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So I wanted to drop Chrome a while ago, and looked at Chromium. Apparently using the "no sync" version you can no longer even log into Gmail (or any other Googl

So I wanted to drop Chrome a while ago, and looked at Chromium. Apparently using the "no sync" version you can no longer even log into Gmail (or any other Google service) on the web. That was definitely the last straw for me losing trust in Google, but there's just no good alternative. I'm not sure where to go from here because it seems pointless to even use Chromium if I can't remove Google from it and still be able to login to Gmail.

inferiorhuman 8y ago
Maybe you should ditch Gmail instead?
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Maybe you should ditch Gmail instead? I'm thinking about doing that. The single reason I started with GMail was because at the time, it had the best spam filter in the industry. But that was years ago. Has everyone else caught up? Is there another option with equally good spam filtering?
  - 0xmohit 8y ago
    It appears that GMail addresses attract more spam. IMO, options like ProtonMail are much better. A service that isn't free but doesn't exploit users in order to make $$ ought to be a better option.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - inferiorhuman 8y ago
    I used to self-host because I could run really strict spam filtering. Unfortunately Sonic dropped their plans to offer static IPs and reverse DNS with their fiber products so I'm stuck with using their servers as a smarthost at least. Can't say I enjoy it (especially with their all-day outage this week), but it does give me a chance to at least easily run aggressive spamassasin filters.
    - zmw 8y ago
      I have a self-hosted domain too, with docker-mailserver, but only for less important email. For important communications I really worry about ending up on a spam list somewhere and landing directly in people's spam box, plus there are potential downtime concerns, so I stick to GSuite for that.
      - inferiorhuman 8y ago
        I've had a couple occasions where things have disappeared into the void. This was, of course, after moving away from a static IP (thanks Sonic). On the inbound side, I've had repeated delivery problems with Sonic blackholing mail from some financial institutions. Otherwise I've had pretty good luck.
  - zeta0134 8y ago
    I use both ProtonMail and FastMail for different purposes, and am considering switching my FastMail account to the main one. It may not be as well integrated, but that's kindof a boon. GMail's new user interface is _really_ clunky. (I know I can switch to classic mode, but I'd rather just switch to something else entirely.)
- aphextron 8y ago
  Well the problem I'm trying to solve is "how to use gmail on chromium without syncing to google" not "how to use email that isn't gmail". I like gmail web mail a lot, and don't have any desire to switch. It seems absurd that my web browser would be incompatible with that.
  - stefano 8y ago
    Firefox, Edge, Safari, pretty much all non-chromium browsers are compatible with gmail.
    - matwood 8y ago
      For now. For example, Hangout video chat worked in Safari (much better than Chrome even). The new Meet video chat does not work in Safari.
  - cvandebroek 8y ago
    Would you mind to explain how using gmail is fine but having to log in into chrome is not? I obviously get the idea of privacy. But using gmail somewhat contradicts it.
    - lbriner 8y ago
      No it doesn't! When you use GMail, you understand that Google have some potential sight of your emails and you accept that because that's how it works. What you DIDN'T sign up for is Chrome, which can see every site you have every visited, sending all of that info to Google as well to perhaps start targetting some different ads at you. I'm sure that would work well if one of your housemates had visited a dodgy site, which then picks up some suspect ads when you are doing online shopping with your girlfriend.
      - pixelrevision 8y ago
        Maybe switch to Firefox and use their accounts toggle feature. It lets you separate out sessions for particular sites. It’s not “chromium” but it works well for what you are asking for as far as I can tell.
- tammer 8y ago
  I would love to do this. However the warnings signs have blared into a real crisis: Google Docs has a stranglehold on “work”, in the broadest sense of the term, the way Microsoft Office once did. Until documents are decoupled from corporate lock-in on a mass scale, I’m personally stuck & likely many others are.
najodleglejszy 8y ago
well, you could always try that thing called Firefox. I can log into Gmail just fine.
lucb1e 8y ago
If you're really set on a Chrome-like browser, there's ungoogled chromium. Otherwise, I guess Firefox is the only truly free choice at this point, and even that includes DRM to be able to cope with sites like Netflix. Edit: actually, there should be more browsers that I don't know about because I haven't really looked around anymore since choosing Firefox a decade ago. Is anything as well-supported (in terms of proper rendering and security, as well as being FOSS / privacy-conscious) that I should look at other than ungoogled chromium?
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Brave and Vivaldi are both based on Chromium and have packaged, non-Google distributions. I'm posting this comment on Brave, having switched over last week for most of my personal browsing. Generally like it a lot; there are a couple warts (it won't open S3 URLs from the AWS web interface, for example), but it does most of what I need in a browser.
  - zamadatix 8y ago
    Vivaldi still has Google features like search and safebrowsing which report everything you type into the URL bar and every site you visit to Google by default. Simply "not packaged by Google" doesn't guarantee non-Google.
    - jonathansampson 8y ago
      You can interact with SafeSearch in one of two ways: by sending a URL hash to Google, or by downloading the list of URLs and performing your checks locally. As a replacement for Chrome on your PC, Brave takes the second approach, and performs the evaluation locally (pulling down a fresh list every so often for up-to-date comparisons). You'll have to check with Vivaldi on which approach they take. Brave has all of the phone-home-to-Google logic removed. If you ever spot anything at all that gives you concern, do feel free to let us know. Sampson (Brave Developer Relations)
      - 8y ago
nerdwaller 8y ago
> there’s just no good alternative Are you referring to the chromium space options, or the browser market as a whole? I’ve never left Firefox and still find it to be a pleasant browser, one with which I’ve never felt really left out barring a few annoying bugs from time to time that are typically short lived.
- aphextron 8y ago
  I love Firefox in theory, it's just that in practice I've never been able to stick with it. One thing or another always leaves me running back to Chrome. It's possible that it's just my own bias and familiarity, but I'm not principled enough to endure an inferior experience in any way. Plus working in chrome dev tools all day long, you really miss it when you want to pop something open and look under the hood real quick, and I don't think Firefox is quite up to par there.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    Firefox's web tools are slightly different, but very comparable. Firefox container tabs are game changing.
    - zmw 8y ago
      Container tabs just makes up for lack of easy profile switching (at least on macOS, not sure about Windows or Linux), which was in Chrome for years. Even after it came, I gave it a try and found it pretty cumbersome. (Before I get you-can-do-this-and-that replies, I know Profile Manager exists, and that's an ugly hack: macOS users should not need to run multiple copies of the same app bundle.)
      - emayljames 8y ago
        Profile switching takes more steps to use than container tabs: 0.
        zmw 8y ago
sergiotapia 8y ago
Go to Brave - it's fantastic.
- aphextron 8y ago
  Thanks for for reminding me to try that out again. It felt a bit rough at launch but I've been using it all day now and I think I'll switch for good.
md_ 8y ago
I’m confused. Are you really claiming you can’t log into gmail in non google browsers? And this comment was upvoted? Sorry. I call BS.
giancarlostoro 8y ago
For me it was early on during the time where Chrome was new. First they didn't support plugins so adblockers were not working so I'd see ads and pop ups everywhere. Next they did support adblockers but they sucked due to API limitations. I realized then that they were primarily an ad company, I know the adblockers have somewhat improved for Chrome but I went back to Firefox and never bothered again. I only use Chrome / Chromium for web development.

inferiorhuman 8y ago

Maybe you should ditch Gmail instead?

reaperducer 8y ago
Maybe you should ditch Gmail instead? I'm thinking about doing that. The single reason I started with GMail was because at the time, it had the best spam filter in the industry. But that was years ago. Has everyone else caught up? Is there another option with equally good spam filtering?
- 0xmohit 8y ago
  It appears that GMail addresses attract more spam. IMO, options like ProtonMail are much better. A service that isn't free but doesn't exploit users in order to make $$ ought to be a better option.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- inferiorhuman 8y ago
  I used to self-host because I could run really strict spam filtering. Unfortunately Sonic dropped their plans to offer static IPs and reverse DNS with their fiber products so I'm stuck with using their servers as a smarthost at least. Can't say I enjoy it (especially with their all-day outage this week), but it does give me a chance to at least easily run aggressive spamassasin filters.
  - zmw 8y ago
    I have a self-hosted domain too, with docker-mailserver, but only for less important email. For important communications I really worry about ending up on a spam list somewhere and landing directly in people's spam box, plus there are potential downtime concerns, so I stick to GSuite for that.
    - inferiorhuman 8y ago
      I've had a couple occasions where things have disappeared into the void. This was, of course, after moving away from a static IP (thanks Sonic). On the inbound side, I've had repeated delivery problems with Sonic blackholing mail from some financial institutions. Otherwise I've had pretty good luck.
- zeta0134 8y ago
  I use both ProtonMail and FastMail for different purposes, and am considering switching my FastMail account to the main one. It may not be as well integrated, but that's kindof a boon. GMail's new user interface is _really_ clunky. (I know I can switch to classic mode, but I'd rather just switch to something else entirely.)
aphextron 8y ago
Well the problem I'm trying to solve is "how to use gmail on chromium without syncing to google" not "how to use email that isn't gmail". I like gmail web mail a lot, and don't have any desire to switch. It seems absurd that my web browser would be incompatible with that.
- stefano 8y ago
  Firefox, Edge, Safari, pretty much all non-chromium browsers are compatible with gmail.
  - matwood 8y ago
    For now. For example, Hangout video chat worked in Safari (much better than Chrome even). The new Meet video chat does not work in Safari.
- cvandebroek 8y ago
  Would you mind to explain how using gmail is fine but having to log in into chrome is not? I obviously get the idea of privacy. But using gmail somewhat contradicts it.
  - lbriner 8y ago
    No it doesn't! When you use GMail, you understand that Google have some potential sight of your emails and you accept that because that's how it works. What you DIDN'T sign up for is Chrome, which can see every site you have every visited, sending all of that info to Google as well to perhaps start targetting some different ads at you. I'm sure that would work well if one of your housemates had visited a dodgy site, which then picks up some suspect ads when you are doing online shopping with your girlfriend.
    - pixelrevision 8y ago
      Maybe switch to Firefox and use their accounts toggle feature. It lets you separate out sessions for particular sites. It’s not “chromium” but it works well for what you are asking for as far as I can tell.
tammer 8y ago
I would love to do this. However the warnings signs have blared into a real crisis: Google Docs has a stranglehold on “work”, in the broadest sense of the term, the way Microsoft Office once did. Until documents are decoupled from corporate lock-in on a mass scale, I’m personally stuck & likely many others are.

najodleglejszy 8y ago

well, you could always try that thing called Firefox. I can log into Gmail just fine.

lucb1e 8y ago

If you're really set on a Chrome-like browser, there's ungoogled chromium. Otherwise, I guess Firefox is the only truly free choice at this point, and even that includes DRM to be able to cope with sites like Netflix. Edit: actually, there should be more browsers that I don't know about because I haven't really looked around anymore since choosing Firefox a decade ago. Is anything as well-supported (in terms of proper rendering and security, as well as being FOSS / privacy-conscious) that I should look at other than ungoogled chromium?

nostrademons 8y ago
Brave and Vivaldi are both based on Chromium and have packaged, non-Google distributions. I'm posting this comment on Brave, having switched over last week for most of my personal browsing. Generally like it a lot; there are a couple warts (it won't open S3 URLs from the AWS web interface, for example), but it does most of what I need in a browser.
- zamadatix 8y ago
  Vivaldi still has Google features like search and safebrowsing which report everything you type into the URL bar and every site you visit to Google by default. Simply "not packaged by Google" doesn't guarantee non-Google.
  - jonathansampson 8y ago
    You can interact with SafeSearch in one of two ways: by sending a URL hash to Google, or by downloading the list of URLs and performing your checks locally. As a replacement for Chrome on your PC, Brave takes the second approach, and performs the evaluation locally (pulling down a fresh list every so often for up-to-date comparisons). You'll have to check with Vivaldi on which approach they take. Brave has all of the phone-home-to-Google logic removed. If you ever spot anything at all that gives you concern, do feel free to let us know. Sampson (Brave Developer Relations)
    - 8y ago

nerdwaller 8y ago

> there’s just no good alternative Are you referring to the chromium space options, or the browser market as a whole? I’ve never left Firefox and still find it to be a pleasant browser, one with which I’ve never felt really left out barring a few annoying bugs from time to time that are typically short lived.

aphextron 8y ago
I love Firefox in theory, it's just that in practice I've never been able to stick with it. One thing or another always leaves me running back to Chrome. It's possible that it's just my own bias and familiarity, but I'm not principled enough to endure an inferior experience in any way. Plus working in chrome dev tools all day long, you really miss it when you want to pop something open and look under the hood real quick, and I don't think Firefox is quite up to par there.
- kbenson 8y ago
  Firefox's web tools are slightly different, but very comparable. Firefox container tabs are game changing.
  - zmw 8y ago
    Container tabs just makes up for lack of easy profile switching (at least on macOS, not sure about Windows or Linux), which was in Chrome for years. Even after it came, I gave it a try and found it pretty cumbersome. (Before I get you-can-do-this-and-that replies, I know Profile Manager exists, and that's an ugly hack: macOS users should not need to run multiple copies of the same app bundle.)
    - emayljames 8y ago
      Profile switching takes more steps to use than container tabs: 0.
      - zmw 8y ago

sergiotapia 8y ago

Go to Brave - it's fantastic.

aphextron 8y ago
Thanks for for reminding me to try that out again. It felt a bit rough at launch but I've been using it all day now and I think I'll switch for good.

md_ 8y ago

I’m confused. Are you really claiming you can’t log into gmail in non google browsers? And this comment was upvoted? Sorry. I call BS.

giancarlostoro 8y ago

For me it was early on during the time where Chrome was new. First they didn't support plugins so adblockers were not working so I'd see ads and pop ups everywhere. Next they did support adblockers but they sucked due to API limitations. I realized then that they were primarily an ad company, I know the adblockers have somewhat improved for Chrome but I went back to Firefox and never bothered again. I only use Chrome / Chromium for web development.