uisjum 9y ago

I have switched most of my phn usage to laptop. Populate the host file with any number of decent blacklists available on github. Install noscript in Firefox and use it in private mode. With zeal docs and kiwix a lot of time I spent online has also reduced. And oh yes all news sites have been blocked as they are total waste of my time. I check the reddit most read articles about once or twice a week and that's about it. It's not hard to keep things private if you want too.

xxdesmus 9y ago

new title - replace one brand with another brand. This article seems more like a blog post of just personal preferences.

marvinpinto 9y ago

I had never heard of Resilio Sync before today, looks pretty neat. Anyone have experience with it?

c0wb0yc0d3r 9y ago
I've used it, and it works. However I ran into an issue where I couldn't use it at my parents' house so I ultimately switched to Syncthing. The biggest differences are Syncthing isn't built directly on top of bittorrent, and opensource.

zeratax 9y ago

I guess I can't recommended everyone my setup since it's pretty time consuming, but I started hosting most google services I use myself. I don't really see a huge difference in using Apple or Google in the end. I used to just have a Nextcloud setup, which already lets you sync files/contacts/calendar and with additional apps even rss feeds extremely easily. https://nextcloud.com/ https://nextcloud.com/ But always sending my stuff across the entire Internet seemed rather unnecessary when my server is in the same Network. So now I've switched to Syncthing, which worjs pretty much lije Resilio Sync But to be fair the experience of using syncthing is still far from comparable to nextcloud or gdrive. As soon as you want to share single files you end up having to write regex based ignore files and you can't just give someone a link to something. https://syncthing.net https://syncthing.net Then for contacts/calendar I use radicale a tiny python script. http://radicale.org/ http://radicale.org/ For rss feeds I've decided to use selfoss https://selfoss.aditu.de/ https://selfoss.aditu.de/ A small raspberry pi seems so far good enough for that. For messenging I use Matrix/Riot but hosting that on my rpi is probably too much. Riot allows to use jitsi video conference widgets now aswell. https://riot.im https://riot.im https://matrix.org https://matrix.org I'd also check out yunohost that should allow you to host these things as one click apps and has a complete ldap setup built in. https://yunohost.org/ https://yunohost.org/ Also interesting is searx, which describes itself as a privacy-respecting, hackable metasearch engine. You could easily host this yourself or use one of the many instances. https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/ https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/ I personally settled for android with lineageos without gapps. I think that android open source apps have come along way and with fdroid they are just as convenient to use (arguably even better than) gstore. And you could still always install yalp, which allows you to download the apk from the gstore without the need of an account, or even with your account to get previously bought apps and update them. I still use YouTube, but I sync my channel subscriptions over rss feeds and use newpipe on android to watch videos (it even has a picture in picture or play audio in background mode) or on my pc with mpv/youtube-dl (shift - t makes a video stay on top) Getting to this pointed definitely took time and you need to be somewhat tech savvy. In the end I still have to rely on nonfree apps like whatsapp since matrix still has no real bridge and probably never will due to the walled in nature of WhatsApp for better or worse. Oh one last thing, if you really need to track your websites's users behavior I would check out Piwik. I persobally don't have trouble with analytics and definitely understand that there is often no way around it. But I think as long as you are the only one I have to trust with that data I can accept that. Everything else gets blocked with umatrix/ublock https://piwik.org/ https://piwik.org/

phatbyte 9y ago

I live fine without FB, Twitter etc.. But I can't find any good replacement for Google services unfortunately. Tried Duck Duck Go for a full month, but the returned results weren't as accurate as Google, I missed some of functionalities the search automatically gives to you. I could switch to bing, although I don't know if that would make a huge difference, privacy wise.

brightball 9y ago
I've been researching the Swiss based options personally. Kolab (open source, hosted and enterprise options) and Proton Mail both look like solid options if you don't mind paying a little.
- pgeorgi 9y ago
  > Swiss based options Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG#Compromised_machines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG#Compromised_machines?
driverdan 9y ago
When was the last time you used DDG? It used to be worse but it's roughly on par now.
- lh7777 9y ago
  Not the OP, but I try it every year or so and always give up after a few weeks. I've been using DDG again for about a week or so, and the results are still about as bad as I remember. It's fine for really common searches such as finding a company's website that I don't remember the domain name for or getting quick info about popular places or things, but anything even slightly obscure (like "how do I do x with y?") is almost always useless. I very quickly get into the habit of adding "!g" to the majority of my searches. That said, I'm going to try to keep using DDG this time. Although most of my "important" searches are still going to Google, at least they're not seeing absolutely everything I search for.
milcron 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

chrishynes 9y ago

The one thing keeping me on Google is Google Voice. I have yet to find another solution that allows calling and SMS in/out on desktop and mobile all from the same number. What I need is simple, a single VOIP number linked to: - Calling/SMS on the desktop (Windows/Linux) and on the phone - Shared contacts and call/sms history on all devices - When I call out/text on any device, show the VOIP number in caller ID not the device number - When I receive a call, ring all devices I don't need any fancy handoff from device to device, or IM integration, or anything else. Just ring all my damn devices and let me pick up one. Ideally it would have an API that allows IM clients to integrate with it as a protocol, but hell, at this point I'd go for a black box app if it could do what I want. Is there an app for that? I'm not sure its even possible on iPhone unless you're iMessage, but of course that doesn't work if your desktop is non-Apple. Seems like it would be fairly simple. Tempted to build something out myself, but that's a lot of ongoing support. Twilio -- that'd make a great showcase app and it's something I'd personally pay for. Any chance you guys might pick that up?

EADGBE 9y ago
Apple has all this; if you play in their court. But that's who they are. Everything is set up to "synchronize" with one number. If my phone rings, my watch also does (when it's on my wrist, no cellular required), so does my iPad. I can answer on these devices. I can also make calls on them from my iPhone number. I don't have a mac at home (because, why desktop?) but If I did it would also ring and allow me to make calls from it too. iMessages and text messages work the same way, alerts and ability to reply on the watch, synchronization with my iPad and iPhone, and the Messaging app on OSX.
- chrishynes 9y ago
  Yep, but only if you play in their sandbox. I'm not going to jump from one walled garden to another, particularly when it's going from GV which is at least cross platform to a Apple only solution. I'd be tempted if they ever had a Windows app that actually worked and was supported, but they've killed off everything. Or if they had an API for iMessages so third parties could access it.

hzhou321 9y ago

To live without google is not hard. But the question is not about can or cannot, it is about will or will not. It is about will you deliberately choose less ideal products simply out of an idea. It is about how much, really, do you buy into that idea. Essentially, it is a crusade, honorable but hardly workable. Don't just to avoid google for the pure idea's sake, try truly see and understand the factors that google controls or limits or annoys you. If you don't have any, then don't bother. But if you notice it, you'll desire the otherwise freedom. When you desire the freedom, you'll find the small inconvenience worthwhile.

wu-ikkyu 9y ago

For anyone who still wants to use google search, but doesn't want their searches tied to their identity, check out GoogleSharing (originally developed by Moxie) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/googlesharing/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/googlesharing...

dna_polymerase 9y ago

Nope, Google Search is not the easiest. DuckDuckGo is not even close to Google Search by any means. Last time I tried to switch I did not even last a week. Maybe, instead of writing such articles you guys should hire some additional engineers to make your search results better. iOS is not an option for people preferring privacy. Cyanogen without Google Packages is.

grimgrin 9y ago
It's really pretty true. It's very hard for me to adapt to DDG style of searching. A comment I said recently highlights one specific area: Those who use DDG, do you miss dates in results? Having a date present definitely helps me think about the results: https://www.google.com/search?q=dcss+branch+order https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dcss+branch+order This isn't a case where I _know_ I only want 2017 results, and so I do the syntax to filter it down automatically. I want all results, but I want to be aware of the timeline of whatever I'm going to click.

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago

This list is mediocre. You want people to switch and recommend a paid service? Good luck! For e-mail, outlook.com is a much better alternative. It has a modern interface and spam filtering works reasonably well. Yes, you get tracked by MS instead of another company, but at least you can use your e-mail account without worrying about payments. (Yes, I've used FastMail and I think it's great.)

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago

I think quoting Resilio as an alternative to Google Drive is completely wrong. You just handle your own important data to another company. Why should you do that? For these purposes you should set up a self-hosted solution such as ownCloud or one of its clones. Otherwise your data only changes hands.

lh7777 9y ago
Resilio Sync is peer-to-peer, so if you believe their marketing copy, you're not handing your data over to anyone -- it only syncs between your authorized devices. Since Sync is proprietary software, it's a valid concern that Resilio could be making copies of your data without your knowledge. I use Resilio myself, but I'd rather use free software for this sort of thing. Syncthing looks great aside from the lack of iOS support.

goosh453 9y ago

these are mostly bad advices. google to vimeo, google to apple. move from one unfree proprietary service to another.. archive.org for video-upload instead of youtube/vimeo is an option. searx instead of google search. for smartphone you have to dig deeper ;)

teekert 9y ago

Nextcloud should be on there, you can run it from your basement, it syncs contacts, calendar and files (like drive), it even has a mail client which can turn your cheap imap provider into nice webmail. Not to mention that it can replace Google docs as well using https://www.collaboraoffice.com/nl/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/nl/

blubb-fish 9y ago

I totally second the basic idea here. I also try to avoid abusive monopolists where I can. I never order at Amazon, I deleted my FB account, I switched from GMail to FastMail and try to use DDG instead of Google. Having said that - the problem with Google is that it provides really useful services and it is really difficult to actually argue that Google is bad. They are doing lots of good stuff. They "abused" their monopoly to push SSL/HTTPS, they recklessly improve web advertisement and so on. Still FB is measurably bad for people's wellbeing, Amazon is treating their workers badly and their customer service gets shittier with every year. Google is just too big. And too much power in one hand is never beneficial in the long run. Just saying. PS: deepl.com is actually better than Google Translate for several languages - so you can start with that and even benefit :)

RationalMoose 9y ago
> the problem with Google is that it provides really useful services and it is really difficult to actually argue that Google is bad. They are doing lots of good stuff That's how i feel about Amazon.
- XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago
  Yeah, I have so far settled for trying competitors from time to time and trying to keep up to date with amazon and google's overreaches so I can switch when they do overstep.
stcredzero 9y ago
it is really difficult to actually argue that Google is bad. They are doing lots of good stuff. They "abused" their monopoly to push SSL/HTTPS, they recklessly improve web advertisement and so on. As they have become part of the business establishment, they have been moving this attitude into politics. That's when it gets scary.
remir 9y ago
Just tried deepl.com and wow! Impressive for a small company!

bambax 9y ago

This is just a big product placement from DuckDuckGo, which should be hosted on their website instead of "spreadprivacy".

SippinLean 9y ago

None of this addresses the main problem: all of Google's apps are so well integrated that I'm locked in. My Google Calendar appointments appear on my Google Maps the day they're occurring. When I get a flight confirmation in GMail it's added to my Google Calendar. That doesn't work with Fastmail and Open Street Maps.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

chrisper 9y ago

I am in the process of replacing Google services that could badly affect me if Google chooses to ban my account. Like Gmail and Google drive. Maps and such still can be used without an account.

caseysoftware 9y ago
Don't forget to update all those places you did a social auth "Sign in with Google!" For me personally, that include Stack Overflow with 7+ years of history. That's one of the things that concerns me about losing my Google or Twitter accounts.
- hexis 9y ago
  You can have multiple social logins on SO (including any arbitrary OpenID provider), so you can be very safe on that site.

tjr 9y ago

Any good alternative for Google Docs?

gaplus 9y ago
dropbox paper?
- sluggg 9y ago
  I use dropbox paper as well, and I have not looked back
Endy 9y ago
I use Zoho for that.
- sluggg 9y ago
  Zoho is a pain to use
  - Endy 9y ago
    Can you explain that in more detail? I quite like it, and it takes less resources than GDocs.

avinassh 9y ago

I have a question, is it really possible to get out of Gmail? I may switch to Fastmail or other alternatives, but all the people I know only use Gmail, so my all my emails will still be present on Google's Servers. Or am I missing something?

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
This is more or less the case, an article about someone who bothered to count is here, though it's a few years dated now (2014): https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all-of-yours https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-be... Also, bear in mind while reading the rest of this comment, that Google claims it no longer scans Gmail account content for ad targeting purposes: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-gmail/google-to-stop-scanning-gmail-for-creating-targeted-ads-idUSKBN19E2C7 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-gmail/google-to-... The big question is, if you don't have a Google account attached to that mail, can Google still profile you with it? Does Google relate all of the emails people across their products get from you? If you aren't logged into a Google account when browsing, does it help them target you with ads? Can the government get a portion of your email by requesting Google give them a copy of all emails from your non-Gmail account to Google servers? These are probably the key questions on how much of an issue this is. I also think there's probably a significant benefit from Google not having access to information in your email that wouldn't come from Gmail users. For example, if you don't have Gmail, Google can't know what you bought on Amazon or who you're friends with on Facebook.

jqs79 9y ago

Unfortunately, Firefox for example does precious little to impede Google. Everything from search to "safebrowsing" to geolocating to their own forums runs through Google servers. The quote that "Google trackers have been found on 75% of the top million websites" must be a huge underestimate, at least for the top few thousands of websites; it would be surprising if more than 10 of the top 1000 websites did not call some Google server on page load, and most will use 5 or 10 Google services. Here in Canada, it's a very rare government website that does not use Google services (American government sites are actually a little better in this regard). My public library's website (bibliocommons) sends every book I look up to Google. Efforts like deleting browser cookies, while certainly a good policy, are probably futile in light of all the ways that Google can track and identify browsers; ip address, stored data, fingerprinting (see: panopticlick), canvas fingerprinting, identification through network card timing, etc. During the past few years, Google has been making a concerted attempt to make website functionality dependent on interaction with Google services: ampproject, googletagservices and googleapis (e.g. jquery) all freqently break websites when browsers block these Google services. For years now Google has been getting a free pass from governments, the media, and most egregiously, developers, who should know better (nobody else knows what 'HTTP' and 'packet' mean!). This is not to say that Google is evil; they're just a unbelievably huge and powerful corporation that is not accountable to anyone, and knows more about most people in the world than they know about themselves, by most measures, and is rapidly developing technology that will be able to make automated, qualitative judgments of people based on this knowledge.

WindowsFon4life 9y ago

I got rid of both my Iphone and Android. Moved over to a couple of inexpensive Windows 10 mobile phones, and have not looked back. Lack of apps? Edge, for all other cases, write your own. It's not hard to port apps, or to write your own for remote apis. Never thought I would ever support Windows. Given how many times I've wanted BG taken out for how bad it was. But I must admit, the Windows lifestyle is pretty nice. Share all my devices on one account, and it may not be up to par with Apple Lifestyle, but it's pretty good.

WindowsFon4life 9y ago

The key is ensuring that choice exists. It's easy to jump on the 'Must have Apple!' or the latest Google Nexus. We create the very monster we complain about when it gets TOO popular. This is very much inline with Southpark and Walmart...

galantbutterfly 9y ago

A few years ago I might have thought this impossible. There's a lot of competition on just about all of their services nowadays though. I think the only real thing stopping me from jumping ship is just the convenience of using the same login on all and having them cross compatible.

graphememes 9y ago

You want to know how to truly live without google? Build and run your own systems. That is the only way.

rukenshia 9y ago

I have a G Suite account mainly to have email addresses across different domains using the routing google provides. Is this possible with Fastmail too? If not, is there any other service out there that would provide this?

fasdfdsafas 9y ago

Is this some type of apple advertisement?

turk184 9y ago

Brave browser is built off of Chromium or whatever Google's engine is called. That said, it's very good.

peterwwillis 9y ago

For a Google Maps alternative on mobile, Maps.me works better than anything I've found, including Google Maps. Its offline support is great, it takes up very little space, and you can even load mapped out itineraries via KML (though you might have to pay for that).

xiaoma 9y ago

There's a much cleaner solution. Just live in China and don't use a VPN. Unless you stay in an expat bubble, you likely won't even hear about Google very often.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Jsmth 9y ago

I can live without Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon. But I can't live without Google. That is the reality.

_tulpa 9y ago

There are a crapload of alternatives, switching in a meaningful way is hard: 1) You have to give up convenience (and/or money), nowadays the alternatives have caught up to where this is kinda the only point of difference but you still have to give up something more tangible than your digital privacy and some data you didn't even know existed. 2) You have to convince other people to use whatever messaging app you've switched to. My social bubble pretty much only uses Facebook for that, nobody is changing any time soon and I'm the only one even thinking about it. I'm like a week into my goal of a month without google and ideally owning as much . I have firefox, a non-gmail email account, Syncthing in place of google drive (luckily I don't need the documents part of it), and LineageOS with FDroid and no google play services (and 3-4x the battery life). What I don't have is p2p calendar/contacts sync, which is pretty annoying.

qbaqbaqba 9y ago
I really really miss times when google talk, facebook messenger and a bunch of other lesser known chat apps used xmpp! For p2p syncing you may want to have a look at https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/ - however, you must use apps that allow plain text export - and they are surprisingly hard to find!
- _tulpa 9y ago
  I do use syncthing, but like you say there are hardly any apps which can use it. There's OwnCloud (or *DAV servers) but I think it's a bit silly requiring a server to host data which I'm only going to sync over 5 devices tops.

hobarrera 9y ago

I've found here maps to be far superior to apple maps. Apple Maps are still awful (I once wanted to go about 5 blocks from home, walking, and the app decided that the destination was cross the atlantic. Lots of things alike). DDG works great, and fastmail is fabulous. their UI/UX is years ahead of Gmail's!

DaveWalk 9y ago
I've had nothing but trouble with Here maps (now HERE WeGo), in the eastern USA at least. Its UI/UX is sadly far behind GMaps. I would love an alternative...
- hobarrera 9y ago
  Yeah, each app varies a lot depending on where you live. HERE works fine in Argentina, but Apple maps will constantly send you to other continents (even if clicking on a contact's address that already has a preview of the map only a few miles away). I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened to others in other regions. As for GMaps, I find their UX/UI awful and too complex. They really need to go back to the old-school google that did simple things.

okjdjd 9y ago

Google are too political to be trusted. Sad they couldn't take the high road that they pretend to take.

epynonymous 9y ago

in china, google services have been blocked by the gfw for some time now, after a few months of requiring vpn just to access gmail and websites, i decided to switch to other products, for example, outlook.com for email. in china, life is fine without google, i use baidu maps, youku/iqiyi video, outlook.com for email, i'm already using an iphone so the lack of a play store is irrelevant. i imagine this would be worse for places where there aren't local solutions where google is the best or only solution for things like maps.

bukgoogle 9y ago

This should be warning to all people. Specially when company dump people with different political opinions out. Delete accounts from people who do not fit they template ? Ask yourself, is it "Evil" behaviour? Facebook, Google, Twitter all same CIA orchestrated company model. Please listen CIA whistleblowers, they will tell you what these companies are doing with you and your information. Listen Alex Jones, they have talked this now 10 years !