19 ms·

Bye, Bye, Google

539 points by Bogdanp 8y ago

StreamBright 8y ago
I am doing the same. Chrome was the hardest move but Safari got much better recently and 90% of the websites are working perfectly only few exceptions. Has anybody tried Amazon Workmail yet? I would be interested in the experience.
- the_duke 8y ago
  If the point is to get away from large, data hungry corps than going to Amazon would be a funny choice.
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    At least it's a different one, and at least Amazon typically offers a straightforward exchange of money-for-service/product, as opposed to directly monetizing surveillance.
    - the_duke 8y ago
      Amazon recently launched a Ad Network... https://developer.amazon.com/mobile-ads https://developer.amazon.com/mobile-ads
      - StreamBright 8y ago
        And?
        dieblur 8y ago
        ...and moving from one company to another with the same vision is a silly idea? Pretty obvious...
      - ForHackernews 8y ago
        I'm not saying Amazon is great, but I'd rather there was at least competition instead of one giant company monopolizing every service I use online.
  - giancarlostoro 8y ago
    I agree, I'd rather suggest FastMail or even ProtonMail which has paid offerings. At least they make a profit from you paying for their services (at least in regards to FastMail).
  - StreamBright 8y ago
    Remind me again when Amazon was tracking me on every single website what I am visiting. Amazon's business is not primarily driven by ads and massive data collection. Google is an ad company with some distraction products like Android and Gmail so that they can collect more data and track you better. Amazon's revenue comes from the web store by selling goods and from AWS providing IT cloud services. I am not sure how could you equate Google and Amazon.
    - nik736 8y ago
      I am not really sure if you are serious or not but Amazon would love to have the data Google has access to. They are suggesting you stuff based on everything you do, and suggestions only become more accurate if they have all your data. If you host your email with Amazon WorkMail they have access to all your emails just like Gmail or G Suite does.
    - propogandist 8y ago
      Amazon is in the ad-biz and they're already near the top of the pile [0]. They're in the silent data gathering phase. All the data they have from 1) eCommerce 2) device like Firestick/kindle/alexa 3) apps like Audible 4) retail (wholefoods) and all their other operations can be combined (if not already governed by a single privacy policy) to leapfrog any competitor. As you say, they are not dependent on their ad business, but they are making a lot of money from it. Expanding operations to improve profits is a no-brainer and they can existing distribution networks like AWS to have an extra edge. [0 ]https://digiday.com/marketing/amazon-ad-revenue-2-2b-132-percent/ https://digiday.com/marketing/amazon-ad-revenue-2-2b-132-per...
  - mvanbaak 8y ago
    With AWS services you can encrypt everything with your own keys etc. how cool is that? You also get the option to select a region where to store your data. Your point is moot, sorry
    - dieblur 8y ago
      ...moving to another conglomerate being silly is definitely not a moot point.
- N0RMAN 8y ago
  I'm really happy with Amazon WorkMail. Only their webmail is unusable. Outlook works 10/10 though.
- bachmeier 8y ago
  > Chrome was the hardest move Do you have some examples of websites that don't work with Firefox? I've never considered moving to Chrome, and I've never had a problem (at least not since the death of IE-only sites).
  - StreamBright 8y ago
    I don't know since I am using Safari.
    - wildebaard 8y ago
      Do you have examples of sites that do not work in Safari but do in Chrome, then?
- trumped 8y ago
  90%? That's very low if you ask me
Numberwang 8y ago
Wow, this truly is a movement, right guys? We are all leaving googles ecosystem now, right right? I don't understand why people upvote crap like this.
CohrinDrake 8y ago
I switched to Fastmail from Gmail years ago. In the beginning I missed the tagging when I went back to a folder structure, but you get used to it. Other then that, I'm super happy and can only recommend the service.
- chrismorgan 8y ago
  Labelling is definitely something that I miss from Gmail; I live without it at FastMail, but I and a few others of us in the company would really like it. Fortunately, we’ve established the technical foundation for supporting labelling with JMAP, which can work with both folders and labelling; I have no timeline (I don’t think it’s on a concrete scheduled roadmap yet), but we are planning on supporting labelling as an alternative to folders.
  - londons_explore 8y ago
    Labelling was put into gmail and other google services because directories were too hard to implement and labels were seen as an easier approach. A single table in a database mapping labelName to documentId can implement labels with no extra constraints, and it scales really well. Put an index on labelName and you can easily list all documents with a given label. Put an index on documentId and you can easily list all labels a document has. I don't understand why other providers go to the significant extra effort of trying to implement directories.
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      The largest issue with labels is that it isn't standards compliant. Gmail does some absolutely weird crud at the boundaries of anything not Gmail, such as IMAP or your Takeout export, neither of which understands labels. FastMail's choice to wait until a new standard that supports it is available is a strong choice towards interoperability and standards.
      - londons_explore 8y ago
        Gmail was launched in 2004, and now 15 years later, the standards haven't caught up with something to support a widely used feature...
jonathanstrange 8y ago
Congratulations! Personally, I'm not that radical but I agree with the motives. I don't use gmail or google docs for anything essential and have my own email address for the past 20 years anyway, but getting away from Youtube is harder. There is a lot of interesting content on Youtube, like Numberphile and 3Blue1Brown, and I wouldn't know where to find this elsewhere. I also use Youtube for its intended main purpose, listening to illegally pirated music content. I don't understand how Youtube's management have succeeded in staying outside prison so far, it seems that the laws in this area are applied extremely selectively. Anyway, you can find and listen to almost any record from any time period at any time on Youtube without paying a cent, and I haven't found a replacement for that yet either.
- joering2 8y ago
  Too big to jail. Google spends million lobbying so politicians that usually held local representativs accountable look elsewhere - I mean who would want to cut off their supply of free cash. Google/Youtube also hires tens of thausands of employees, including hefty chunk in California. So those local representatives like govenors or mayors won’t mention raidin Youtube because that may mean many people out of jobs - people that voted them in the office/s in the first place. But please don’t try it at home. Unless you are a Google size or Google connections, you can be sure they will come after you. I mean they still are on Dot Com case and most likely he will be soon extradited to usa.
  - Freestyler_3 8y ago
    I can imagine that in the USA interest google stays on top, because when that spot is open and suddenly a foreign company competes for it it will be a big loss. Maybe even as far as considering it to be of national security interest.
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    Actually. Truly pirated content - whole movies - are removed as soon as they're found (or even before they're uploaded). Music videos - and music used by others than the publishers - get all their ad revenue to the publishers themselves, so for the music publishers it becomes a streaming platform like Spotify (plus there's links to Google Play and such in the description). They won't sue as long as youtube pays them.
flaviocopes 8y ago
> [...] they have access to most of our web browsing via Google Chrome (62.5% market share – although given the amount of broken websites (some explicitly Chrome-only!) I’ve found since switching to Firefox, I believe this number may actually be higher) Anecdotal, but I got in touch with a pretty popular newsletter hosting tool to tell them the charts on Firefox didn't render correctly, only to be told to use Chrome.
- mrmondo 8y ago
  I’ve see the odd app / website like that, if it’s not OSS I give them the finger and move on (while politely suggesting they should offer non-google integrated options), if it is OSS I start by opening a feature / bug request (if there isn’t one already) and submit a MR if I’m able to (which often I’m not as I’m more experienced in the Ops and Sec space than I have development (understatement of the century)).
- deadbunny 8y ago
  Ah, the good old days of "This site was built for IE6".
  - rplnt 8y ago
    Google went this route as soon as Chrome gained non-negligible market share. The "Works better with chrome" native ads or outright blocking other user-agents.
kentiko 8y ago
I don't know how to quit Gmail. Any suggestions?
- bebna 8y ago
  I don't know if it even matters. Emails are like postcards, easily read by anyone who handles them. Just because your mailbox provider isn't google, doesn't mean it doesn't come in contact with google somewhere else. If you really don't want them to be able to collect the content of your mails then you and all who write to you have to encrypt them. And then you would still have the problem of the metadata to be accessible.
- martin_a 8y ago
  Get yourself a domain with some webhosting attached and start switching mail-by-mail. Everytime you receive something "important", log in to that service and change the mail address. Thunderbird with filters does a pretty good job with keeping my inbox clean, although I'm aiming for much less mails anyway.
- robjan 8y ago
  Buy [yourname].com on Gandi. Comes with two 2GB mailboxes or 50GB for something like $1/mo. Forward your GMail to your new address. Then stop entering your old email address anywhere. If you notice yourself typing your old address, migrate the account to the new one. Eventually all the accounts that you care about will be moved over.
  - Leace 8y ago
    I agree with that strategy. I was using @gmail.com since 2007 and just setting up new e-mail on new domain and using it was enough to reduce old @gmail.com traffic to max 1 new e-mail per week.
  - bklaasen 8y ago
    Second the choice to use Gandi.net. 3Gb included with your domain. Their spam filter isn't as good as Fastmail's, which isn't as good as Gmail's. I'm back to training my mail clients' Bayesian spam filters like it's 2006. I also set up an autoresponder on Gmail with the following message: Hi - I'm moving off Google Mail to a privacy-respecting provider. Please update your address book to change my address to <me@mydomain>. Thank you! regards Ben Mailing lists dump that response into /dev/null and my human correspondents quickly and quietly complied.
nailer 8y ago
I second Fastmail. GMail is 6MB now according to devtools, Fastmail is about half a meg. The latency in Gmail using any non Google browser makes it unusable.
- mrmondo 8y ago
  Like the two posts above - I third Fastmail, great company, great engineers and the platform works so damn well!
- flixic 8y ago
  I've recently moved away from Fastmail (been a paying client for 5+ years) to Mailbox.org. The Australian Assistance and Access bill scared me off.
  - ThePhysicist 8y ago
    I like mailbox.org but they also do not operate in a legal void and can be forced to hand over your data to law enforcement. Recently there was a ruling by the federal constitutional court (https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2019/bvg19-007.html https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemit...) which clarified that providers don't have the right to ensure anonymity/untraceability of their users by technical means and are required to implement surveillance measures when asked to by a court. It does not mean that they need to track users indiscriminately though. That said I still prefer having my mail hosted by a "normal" company located in my country of residence, as it would probably be much easier for me to get hold of them legally if they e.g. decide to delete my e-mail account or revoke my access to it.
- thuruv 8y ago
  This is true. Even with HTML stylying.
- chrismorgan 8y ago
  Those numbers don’t sound right at all (we serve more JavaScript than that at FastMail, though not terribly much more, so it can’t be that small), but the ratios are about right; I last looked at Gmail shortly after the latest redesign, and when I measured it in Firefox (which tends to use less than Chrome, not so sure about Safari or Edge these days), Gmail was using 160MB or more (and I think I estimated about half of that to be Hangouts), while FastMail sits steady at 10–12MB, or add on another five or six megabytes if you use calendars too. Note that these sizes depend a little on how you measure; some measurements will increase these numbers by up to a factor of two.
Klonoar 8y ago
I avoid Google when possible, but... can we stop saying shit in these articles that isn't proven true? Google doesn't release your email address if you delete it. Squatting isn't an issue there. When we just start saying things that are proven incorrect it makes the entire discussion look like a bunch of spooks, it's not helpful.
- Bogdanp 8y ago
  Sorry! I should've been more clear. I'm keeping it so there's no chance of them releasing it without my knowledge down the line. Whether their policy right now is to release it or not, I feel safer by not deleting the account.
  - bachmeier 8y ago
    FYI, Fastmail does recycle names if you use a fastmail.com address, so stick to your own domain if using their service.
    - Bogdanp 8y ago
      Yup! I'm aware. I purchased their 3 year plan for 2 accounts using my own domain names.
    - harianus 8y ago
      Fastmail is not a good privacy first solution. People do share it as a great Google Mail alternative, but it's not more privacy friendly [1]. [1] https://www.quora.com/Fastmail-or-Protonmail-Which-one-is-truly-more-secure https://www.quora.com/Fastmail-or-Protonmail-Which-one-is-tr...
      - detaro 8y ago
        "Privacy friendly" is more than a binary "has end-to-end encryption or not" when it comes to e-mail, especially given the issues laid out in the quoted document (which the quora answer then dismisses, arguably not having understood the basis for them or at least not properly establishing why they think it still provides a benefit). In nearly all cases you have to trust your provider in the end, so the more important question is "which organization do I trust the most".
lelima 8y ago
I'll recommend before deleting everything, download all your data, or at least everything that google have stored, you can do it here [1]. If you're in Europe you can apply the Right to be forgotten, implement that can be a real pain (data engineer here), link for the template[2]. [1]: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en [2]: https://gdpr.eu/right-to-erasure-request-form/ https://gdpr.eu/right-to-erasure-request-form/
romanovcode 8y ago
> I’ve debated deleting the @gmail.com e-mail address, but I think it’s wiser to keep it and essentially squat the username lest someone else take it over and cause me trouble down the line. No need. The google does not allow to register email addresses that was already deleted.
- bluehatbrit 8y ago
  For now, and it's likely they won't change it, but if you hold onto the account at least you can be sure it won't go to someone else any time soon.
OJFord 8y ago
> I started by moving all of my websites off of Google App Engine and onto a dedicated box that I had already owned. That was straightforward enough. That surprises me, that it was straightforward, I haven't used GAE for some time, but when I did it was python but with a custom ORM etc. - you couldn't just use anything.
- Bogdanp 8y ago
  It was easy for me because I had been using GAE as a fast/free static website host. None of the sites that I moved were dynamic.
  - tzfld 8y ago
    >dedicated box What kind of dedicated box are you referring to?
    - Bogdanp 8y ago
      One of these: https://www.online.net/en/server-dedicated/pro-2-m-ssd https://www.online.net/en/server-dedicated/pro-2-m-ssd . I had it for a while and wasn't using it for much.
stojano 8y ago
Cool... Congratulation. This is a project for me as well, which started two months ago. Still moving the drive files and re-registering all accounts where I used @gmail.com and my domain email. It's a pain after 16years. Everyday something pops up which I didn't consider. I'm doing it with own server (hetzner) and protonmail.
leemailll 8y ago
For me the hardest part is other accounts associated with an old email address. I’m also moving away from google, but it is tiring to change accounts associated with gmail address to a new one
- r3bl 8y ago
  Third party email services have an import feature and you can set up forwarding of all emails from Gmail to your new address. That alone allows you to make a move today (from my experience, it takes less than an hour), and then you can move your accounts as you go one by one. You'll probably get rid of a bunch of accounts in the process as well.
tfmatt 8y ago
How did you change the two factor authorization codes from Google Authenucator? I think they are needed for crypto sites like Kracken.
- Bogdanp 8y ago
  I never used Google Authenticator. Instead, I use 1Password's 2FA functionality.
  - bubblethink 8y ago
    Not a great idea to combine your first factor and second factor in the same place.
    - ggm 8y ago
      Backup codes and then the protection is against illegal SMS porting which is a social engineering attack hard to otherwise defeat. Your phone is fulfilling a different function and yes it does collapse both factors onto one device but the primary risk wasn't loss of phone, it was weak password and no variant second factor and then porting attacks on SMS.
      - bubblethink 8y ago
        I didn't understand the point your are making. I'm referring to the overall attack surface area of apps like 1password (which I think also have browser extensions ?). TOTP is better than sms, but why put it in the same app as your password ?
        ggm 8y ago
        You have to ask yourself what's the primary threat. Yes,the point in strong sense of a second factor is a fully independent test. But the actual threat it mostly protects against is credentials threats. Not loss of devices or compromise of a keystore. SMS as second factor is way way worse because of the porting problem. Otp inside 1password is a compromise but it protects against the primary threat. If you crypt your disk and use a good passphrase or a long pin and passphrase on a phone you are not that badly exposed.
fxfan 8y ago
Outlook online now has labels (categories) and skype chat (that works) built in online. The spam filter sucks for me though.
ionised 8y ago
I de-Googled completely a few years ago and it's nowhere near as difficult as people think. The initial switching of accounts can be tedious, but it's a one-time job, and there are alternatives all all Google's services out there (some better than Google's offerings). Personally the dreaded 'convenience hit' was temporary for me.
paride5745 8y ago
I almost finished de-google-fy my digital life as well, but I really can't fully leave Youtube, there is simply too much good content there.
- zuron7 8y ago
  If you want to just avoid some of the tracking and logging, you could use an app like NewPipe which will stream only the video from youtube. I wonder if there's anything on the same lines for the PC.
  - paride5745 8y ago
    I watch mostly from the PC (I'm old school I guess), so NewPipe does not work for me :/
  - pinusc 8y ago
    There is! Check out invidio.us
- deadbunny 8y ago
  I'm the same I heavily use the Watch Later feature, slap things in the queue then watch them on my telly alongside mty other media via Kodi with the YouTube plugin. I guess one alternative would be having some kind of place I can chuck video links into and have them downloaded by youtube-dl then a metadata provider for Kodi to get everything nicely tagged.
  - paride5745 8y ago
    Yeah, me too. I put stuff in my watch later list during the day and then watch videos in the evening on my PC.
mjrpes 8y ago
More and more people are using Google docs instead of Ms office. How do you get away from having a Google account to edit a shared doc that another company or consultant had shared with you? Keep a dummy account just for these instances?
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  > More and more people are using Google docs instead of Ms office. Source? I haven't heard much about this space in a long time now, and due to that I get the feeling that it's kinda meandering.
  - mjrpes 8y ago
    Totally anecdotal. Should have been clearer on that. When we are working with a consultant or someone else in a sharing context, Google docs is practically assumed.
    - londons_explore 8y ago
      Google docs is the only semi-good real time-collaborative spreadsheet and word processor. It isn't even very good, or have many features, but still seems to be the best. In my opinion, the area is ripe for disruption, but I suspect nobody wants to spend their life re-reinventing the word processor in javascript.
- mrmondo 8y ago
  Personally I switched to a mix of LibreOffice and Pages/Keynote and have been very happy with them. Google docs offers some awesome feature but I don’t think the privacy and ethics of using Google products justified its use and as of MS Office - I personally think that the software quality is terrible (Yes I know excel is powerful but there’s probably a better product or system for most of a spreadsheets solutions (but not all I’m sure)).
  - kowdermeister 8y ago
    So what do you do if you have to collaborate using a gDoc?
mcbetz 8y ago
Some privacy-conscious Gmail alternatives from Europe (I use them all): - Mailbox.org (DE), from 1€/month, basic custom domain, aliases possible - Posteo.de (DE), from 1€/month - Migadu.com (SUI), from 4€/month, run unlimited custom domains with very flexible settings (mailboxes, aliases, forwarding)
- bubblethink 8y ago
  There's also mailcow that's popular in the self hosting crowd. Anyone use it and can share experience ? I'm a bit lazy to switch email since the other end of the mail is going to be gmail/outlook etc. anyway. So not much net gain.
  - mcbetz 8y ago
    Great addition, from a quick trial I can say the admin interface is easy to use and has all settings you need as a manager of multiple users and domains.
  - rmkrmk 8y ago
    I'm running mailcow for about a year now. So far so good, very little to no maintenance and the update process through the dockerized version is very easy. Using it with a few friends and 10 custom domains with wildcard addresses, no issues with the spam-filter either. I'm only slightly worried if they ever abandon the project I'm out of luck maintaining it by myself. But since it's all based on standard software it's rather easy so switch to another solution I guess.
  - londons_explore 8y ago
    Does it have a decent mobile app with push notifications for important mails? That always seems to be where the other providers fall down...
    - bubblethink 8y ago
      What client you use is up to you. It's just a mail server. Any client that supports IMAP idle should work. I imagine k-9 will do fine.
close04 8y ago
> I’ve made it forward and delete any new mail it gets to @defn.io Deleting doesn't do much, by that time Google already gobbled up all they needed. You'll get the real benefit when the trickle of emails to that address dries up.
abhij89 8y ago
Great. Congratulations. > (62.5% market share – although given the amount of broken websites (some explicitly Chrome-only!) I’ve found since switching to Firefox. There is a reason why this percentage is high. Other browsers suck, firefox for me takes forever to start and don't get me started about how long it takes to load a website. It has been copying chrome with it's last few updates but still way too far. I would happily switch to an alternative to chrome which is equally good or atleast is near it but there aren't any I believe.
- bluehatbrit 8y ago
  What are you running on? I'm not saying you're wrong at all, but I've not seen any startup or load time differences on my macbook or win 10 desktop. If anything firefox is a bit faster and consumes less memory on my macbook.
  - abhij89 8y ago
    windows 7 professional, 8gb ram
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
harianus 8y ago
This is amazing. So many people are starting to de-Google their life. It somehow become a popular subject. Earlier this week Fast Company wrote [1] about it, DuckDuckGo reached 1 billion monthly searches [2] and it's a common thing to see in Hacker News' posts lately. I'm personally very happy with the raise of awareness. I'm hoping it's will reach the regular folks. I realized this a few months ago when I started Simple Analytics [3]. I see that advertising is almost done automatically by the press. When Facebook or Google has bad press, it's great for privacy first tools. [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90300072/its-time-to-ditch-google-analytics https://www.fastcompany.com/90300072/its-time-to-ditch-googl... [2] https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1091709578444750849 https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1091709578444750849 [3] https://simpleanalytics.io/?ref=news.ycombinator.com https://simpleanalytics.io/?ref=news.ycombinator.com
- zavi 8y ago
  > So many people are starting to de-Google their life. Is this actually true or just an anecdote? Last time I checked the market share for core Google products was growing everywhere except in China, especially in Europe where EU has been killing off the remaining competition through GDPR et al. I'm all for seeing newcomers take on the incumbent behemoths, but I also like true information.
  - harianus 8y ago
    I'm seeing this trend (it is a personal statement), and if I look at Googles popularity in Google Trends [1] it's going down in the last 5 years. It's still huge compared to privacy first products like DuckDuckGo [2]. Again, it's my view around me. I didn't have my business yet so it could be that my eyes are more open to privacy first products. [1] https://g.co/trends/363ud https://g.co/trends/363ud [2] https://g.co/trends/a7kcZ https://g.co/trends/a7kcZ
    - nova22033 8y ago
      >I'm seeing this trend (it is a personal statement) So it's anecdata..
Zelmor 8y ago
Switching from one email service to another instead of self-hosting, isn't he just trading a cow for a cattle?
- detaro 8y ago
  IMHO, the key is using your own domain. It's fine to outsource the actual running of a mail server to professionals if you can freely choose who that is, and switch if your opinion changes, self-hosting being one option.
  - trumped 8y ago
    There's a privacy tradeoff in using your own domain for email.
    - detaro 8y ago
      That's true, and I personally keep some "unbranded" e-mail accounts for those cases, even if I can't move those. You also add a potential weak point in that not only your e-mail account, but also your registrar/DNS accounts could be compromised.
bigbugbag 8y ago
De-google-ify Internet: https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/ https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  Even just that image made my day. Probably started as a sketch in someone's notebook, and I'm off to listen to "Bombtrack" now. https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/carte-roman-2014-2016.png https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/carte-roman...
mesaframe 8y ago
I think deGooglying is easy but less important than stop using Facebook services yourself. As in case of Facebook you have to make your family stop using Facebook services before it can really make an effect
raffomania 8y ago
For anyone interested in more alternatives, https://switching.social https://switching.social is a well-written and maintained directory.
- nichos 8y ago
  Good list, but the font on that site makes it almost unusable.
qubex 8y ago
It’s fascinating how regularly the beloved underdogs of the tech world rise to become monopolistic titans, betray (or are perceived as betraying) their original ethos, and are turned on and repudiated by the technorati. I’ve seen it happen three and a half times in my life: the monopolistic phase for Microsoft, the rise and repudiation of Google and Facebook, and something along those lines for Apple (though they’re somewhat different, probably because of very snide perception-management). I’m not saying it’s wrong (I actually think it’s fair), it’s just that the regularity is amusing. When Microsoft was represented by a Locutus-ified Bill Gates on Slashdot two decades ago, “do no evil” open-source champion Google could do no wrong, I was about to write “oh, how far the mighty have fallen!” but upon closer consideration that would be the wrong epithet. It’s precisely because it has not fallen, and because it has become too mighty, that is now viewed with ever-growing suspicion. The vaunted free market that so enamours Silicon Valley and digital utopianists cannot avoid corrupting these companies’ moral cores, apparently. Quite the opposite of the declared ethos. EDIT: The cherished underdogs of today, if they do not succumb, regularly become the maligned monsters of tomorrow. It’s almost as if there’s something built into the system that corrupts them...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ubermonkey 8y ago
  >When Microsoft was represented by a Locutus-ified Bill Gates on Slashdot two decades ago, “do no evil” open-source champion Google could do no wrong, That does NOT match my recollection of Google's early days. Among my immediate network it was pretty common to view Google with a LOT of trepidation given the implied dangers of having so much data. OTOH, nobody I know in real life has felt this way about Apple, largely because you can avoid their power if you decide their approach doesn't work for you.
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    I think there was a lot of naïve belief that with a love of open standards and "Do No Evil" as unofficial mascot, even with all that data they might be reasonable "overlords". I know in some of my circles we didn't start to feel trepidation until they acquired dot-com era mustachioed villains DoubleClick, and certainly the point of no-return for me was G+ killing Reader and XMPP access in Talk.
bad_user 8y ago
I have also de-Google-ified and it wasn't a very focused effort or a life goal. Google's productivity apps win via their integration, but when judged individually the alternatives are better, at least for me. E.g. if you use Google Drive it's hard to not use Gmail because the price of a G Suite Business subscription is really good, but then Google Drive's desktop client is a piece of shit that doesn't work. If you use Gmail it's hard to not use Chrome, because Gmail doesn't play very well with classic IMAP desktop clients and for the web UI the "offine email" feature is Chrome-only, plus Gmail's web interface is now really bloated and slow and by using it in Chrome it sucks the least, because Google doesn't give a crap about other browsers. If you're on G Suite, it's hard to not use Google Docs, it's great for collaborative editing, but compared with Microsoft Office it has performance issues and has missing features that makes it painful to use for serious stuff. There are 3 products that are hard to replace: 1. Google Search can give better results, but usually DuckDuckGo does the job well; I switched to DDG after noticing ads following me on the web based on searches I did 2. Google Maps (and Waze) because they have really good real-time traffic information, otherwise the POIs are better in OpenStreetMaps in my country 3. YouTube which currently has no replacement if you're a consumer I'm not a fanatic btw, if Youtube Premium would be available in my country, I would pay for it.
mattkevan 8y ago
I de-Googled as much as possible last year. It was surprisingly painless as I already used custom domain. Gmail to Soverin, GFonts to self hosted, GA to Clicky, Drive to iCloud/iWork etc. Haven't yet managed to give up Google Maps as I still don't fully trust Apple Maps for driving directions. Although the way GMaps refuses to save locations without search history turned on is seriously annoying, and a dark pattern to boot. All other Google products, like YouTube, I refuse to use while signed in.
acd 8y ago
Bye bye Google Bye bye Facebook Bye bye private surveillance state by advertisement companies selling private information for profit
jbergstroem 8y ago
For those who host their own email (read: use your own domain for incoming), I'd like to remind/raise awareness about using `.io` which had two pretty serious security incidents recently (<3 years). Last incident: https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all-io-domains-with-a-targeted-registration/index.html https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all...
sweetp 8y ago
I de googlified over a year ago, but just realised I was still serving some fonts for my site via google... I'm totally happy to be "mostly" google free now. I still need my hit of youtube... :(
3xblah 8y ago
He mentions a number of "de-Google" measures. Here is one he omitted: What if those running websites stopped treating "Googlebot" as different from any other "bot"? No more preferential treatment for Google. What if websites made it as easy as possible for anyone to download/copy/create a webcache like Google's (or even just a small cache of a particular segment of the web that interests them). Nothing would radically change and democratize the web faster. No need for every web user to use the same search engine, believing it has a superior cache. With preferential treatment removed, every search engine could have the same cache of the web's public information. We could have a content-based web instead of a location-based one. There could be unlimited locations from which to retrieve any of the web's public content. ("CDNs" already hint at the effiencies of this approach.) As another commenter points out, switching to DuckDuckGo is more or less switching to Bing, which one might argue is just a copy of the Google webcache (Microsoft did not build it from scratch).
- khacking 8y ago
  Can somebody explain why the downvotes on this comment?
sureaboutthis 8y ago
> While I don’t believe that folks working at Google are actively trying to do harm This is my issue with all these de-Googling articles. In what way has anyone had harm put on them by anything Google has done? Ignoring technical glitches where one has lost email or docs files and similar, or legal issues the user got themselves into, what harm has Google caused to anyone?
- khacking 8y ago
  Google is still relatively young... and their data mining is young. It is quite short sighted to take the 'what bad has it done so far' argument
- justinclift 8y ago
  > Ignoring technical glitches where one has lost email or docs files and similar, or legal issues the user got themselves into, what harm has Google caused to anyone? Apart from the several times they've been fined in the EU and various other countries for (summarising here) slurping data, lying about deleting it, favoring their own services, and so on? From a very quick online search: * https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/30/google_slurp_ok/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/30/google_slurp_ok/ * https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/technology/eu-google-fine.. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/technology/eu-google-fine.... * https://variety.com/2019/data/global/google-fined-57-million.. https://variety.com/2019/data/global/google-fined-57-million.... Of course, such fines (etc) are subject to potential change over time because lawyers. Then there are the many reports of people demonstrating novel things to them during interviews and/or potential-partnership intro's, later on finding out Google has ripped off the idea(s). Or were you more wanting to ignore that stuff, and instead are asking about Gmail specific things?
  - sureaboutthis 8y ago
    Nothing you listed shows any harm put onto every day users of their services.
    - PavlovsCat 8y ago
WhooisWhoo 8y ago
A list of articles with suggestions for alternatives to all Google products > https://medium.com/s/story/how-i-fully-quit-google-and-you-can-too-4c2f3f85793a https://medium.com/s/story/how-i-fully-quit-google-and-you-c... > https://habrahabr.info/development/programming/2559-alternatives-to-google-products.html https://habrahabr.info/development/programming/2559-alternat... > https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ev3qw7/how-to-quit-apple-microsoft-google-facebook-amazon https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ev3qw7/how-to-qui... > https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/alternatives/ https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/alternatives/ > https://restoreprivacy.com/google-alternatives/ https://restoreprivacy.com/google-alternatives/ > https://nomoregoogle.com/ https://nomoregoogle.com/ Here is a guide how to delete your gmail-account, and comes with possible warnings > https://business.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-delete-your-gmail-account--cms-28247 https://business.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-delete-your-g... Gmail doesn't recycle deleted usernames, ... well,for now > Your Gmail address can’t be used by anyone else in the future > https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/61177 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/61177
ttty 8y ago
Be very careful if you somehow lose your phone number... You might lose your Gmail account completely.
hajderr 8y ago
welcome! Have you tried Protonmail instead?
jumbopapa 8y ago
What are your guys thoughts on using Android? I really do prefer it to iOS, but the urge to de-Google has me seconding guessing my OS choice. I've thought about using LineageOS or something, but from what I understand is many people do not like using it without Google Play services enabled.
- japanoise 8y ago
  I had the same thought. I guess it depends on what one actually uses the phone for. For me at the moment that makes me (somewhat) tied to the play store, since the keyboard app I use and several language learning apps are play-store only (not on f-droid)
  - jumbopapa 8y ago
    What keyboard app are you using? I should probably quit using Gboard, but its been the best I've tried.
- propogandist 8y ago
  Look into microG, an open source play service alternative that's used alongside Lineage
  - zamadatix 8y ago
    Looks like it doesn't really have much implemented and what is implemented is likely buggy or limited https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki/Implementation-Status https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki...
    - propogandist 8y ago
      core stuff should work - the goal is get off Google services, so you get bare minimum functionality.
- anta40 8y ago
  I still use Android, because... pretty much the only viable options for smartphone OSes are Android and iOS. There are plenty dozens of phones running Android: Samsung, LG, Xiaomi, Huawei, etc. And for iOS, well you only have iPhone. I'd like to see more competitors in the game though: Firefox OS, Tizen, Sailfish OS, etc etc. So far, only Librem 5 looks promising. Hopefully it can gain much commercial and dev support.
shahidhanif2009 8y ago
This is wonderful. I expect more and more people jumping on the bandwagon very soon.
agnelvishal 8y ago
"If it's not open source, it's not safe" - Richard Stallman. DuckDuckGo is not open source. DuckDuckGo says they don't track but you never know. Let me give you a trivial example. Bill Gates wrote the program for seat allocation for his school. He made sure girls he liked sat near him. If Bill Gates had to submit the source code, he could been caught. But he didn’t and his practice continues till date. https://www.businessinsider.in/Bill-Gates-and-Paul-Allen-hacked-their-schools-computer-to-help-Gates-meet-girls/articleshow/50856013.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/Bill-Gates-and-Paul-Allen-hac...
agnelvishal 8y ago
I am making an open source alternative to Google news at http://www.condense.press http://www.condense.press
kerng 8y ago
Interesting enough for me, I degoogled around 2005. And just now I have to use their online office tools and mail. Its horrific experience. (1) gmail is ugly and unproductive- not even possible to attach another mail to an email, seriously? (2) Calendar - omg, what is this. Its clunky, invites are unreadable and difficult to parse. Want to send a quick note that you are running late? There is no mail integration with the calendar... (3) Sharing - everyone over shares documents, the UI encourages, sometimes even silently grants powerful permission to others. So people have access to things they shouldn't- this is a real security issue in my opinion. (4) list goes on... I really never thought I would miss Microsoft Office, but GSuites really makes me miss Office.
- hnnh44 8y ago
  1. This is easily done, both on free and gsuite (paid) depending on how you want to implement it. I have multiple Gmail accounts with dozens of emails attached to each. Multiple configuration options. 2. I've never used a calendar outside of Google, and avoid it where possible, but find Google's calendar easy. 3. I think this is a great feature. I use it to collaborate on tons of things, with the understanding that it's not 100% secure, and acting accordingly. Maybe it doesn't suit your particular use case... and that's fine. It doesn't mean it doesn't work great for other uses. ^ all of that considered, I still agree fully with the original article. I've taken a few steps to have working backups and have fallback plans but having an account closed would still be disastrous.
sudo_rm 8y ago
Does anyone have a good alternative to Google Maps? I recently purchased a Nexus 5X and installed LineagosOS with no Google Services. The one thing that I am having trouble with is finding a good navigation application.
zelon88 8y ago
I wrote an article with some other ways to unGoogle [1]. I still intend to revisit Part II but self-hosted email kicked my ass. I'm open to suggestions though. [1] https://www.honestrepair.net/index.php/2018/07/23/un-google-your-life-part-i/ https://www.honestrepair.net/index.php/2018/07/23/un-google-...
numbers 8y ago
This is great to hear! I forget exactly where it was posted but a journalist attempted to do this and she was not as successful as you. I started the process, but it’s going very slowly. Mostly because I didn’t want to leave Gmail. But since you mentioned the 1Password truck, I will try that. Great post!
mark_l_watson 8y ago
I have just done the reverse process. I decided that with integrated Cloud Search (of Gmail, docs, sheets, calendar, Drive, etc.) that help me quickly find research notes, etc. on all devices, that I quit Fastmail (which is an excellent service!) and transitioned to a $10/month Google G Suite account. I find it well worth the money. I still use DuckDuckGo and my once a month visit to Facebook is done with a container to avoid FB tracking. I also don’t use Google Analytics on my web sites (except for my blogger account, no way around that). Using Firefox containers for all separate browsing modes is the advice I give my family and friends. I do still use GCP because I like it better than AWS, but that is just a personal preference (AWS is also a great service).
- acqq 8y ago
  "Starting on April 2, 2019, G Suite Basic Edition will increase by $1 (from $5 to $6 per user/month) and G Suite Business Edition will increase by $2 (from $10 to $12 per user/month), or the local currency equivalent where applicable. These increases will apply globally with local market adjustments for certain regions"
addajones 8y ago
When everyone in the comments mentions Gmail are you referring to @gmail.com switching or GSuite? Two different policies. Just curious why people don’t consider it an option.
glenrivard 8y ago
We just had FB report numbers and we will get Google this evening. FB 30% growth. Google 20%+ last 10 quarters without any end in site. Versus Apple reported declines both top and bottom lines last week. These type of articles must not be typical of "average" people. Google search share is actually increasing and now at 93%. http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share Curious why is there such a disconnect between articles on HN and the actual data?
tombert 8y ago
I've moved all my stuff off of Google infrastructure...except YouTube. I tried using streaming services and the content just isn't there. I really don't know how a company or system will be able to steal the traffic from YouTube...it seems like it's too big.
scaasic 8y ago
Does anyone have recommendations for a good, privacy-focused domain registrar? All of mine are on Google at the moment but I'd like to switch away.
- ValentineC 8y ago
  Cloudflare, maybe?
- mikro2nd 8y ago
  https://njal.la/ https://njal.la/ /me: No affiliation with them.
deevolution 8y ago
I think the pendulum is slowly but surely on it's way back towards decentralization. More and more people are getting increasingly concerned about the explotative behavior and control these mega corps have. An enormous amount of progress still needs to be made in terms of viable alternatives, increased awareness by the general masses, and easier accesability for adoption.
atombender 8y ago
I have migrated away from Google for personal stuff, except for Maps, and I've not found any alternatives for my use cases. I'm fine with Apple Maps or Waze for general navigation. But I also use Google Maps for two things. (1) Keeping track of my saved places. These are split into a bunch of lists: Favourites, coffee shops, restaurants I want to try, general places I want to travel, etc. (Because Google Maps' place system is an afterthought, I also have to split it up by area: So I have "NYC coffee", "Berlin coffee", etc., otherwise the list view becomes impossible to use, ugh.) Apple Maps allows you save "favourites", but that's all. My ideal app would let me easily manage lists, add notes and photos and so on, and share the lists to collaborate with people, and group things like Google Map's little-known "My Maps" feature. (2) Keeping location history. I just want the ability to see where I've been, going back forever, as a kind of automatic diary (where was I on July 4, 2016 again? Oh, that was that party). Google Maps is neat in that it magically figures out what transportation method you used to travel, and uses your saved places as a hint to figure out what location you were in at any given moment. I don't want Google to have this data, of course. There's an iOS app called Life Cycle which is pretty good (for example, it has a view showing all the countries you've been to), but it's not fine-grained enough. Day One, an actual diary app, only remembers your location history for 30 days or so. Any tips?
- robolange 8y ago
  I see people mention Waze frequently as a competitor or alternative to Google Maps. It's useful to remind people that Google also owns Waze, so it's really just another Google product.
- clairity 8y ago
  build a memex (or help andrew build/release it): http://confreaks.tv/videos/rubyconf2018-building-a-memex-with-ruby http://confreaks.tv/videos/rubyconf2018-building-a-memex-wit...
scrumper 8y ago
> explicitly Chrome-only That’s a thing?! Web developers have already forgotten those ridiculous “Made for Internet Explorer” badges and the mess that caused? We won that fight! Wtf!
pradn 8y ago
While I admire the author's choice, individual actions, even when considered as a whole, are not going to fundamentally change things without regulation or other higher force pushing against a company's practices. Which has more of an effect - fuel efficiency standards or people choosing to buy a hybrid?
coryfklein 8y ago
> Why go through all this trouble? I’ve grown increasingly concerned this past year with how much access Google has to our lives. They are the world’s biggest advertising company and they have access to most of our web browsing I come across this sentiment all the time, but serious question: why does this bother people? Does anybody have practical examples of real harm being done that would have been prevented by deleting Google?
dylan-m 8y ago
I was doing my own, much lighter de-Googling, (also last week). I've been really impressed by the amount of control you get with Fastmail. You can add all the domains and aliases you want, including ones that forward to multiple addresses, the filtering rules are very useful, and everything feels much more transparent than Gmail. I haven't moved all my stuff off Google, and I don't expect to, but I find it really interesting how straightforward it is to move PIM stuff to other services. Contacts, calendars and mail really haven't changed much over the years. There is some stuff missing, but it's refreshing being able to add features by choosing the right software (or, heck, fixing it myself) rather than hoping for Google's unlikely mercy. (Granted, I found this notion harder to stomach until they killed Google Inbox, at which point it became clear they're going all in on not bothering).
craftoman 8y ago
Should we start de-Googling our lifes after the monopolistic market share of smartphones? Most privacy violations exist in Android phones and personally there's no way I could give 1000$ for an Apple phone. If there was a trully open source mobile OS that could run on every mobile CPU with every necessary drivers we could actually build cheap phones without any software from Google. Imagine if phones were like desktops and you could grab a tiny motherboard stick some RAM, a CPU, a flash drive and you were ready to go.
deanmoriarty 8y ago
My main problem in getting away from Google is: who will protect my email/phone accounts as well as Google does with GMail and Google Voice? Sadly, those are the main means of authentication for my multiple financial accounts (for most banks phone and emails are the only 2FA methods available). I am not worried about the privacy issues, I'm mostly worried about Google deciding to terminate my account for some reason. I'm also not worried about getting locked out due to losing my 2FA secrets, since I backup them in multiple places. The obvious solution would be: buy my own domain and then connect it to another email provider or G Suite, right? However, now I have a point of failure that is my domain registrar and my DNS provider, and I'm sure that even the ones that offer strong security (e.g. Gandi with U2F) are more prone to getting successfully hacked than @gmail.com, from both a technical point of view (e.g. attackers violating their systems and change the DNS records for my domain) and social engineering point of view (e.g. crafted support requests pretending to be me and begging to reset my 2FA).
Fudgel 8y ago
Is there a service that will let you upload a video and then it cross posts it to your YouTube & PeerTube & Vimeo etc.? - similar to those apps that can cross-post a social media post to your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. I like the idea of moving away from Google, but I also think it might be good (in terms of content) if you could post to many platforms instead of one.
muvek 8y ago
Your site is really performant Bogdanp. Mind me asking if you use a paid host or something like netlify?
auiya 8y ago
I submit that you did not, in fact, "de-Google" your computer usage. Not entirely at least. You may have reduced your usage of a handful of their core services, but until you're running every device you use through a tunnel that completely filters out their entire IP space like this person[1], you haven't truly discovered just how deep they have their tendrils into your every day Internet usage (fonts, analytics, ads, GCP, etc). [1] - https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-up-everything-1830565500 https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-u...

539 points by Bogdanp 8y ago

I am doing the same. Chrome was the hardest move but Safari got much better recently and 90% of the websites are working perfectly only few exceptions. Has anybody tried Amazon Workmail yet? I would be interested in the experience.

the_duke 8y ago
If the point is to get away from large, data hungry corps than going to Amazon would be a funny choice.
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  At least it's a different one, and at least Amazon typically offers a straightforward exchange of money-for-service/product, as opposed to directly monetizing surveillance.
  - the_duke 8y ago
    Amazon recently launched a Ad Network... https://developer.amazon.com/mobile-ads https://developer.amazon.com/mobile-ads
    - StreamBright 8y ago
      And?
      - dieblur 8y ago
        ...and moving from one company to another with the same vision is a silly idea? Pretty obvious...
    - ForHackernews 8y ago
      I'm not saying Amazon is great, but I'd rather there was at least competition instead of one giant company monopolizing every service I use online.
- giancarlostoro 8y ago
  I agree, I'd rather suggest FastMail or even ProtonMail which has paid offerings. At least they make a profit from you paying for their services (at least in regards to FastMail).
- StreamBright 8y ago
  Remind me again when Amazon was tracking me on every single website what I am visiting. Amazon's business is not primarily driven by ads and massive data collection. Google is an ad company with some distraction products like Android and Gmail so that they can collect more data and track you better. Amazon's revenue comes from the web store by selling goods and from AWS providing IT cloud services. I am not sure how could you equate Google and Amazon.
  - nik736 8y ago
    I am not really sure if you are serious or not but Amazon would love to have the data Google has access to. They are suggesting you stuff based on everything you do, and suggestions only become more accurate if they have all your data. If you host your email with Amazon WorkMail they have access to all your emails just like Gmail or G Suite does.
  - propogandist 8y ago
    Amazon is in the ad-biz and they're already near the top of the pile [0]. They're in the silent data gathering phase. All the data they have from 1) eCommerce 2) device like Firestick/kindle/alexa 3) apps like Audible 4) retail (wholefoods) and all their other operations can be combined (if not already governed by a single privacy policy) to leapfrog any competitor. As you say, they are not dependent on their ad business, but they are making a lot of money from it. Expanding operations to improve profits is a no-brainer and they can existing distribution networks like AWS to have an extra edge. [0 ]https://digiday.com/marketing/amazon-ad-revenue-2-2b-132-percent/ https://digiday.com/marketing/amazon-ad-revenue-2-2b-132-per...
- mvanbaak 8y ago
  With AWS services you can encrypt everything with your own keys etc. how cool is that? You also get the option to select a region where to store your data. Your point is moot, sorry
  - dieblur 8y ago
    ...moving to another conglomerate being silly is definitely not a moot point.
N0RMAN 8y ago
I'm really happy with Amazon WorkMail. Only their webmail is unusable. Outlook works 10/10 though.
bachmeier 8y ago
> Chrome was the hardest move Do you have some examples of websites that don't work with Firefox? I've never considered moving to Chrome, and I've never had a problem (at least not since the death of IE-only sites).
- StreamBright 8y ago
  I don't know since I am using Safari.
  - wildebaard 8y ago
    Do you have examples of sites that do not work in Safari but do in Chrome, then?
trumped 8y ago
90%? That's very low if you ask me

Numberwang 8y ago

Wow, this truly is a movement, right guys? We are all leaving googles ecosystem now, right right? I don't understand why people upvote crap like this.

CohrinDrake 8y ago

I switched to Fastmail from Gmail years ago. In the beginning I missed the tagging when I went back to a folder structure, but you get used to it. Other then that, I'm super happy and can only recommend the service.

chrismorgan 8y ago
Labelling is definitely something that I miss from Gmail; I live without it at FastMail, but I and a few others of us in the company would really like it. Fortunately, we’ve established the technical foundation for supporting labelling with JMAP, which can work with both folders and labelling; I have no timeline (I don’t think it’s on a concrete scheduled roadmap yet), but we are planning on supporting labelling as an alternative to folders.
- londons_explore 8y ago
  Labelling was put into gmail and other google services because directories were too hard to implement and labels were seen as an easier approach. A single table in a database mapping labelName to documentId can implement labels with no extra constraints, and it scales really well. Put an index on labelName and you can easily list all documents with a given label. Put an index on documentId and you can easily list all labels a document has. I don't understand why other providers go to the significant extra effort of trying to implement directories.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    The largest issue with labels is that it isn't standards compliant. Gmail does some absolutely weird crud at the boundaries of anything not Gmail, such as IMAP or your Takeout export, neither of which understands labels. FastMail's choice to wait until a new standard that supports it is available is a strong choice towards interoperability and standards.
    - londons_explore 8y ago
      Gmail was launched in 2004, and now 15 years later, the standards haven't caught up with something to support a widely used feature...

jonathanstrange 8y ago

Congratulations! Personally, I'm not that radical but I agree with the motives. I don't use gmail or google docs for anything essential and have my own email address for the past 20 years anyway, but getting away from Youtube is harder. There is a lot of interesting content on Youtube, like Numberphile and 3Blue1Brown, and I wouldn't know where to find this elsewhere. I also use Youtube for its intended main purpose, listening to illegally pirated music content. I don't understand how Youtube's management have succeeded in staying outside prison so far, it seems that the laws in this area are applied extremely selectively. Anyway, you can find and listen to almost any record from any time period at any time on Youtube without paying a cent, and I haven't found a replacement for that yet either.

joering2 8y ago
Too big to jail. Google spends million lobbying so politicians that usually held local representativs accountable look elsewhere - I mean who would want to cut off their supply of free cash. Google/Youtube also hires tens of thausands of employees, including hefty chunk in California. So those local representatives like govenors or mayors won’t mention raidin Youtube because that may mean many people out of jobs - people that voted them in the office/s in the first place. But please don’t try it at home. Unless you are a Google size or Google connections, you can be sure they will come after you. I mean they still are on Dot Com case and most likely he will be soon extradited to usa.
- Freestyler_3 8y ago
  I can imagine that in the USA interest google stays on top, because when that spot is open and suddenly a foreign company competes for it it will be a big loss. Maybe even as far as considering it to be of national security interest.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  Actually. Truly pirated content - whole movies - are removed as soon as they're found (or even before they're uploaded). Music videos - and music used by others than the publishers - get all their ad revenue to the publishers themselves, so for the music publishers it becomes a streaming platform like Spotify (plus there's links to Google Play and such in the description). They won't sue as long as youtube pays them.

flaviocopes 8y ago

> [...] they have access to most of our web browsing via Google Chrome (62.5% market share – although given the amount of broken websites (some explicitly Chrome-only!) I’ve found since switching to Firefox, I believe this number may actually be higher) Anecdotal, but I got in touch with a pretty popular newsletter hosting tool to tell them the charts on Firefox didn't render correctly, only to be told to use Chrome.

mrmondo 8y ago
I’ve see the odd app / website like that, if it’s not OSS I give them the finger and move on (while politely suggesting they should offer non-google integrated options), if it is OSS I start by opening a feature / bug request (if there isn’t one already) and submit a MR if I’m able to (which often I’m not as I’m more experienced in the Ops and Sec space than I have development (understatement of the century)).
deadbunny 8y ago
Ah, the good old days of "This site was built for IE6".
- rplnt 8y ago
  Google went this route as soon as Chrome gained non-negligible market share. The "Works better with chrome" native ads or outright blocking other user-agents.

kentiko 8y ago

I don't know how to quit Gmail. Any suggestions?

bebna 8y ago
I don't know if it even matters. Emails are like postcards, easily read by anyone who handles them. Just because your mailbox provider isn't google, doesn't mean it doesn't come in contact with google somewhere else. If you really don't want them to be able to collect the content of your mails then you and all who write to you have to encrypt them. And then you would still have the problem of the metadata to be accessible.
martin_a 8y ago
Get yourself a domain with some webhosting attached and start switching mail-by-mail. Everytime you receive something "important", log in to that service and change the mail address. Thunderbird with filters does a pretty good job with keeping my inbox clean, although I'm aiming for much less mails anyway.
robjan 8y ago
Buy [yourname].com on Gandi. Comes with two 2GB mailboxes or 50GB for something like $1/mo. Forward your GMail to your new address. Then stop entering your old email address anywhere. If you notice yourself typing your old address, migrate the account to the new one. Eventually all the accounts that you care about will be moved over.
- Leace 8y ago
  I agree with that strategy. I was using @gmail.com since 2007 and just setting up new e-mail on new domain and using it was enough to reduce old @gmail.com traffic to max 1 new e-mail per week.
- bklaasen 8y ago
  Second the choice to use Gandi.net. 3Gb included with your domain. Their spam filter isn't as good as Fastmail's, which isn't as good as Gmail's. I'm back to training my mail clients' Bayesian spam filters like it's 2006. I also set up an autoresponder on Gmail with the following message: Hi - I'm moving off Google Mail to a privacy-respecting provider. Please update your address book to change my address to <me@mydomain>. Thank you! regards Ben Mailing lists dump that response into /dev/null and my human correspondents quickly and quietly complied.

nailer 8y ago

I second Fastmail. GMail is 6MB now according to devtools, Fastmail is about half a meg. The latency in Gmail using any non Google browser makes it unusable.

mrmondo 8y ago
Like the two posts above - I third Fastmail, great company, great engineers and the platform works so damn well!
flixic 8y ago
I've recently moved away from Fastmail (been a paying client for 5+ years) to Mailbox.org. The Australian Assistance and Access bill scared me off.
- ThePhysicist 8y ago
  I like mailbox.org but they also do not operate in a legal void and can be forced to hand over your data to law enforcement. Recently there was a ruling by the federal constitutional court (https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2019/bvg19-007.html https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemit...) which clarified that providers don't have the right to ensure anonymity/untraceability of their users by technical means and are required to implement surveillance measures when asked to by a court. It does not mean that they need to track users indiscriminately though. That said I still prefer having my mail hosted by a "normal" company located in my country of residence, as it would probably be much easier for me to get hold of them legally if they e.g. decide to delete my e-mail account or revoke my access to it.
thuruv 8y ago
This is true. Even with HTML stylying.
chrismorgan 8y ago
Those numbers don’t sound right at all (we serve more JavaScript than that at FastMail, though not terribly much more, so it can’t be that small), but the ratios are about right; I last looked at Gmail shortly after the latest redesign, and when I measured it in Firefox (which tends to use less than Chrome, not so sure about Safari or Edge these days), Gmail was using 160MB or more (and I think I estimated about half of that to be Hangouts), while FastMail sits steady at 10–12MB, or add on another five or six megabytes if you use calendars too. Note that these sizes depend a little on how you measure; some measurements will increase these numbers by up to a factor of two.

Klonoar 8y ago

I avoid Google when possible, but... can we stop saying shit in these articles that isn't proven true? Google doesn't release your email address if you delete it. Squatting isn't an issue there. When we just start saying things that are proven incorrect it makes the entire discussion look like a bunch of spooks, it's not helpful.

Bogdanp 8y ago
Sorry! I should've been more clear. I'm keeping it so there's no chance of them releasing it without my knowledge down the line. Whether their policy right now is to release it or not, I feel safer by not deleting the account.
- bachmeier 8y ago
  FYI, Fastmail does recycle names if you use a fastmail.com address, so stick to your own domain if using their service.
  - Bogdanp 8y ago
    Yup! I'm aware. I purchased their 3 year plan for 2 accounts using my own domain names.
  - harianus 8y ago
    Fastmail is not a good privacy first solution. People do share it as a great Google Mail alternative, but it's not more privacy friendly [1]. [1] https://www.quora.com/Fastmail-or-Protonmail-Which-one-is-truly-more-secure https://www.quora.com/Fastmail-or-Protonmail-Which-one-is-tr...
    - detaro 8y ago
      "Privacy friendly" is more than a binary "has end-to-end encryption or not" when it comes to e-mail, especially given the issues laid out in the quoted document (which the quora answer then dismisses, arguably not having understood the basis for them or at least not properly establishing why they think it still provides a benefit). In nearly all cases you have to trust your provider in the end, so the more important question is "which organization do I trust the most".

lelima 8y ago

I'll recommend before deleting everything, download all your data, or at least everything that google have stored, you can do it here [1]. If you're in Europe you can apply the Right to be forgotten, implement that can be a real pain (data engineer here), link for the template[2]. [1]: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en [2]: https://gdpr.eu/right-to-erasure-request-form/ https://gdpr.eu/right-to-erasure-request-form/

romanovcode 8y ago

> I’ve debated deleting the @gmail.com e-mail address, but I think it’s wiser to keep it and essentially squat the username lest someone else take it over and cause me trouble down the line. No need. The google does not allow to register email addresses that was already deleted.

bluehatbrit 8y ago
For now, and it's likely they won't change it, but if you hold onto the account at least you can be sure it won't go to someone else any time soon.

OJFord 8y ago

> I started by moving all of my websites off of Google App Engine and onto a dedicated box that I had already owned. That was straightforward enough. That surprises me, that it was straightforward, I haven't used GAE for some time, but when I did it was python but with a custom ORM etc. - you couldn't just use anything.

Bogdanp 8y ago
It was easy for me because I had been using GAE as a fast/free static website host. None of the sites that I moved were dynamic.
- tzfld 8y ago
  >dedicated box What kind of dedicated box are you referring to?
  - Bogdanp 8y ago
    One of these: https://www.online.net/en/server-dedicated/pro-2-m-ssd https://www.online.net/en/server-dedicated/pro-2-m-ssd . I had it for a while and wasn't using it for much.

stojano 8y ago

Cool... Congratulation. This is a project for me as well, which started two months ago. Still moving the drive files and re-registering all accounts where I used @gmail.com and my domain email. It's a pain after 16years. Everyday something pops up which I didn't consider. I'm doing it with own server (hetzner) and protonmail.

leemailll 8y ago

For me the hardest part is other accounts associated with an old email address. I’m also moving away from google, but it is tiring to change accounts associated with gmail address to a new one

r3bl 8y ago
Third party email services have an import feature and you can set up forwarding of all emails from Gmail to your new address. That alone allows you to make a move today (from my experience, it takes less than an hour), and then you can move your accounts as you go one by one. You'll probably get rid of a bunch of accounts in the process as well.

tfmatt 8y ago

How did you change the two factor authorization codes from Google Authenucator? I think they are needed for crypto sites like Kracken.

Bogdanp 8y ago
I never used Google Authenticator. Instead, I use 1Password's 2FA functionality.
- bubblethink 8y ago
  Not a great idea to combine your first factor and second factor in the same place.
  - ggm 8y ago
    Backup codes and then the protection is against illegal SMS porting which is a social engineering attack hard to otherwise defeat. Your phone is fulfilling a different function and yes it does collapse both factors onto one device but the primary risk wasn't loss of phone, it was weak password and no variant second factor and then porting attacks on SMS.
    - bubblethink 8y ago
      I didn't understand the point your are making. I'm referring to the overall attack surface area of apps like 1password (which I think also have browser extensions ?). TOTP is better than sms, but why put it in the same app as your password ?
      - ggm 8y ago
        You have to ask yourself what's the primary threat. Yes,the point in strong sense of a second factor is a fully independent test. But the actual threat it mostly protects against is credentials threats. Not loss of devices or compromise of a keystore. SMS as second factor is way way worse because of the porting problem. Otp inside 1password is a compromise but it protects against the primary threat. If you crypt your disk and use a good passphrase or a long pin and passphrase on a phone you are not that badly exposed.

fxfan 8y ago

Outlook online now has labels (categories) and skype chat (that works) built in online. The spam filter sucks for me though.

ionised 8y ago

I de-Googled completely a few years ago and it's nowhere near as difficult as people think. The initial switching of accounts can be tedious, but it's a one-time job, and there are alternatives all all Google's services out there (some better than Google's offerings). Personally the dreaded 'convenience hit' was temporary for me.

paride5745 8y ago

I almost finished de-google-fy my digital life as well, but I really can't fully leave Youtube, there is simply too much good content there.

zuron7 8y ago
If you want to just avoid some of the tracking and logging, you could use an app like NewPipe which will stream only the video from youtube. I wonder if there's anything on the same lines for the PC.
- paride5745 8y ago
  I watch mostly from the PC (I'm old school I guess), so NewPipe does not work for me :/
- pinusc 8y ago
  There is! Check out invidio.us
deadbunny 8y ago
I'm the same I heavily use the Watch Later feature, slap things in the queue then watch them on my telly alongside mty other media via Kodi with the YouTube plugin. I guess one alternative would be having some kind of place I can chuck video links into and have them downloaded by youtube-dl then a metadata provider for Kodi to get everything nicely tagged.
- paride5745 8y ago
  Yeah, me too. I put stuff in my watch later list during the day and then watch videos in the evening on my PC.

mjrpes 8y ago

More and more people are using Google docs instead of Ms office. How do you get away from having a Google account to edit a shared doc that another company or consultant had shared with you? Keep a dummy account just for these instances?

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
> More and more people are using Google docs instead of Ms office. Source? I haven't heard much about this space in a long time now, and due to that I get the feeling that it's kinda meandering.
- mjrpes 8y ago
  Totally anecdotal. Should have been clearer on that. When we are working with a consultant or someone else in a sharing context, Google docs is practically assumed.
  - londons_explore 8y ago
    Google docs is the only semi-good real time-collaborative spreadsheet and word processor. It isn't even very good, or have many features, but still seems to be the best. In my opinion, the area is ripe for disruption, but I suspect nobody wants to spend their life re-reinventing the word processor in javascript.
mrmondo 8y ago
Personally I switched to a mix of LibreOffice and Pages/Keynote and have been very happy with them. Google docs offers some awesome feature but I don’t think the privacy and ethics of using Google products justified its use and as of MS Office - I personally think that the software quality is terrible (Yes I know excel is powerful but there’s probably a better product or system for most of a spreadsheets solutions (but not all I’m sure)).
- kowdermeister 8y ago
  So what do you do if you have to collaborate using a gDoc?

mcbetz 8y ago

Some privacy-conscious Gmail alternatives from Europe (I use them all): - Mailbox.org (DE), from 1€/month, basic custom domain, aliases possible - Posteo.de (DE), from 1€/month - Migadu.com (SUI), from 4€/month, run unlimited custom domains with very flexible settings (mailboxes, aliases, forwarding)

bubblethink 8y ago
There's also mailcow that's popular in the self hosting crowd. Anyone use it and can share experience ? I'm a bit lazy to switch email since the other end of the mail is going to be gmail/outlook etc. anyway. So not much net gain.
- mcbetz 8y ago
  Great addition, from a quick trial I can say the admin interface is easy to use and has all settings you need as a manager of multiple users and domains.
- rmkrmk 8y ago
  I'm running mailcow for about a year now. So far so good, very little to no maintenance and the update process through the dockerized version is very easy. Using it with a few friends and 10 custom domains with wildcard addresses, no issues with the spam-filter either. I'm only slightly worried if they ever abandon the project I'm out of luck maintaining it by myself. But since it's all based on standard software it's rather easy so switch to another solution I guess.
- londons_explore 8y ago
  Does it have a decent mobile app with push notifications for important mails? That always seems to be where the other providers fall down...
  - bubblethink 8y ago
    What client you use is up to you. It's just a mail server. Any client that supports IMAP idle should work. I imagine k-9 will do fine.

close04 8y ago

> I’ve made it forward and delete any new mail it gets to @defn.io Deleting doesn't do much, by that time Google already gobbled up all they needed. You'll get the real benefit when the trickle of emails to that address dries up.

abhij89 8y ago

Great. Congratulations. > (62.5% market share – although given the amount of broken websites (some explicitly Chrome-only!) I’ve found since switching to Firefox. There is a reason why this percentage is high. Other browsers suck, firefox for me takes forever to start and don't get me started about how long it takes to load a website. It has been copying chrome with it's last few updates but still way too far. I would happily switch to an alternative to chrome which is equally good or atleast is near it but there aren't any I believe.

bluehatbrit 8y ago
What are you running on? I'm not saying you're wrong at all, but I've not seen any startup or load time differences on my macbook or win 10 desktop. If anything firefox is a bit faster and consumes less memory on my macbook.
- abhij89 8y ago
  windows 7 professional, 8gb ram
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

harianus 8y ago

This is amazing. So many people are starting to de-Google their life. It somehow become a popular subject. Earlier this week Fast Company wrote [1] about it, DuckDuckGo reached 1 billion monthly searches [2] and it's a common thing to see in Hacker News' posts lately. I'm personally very happy with the raise of awareness. I'm hoping it's will reach the regular folks. I realized this a few months ago when I started Simple Analytics [3]. I see that advertising is almost done automatically by the press. When Facebook or Google has bad press, it's great for privacy first tools. [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90300072/its-time-to-ditch-google-analytics https://www.fastcompany.com/90300072/its-time-to-ditch-googl... [2] https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1091709578444750849 https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1091709578444750849 [3] https://simpleanalytics.io/?ref=news.ycombinator.com https://simpleanalytics.io/?ref=news.ycombinator.com

zavi 8y ago
> So many people are starting to de-Google their life. Is this actually true or just an anecdote? Last time I checked the market share for core Google products was growing everywhere except in China, especially in Europe where EU has been killing off the remaining competition through GDPR et al. I'm all for seeing newcomers take on the incumbent behemoths, but I also like true information.
- harianus 8y ago
  I'm seeing this trend (it is a personal statement), and if I look at Googles popularity in Google Trends [1] it's going down in the last 5 years. It's still huge compared to privacy first products like DuckDuckGo [2]. Again, it's my view around me. I didn't have my business yet so it could be that my eyes are more open to privacy first products. [1] https://g.co/trends/363ud https://g.co/trends/363ud [2] https://g.co/trends/a7kcZ https://g.co/trends/a7kcZ
  - nova22033 8y ago
    >I'm seeing this trend (it is a personal statement) So it's anecdata..

Zelmor 8y ago

Switching from one email service to another instead of self-hosting, isn't he just trading a cow for a cattle?

detaro 8y ago
IMHO, the key is using your own domain. It's fine to outsource the actual running of a mail server to professionals if you can freely choose who that is, and switch if your opinion changes, self-hosting being one option.
- trumped 8y ago
  There's a privacy tradeoff in using your own domain for email.
  - detaro 8y ago
    That's true, and I personally keep some "unbranded" e-mail accounts for those cases, even if I can't move those. You also add a potential weak point in that not only your e-mail account, but also your registrar/DNS accounts could be compromised.

bigbugbag 8y ago

De-google-ify Internet: https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/ https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/

PavlovsCat 8y ago
Even just that image made my day. Probably started as a sketch in someone's notebook, and I'm off to listen to "Bombtrack" now. https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/carte-roman-2014-2016.png https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/carte-roman...

mesaframe 8y ago

I think deGooglying is easy but less important than stop using Facebook services yourself. As in case of Facebook you have to make your family stop using Facebook services before it can really make an effect

raffomania 8y ago

For anyone interested in more alternatives, https://switching.social https://switching.social is a well-written and maintained directory.

nichos 8y ago
Good list, but the font on that site makes it almost unusable.

qubex 8y ago

It’s fascinating how regularly the beloved underdogs of the tech world rise to become monopolistic titans, betray (or are perceived as betraying) their original ethos, and are turned on and repudiated by the technorati. I’ve seen it happen three and a half times in my life: the monopolistic phase for Microsoft, the rise and repudiation of Google and Facebook, and something along those lines for Apple (though they’re somewhat different, probably because of very snide perception-management). I’m not saying it’s wrong (I actually think it’s fair), it’s just that the regularity is amusing. When Microsoft was represented by a Locutus-ified Bill Gates on Slashdot two decades ago, “do no evil” open-source champion Google could do no wrong, I was about to write “oh, how far the mighty have fallen!” but upon closer consideration that would be the wrong epithet. It’s precisely because it has not fallen, and because it has become too mighty, that is now viewed with ever-growing suspicion. The vaunted free market that so enamours Silicon Valley and digital utopianists cannot avoid corrupting these companies’ moral cores, apparently. Quite the opposite of the declared ethos. EDIT: The cherished underdogs of today, if they do not succumb, regularly become the maligned monsters of tomorrow. It’s almost as if there’s something built into the system that corrupts them...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ubermonkey 8y ago
>When Microsoft was represented by a Locutus-ified Bill Gates on Slashdot two decades ago, “do no evil” open-source champion Google could do no wrong, That does NOT match my recollection of Google's early days. Among my immediate network it was pretty common to view Google with a LOT of trepidation given the implied dangers of having so much data. OTOH, nobody I know in real life has felt this way about Apple, largely because you can avoid their power if you decide their approach doesn't work for you.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  I think there was a lot of naïve belief that with a love of open standards and "Do No Evil" as unofficial mascot, even with all that data they might be reasonable "overlords". I know in some of my circles we didn't start to feel trepidation until they acquired dot-com era mustachioed villains DoubleClick, and certainly the point of no-return for me was G+ killing Reader and XMPP access in Talk.

bad_user 8y ago

I have also de-Google-ified and it wasn't a very focused effort or a life goal. Google's productivity apps win via their integration, but when judged individually the alternatives are better, at least for me. E.g. if you use Google Drive it's hard to not use Gmail because the price of a G Suite Business subscription is really good, but then Google Drive's desktop client is a piece of shit that doesn't work. If you use Gmail it's hard to not use Chrome, because Gmail doesn't play very well with classic IMAP desktop clients and for the web UI the "offine email" feature is Chrome-only, plus Gmail's web interface is now really bloated and slow and by using it in Chrome it sucks the least, because Google doesn't give a crap about other browsers. If you're on G Suite, it's hard to not use Google Docs, it's great for collaborative editing, but compared with Microsoft Office it has performance issues and has missing features that makes it painful to use for serious stuff. There are 3 products that are hard to replace: 1. Google Search can give better results, but usually DuckDuckGo does the job well; I switched to DDG after noticing ads following me on the web based on searches I did 2. Google Maps (and Waze) because they have really good real-time traffic information, otherwise the POIs are better in OpenStreetMaps in my country 3. YouTube which currently has no replacement if you're a consumer I'm not a fanatic btw, if Youtube Premium would be available in my country, I would pay for it.

mattkevan 8y ago

I de-Googled as much as possible last year. It was surprisingly painless as I already used custom domain. Gmail to Soverin, GFonts to self hosted, GA to Clicky, Drive to iCloud/iWork etc. Haven't yet managed to give up Google Maps as I still don't fully trust Apple Maps for driving directions. Although the way GMaps refuses to save locations without search history turned on is seriously annoying, and a dark pattern to boot. All other Google products, like YouTube, I refuse to use while signed in.

acd 8y ago

Bye bye Google Bye bye Facebook Bye bye private surveillance state by advertisement companies selling private information for profit

jbergstroem 8y ago

For those who host their own email (read: use your own domain for incoming), I'd like to remind/raise awareness about using `.io` which had two pretty serious security incidents recently (<3 years). Last incident: https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all-io-domains-with-a-targeted-registration/index.html https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all...

sweetp 8y ago

I de googlified over a year ago, but just realised I was still serving some fonts for my site via google... I'm totally happy to be "mostly" google free now. I still need my hit of youtube... :(

3xblah 8y ago

He mentions a number of "de-Google" measures. Here is one he omitted: What if those running websites stopped treating "Googlebot" as different from any other "bot"? No more preferential treatment for Google. What if websites made it as easy as possible for anyone to download/copy/create a webcache like Google's (or even just a small cache of a particular segment of the web that interests them). Nothing would radically change and democratize the web faster. No need for every web user to use the same search engine, believing it has a superior cache. With preferential treatment removed, every search engine could have the same cache of the web's public information. We could have a content-based web instead of a location-based one. There could be unlimited locations from which to retrieve any of the web's public content. ("CDNs" already hint at the effiencies of this approach.) As another commenter points out, switching to DuckDuckGo is more or less switching to Bing, which one might argue is just a copy of the Google webcache (Microsoft did not build it from scratch).

khacking 8y ago
Can somebody explain why the downvotes on this comment?

sureaboutthis 8y ago

> While I don’t believe that folks working at Google are actively trying to do harm This is my issue with all these de-Googling articles. In what way has anyone had harm put on them by anything Google has done? Ignoring technical glitches where one has lost email or docs files and similar, or legal issues the user got themselves into, what harm has Google caused to anyone?

khacking 8y ago
Google is still relatively young... and their data mining is young. It is quite short sighted to take the 'what bad has it done so far' argument
justinclift 8y ago
> Ignoring technical glitches where one has lost email or docs files and similar, or legal issues the user got themselves into, what harm has Google caused to anyone? Apart from the several times they've been fined in the EU and various other countries for (summarising here) slurping data, lying about deleting it, favoring their own services, and so on? From a very quick online search: * https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/30/google_slurp_ok/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/30/google_slurp_ok/ * https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/technology/eu-google-fine.. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/technology/eu-google-fine.... * https://variety.com/2019/data/global/google-fined-57-million.. https://variety.com/2019/data/global/google-fined-57-million.... Of course, such fines (etc) are subject to potential change over time because lawyers. Then there are the many reports of people demonstrating novel things to them during interviews and/or potential-partnership intro's, later on finding out Google has ripped off the idea(s). Or were you more wanting to ignore that stuff, and instead are asking about Gmail specific things?
- sureaboutthis 8y ago
  Nothing you listed shows any harm put onto every day users of their services.
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago

WhooisWhoo 8y ago

A list of articles with suggestions for alternatives to all Google products > https://medium.com/s/story/how-i-fully-quit-google-and-you-can-too-4c2f3f85793a https://medium.com/s/story/how-i-fully-quit-google-and-you-c... > https://habrahabr.info/development/programming/2559-alternatives-to-google-products.html https://habrahabr.info/development/programming/2559-alternat... > https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ev3qw7/how-to-quit-apple-microsoft-google-facebook-amazon https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ev3qw7/how-to-qui... > https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/alternatives/ https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/alternatives/ > https://restoreprivacy.com/google-alternatives/ https://restoreprivacy.com/google-alternatives/ > https://nomoregoogle.com/ https://nomoregoogle.com/ Here is a guide how to delete your gmail-account, and comes with possible warnings > https://business.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-delete-your-gmail-account--cms-28247 https://business.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-delete-your-g... Gmail doesn't recycle deleted usernames, ... well,for now > Your Gmail address can’t be used by anyone else in the future > https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/61177 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/61177

ttty 8y ago

Be very careful if you somehow lose your phone number... You might lose your Gmail account completely.

hajderr 8y ago

welcome! Have you tried Protonmail instead?

jumbopapa 8y ago

What are your guys thoughts on using Android? I really do prefer it to iOS, but the urge to de-Google has me seconding guessing my OS choice. I've thought about using LineageOS or something, but from what I understand is many people do not like using it without Google Play services enabled.

japanoise 8y ago
I had the same thought. I guess it depends on what one actually uses the phone for. For me at the moment that makes me (somewhat) tied to the play store, since the keyboard app I use and several language learning apps are play-store only (not on f-droid)
- jumbopapa 8y ago
  What keyboard app are you using? I should probably quit using Gboard, but its been the best I've tried.
propogandist 8y ago
Look into microG, an open source play service alternative that's used alongside Lineage
- zamadatix 8y ago
  Looks like it doesn't really have much implemented and what is implemented is likely buggy or limited https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki/Implementation-Status https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki...
  - propogandist 8y ago
    core stuff should work - the goal is get off Google services, so you get bare minimum functionality.
anta40 8y ago
I still use Android, because... pretty much the only viable options for smartphone OSes are Android and iOS. There are plenty dozens of phones running Android: Samsung, LG, Xiaomi, Huawei, etc. And for iOS, well you only have iPhone. I'd like to see more competitors in the game though: Firefox OS, Tizen, Sailfish OS, etc etc. So far, only Librem 5 looks promising. Hopefully it can gain much commercial and dev support.

shahidhanif2009 8y ago

This is wonderful. I expect more and more people jumping on the bandwagon very soon.

agnelvishal 8y ago

"If it's not open source, it's not safe" - Richard Stallman. DuckDuckGo is not open source. DuckDuckGo says they don't track but you never know. Let me give you a trivial example. Bill Gates wrote the program for seat allocation for his school. He made sure girls he liked sat near him. If Bill Gates had to submit the source code, he could been caught. But he didn’t and his practice continues till date. https://www.businessinsider.in/Bill-Gates-and-Paul-Allen-hacked-their-schools-computer-to-help-Gates-meet-girls/articleshow/50856013.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/Bill-Gates-and-Paul-Allen-hac...

agnelvishal 8y ago

I am making an open source alternative to Google news at http://www.condense.press http://www.condense.press

kerng 8y ago

Interesting enough for me, I degoogled around 2005. And just now I have to use their online office tools and mail. Its horrific experience. (1) gmail is ugly and unproductive- not even possible to attach another mail to an email, seriously? (2) Calendar - omg, what is this. Its clunky, invites are unreadable and difficult to parse. Want to send a quick note that you are running late? There is no mail integration with the calendar... (3) Sharing - everyone over shares documents, the UI encourages, sometimes even silently grants powerful permission to others. So people have access to things they shouldn't- this is a real security issue in my opinion. (4) list goes on... I really never thought I would miss Microsoft Office, but GSuites really makes me miss Office.

hnnh44 8y ago
1. This is easily done, both on free and gsuite (paid) depending on how you want to implement it. I have multiple Gmail accounts with dozens of emails attached to each. Multiple configuration options. 2. I've never used a calendar outside of Google, and avoid it where possible, but find Google's calendar easy. 3. I think this is a great feature. I use it to collaborate on tons of things, with the understanding that it's not 100% secure, and acting accordingly. Maybe it doesn't suit your particular use case... and that's fine. It doesn't mean it doesn't work great for other uses. ^ all of that considered, I still agree fully with the original article. I've taken a few steps to have working backups and have fallback plans but having an account closed would still be disastrous.

sudo_rm 8y ago

Does anyone have a good alternative to Google Maps? I recently purchased a Nexus 5X and installed LineagosOS with no Google Services. The one thing that I am having trouble with is finding a good navigation application.

zelon88 8y ago

I wrote an article with some other ways to unGoogle [1]. I still intend to revisit Part II but self-hosted email kicked my ass. I'm open to suggestions though. [1] https://www.honestrepair.net/index.php/2018/07/23/un-google-your-life-part-i/ https://www.honestrepair.net/index.php/2018/07/23/un-google-...

numbers 8y ago

This is great to hear! I forget exactly where it was posted but a journalist attempted to do this and she was not as successful as you. I started the process, but it’s going very slowly. Mostly because I didn’t want to leave Gmail. But since you mentioned the 1Password truck, I will try that. Great post!

mark_l_watson 8y ago

I have just done the reverse process. I decided that with integrated Cloud Search (of Gmail, docs, sheets, calendar, Drive, etc.) that help me quickly find research notes, etc. on all devices, that I quit Fastmail (which is an excellent service!) and transitioned to a $10/month Google G Suite account. I find it well worth the money. I still use DuckDuckGo and my once a month visit to Facebook is done with a container to avoid FB tracking. I also don’t use Google Analytics on my web sites (except for my blogger account, no way around that). Using Firefox containers for all separate browsing modes is the advice I give my family and friends. I do still use GCP because I like it better than AWS, but that is just a personal preference (AWS is also a great service).

acqq 8y ago
"Starting on April 2, 2019, G Suite Basic Edition will increase by $1 (from $5 to $6 per user/month) and G Suite Business Edition will increase by $2 (from $10 to $12 per user/month), or the local currency equivalent where applicable. These increases will apply globally with local market adjustments for certain regions"

addajones 8y ago

When everyone in the comments mentions Gmail are you referring to @gmail.com switching or GSuite? Two different policies. Just curious why people don’t consider it an option.

glenrivard 8y ago

We just had FB report numbers and we will get Google this evening. FB 30% growth. Google 20%+ last 10 quarters without any end in site. Versus Apple reported declines both top and bottom lines last week. These type of articles must not be typical of "average" people. Google search share is actually increasing and now at 93%. http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share Curious why is there such a disconnect between articles on HN and the actual data?

tombert 8y ago

I've moved all my stuff off of Google infrastructure...except YouTube. I tried using streaming services and the content just isn't there. I really don't know how a company or system will be able to steal the traffic from YouTube...it seems like it's too big.

scaasic 8y ago

Does anyone have recommendations for a good, privacy-focused domain registrar? All of mine are on Google at the moment but I'd like to switch away.

ValentineC 8y ago
Cloudflare, maybe?
mikro2nd 8y ago
https://njal.la/ https://njal.la/ /me: No affiliation with them.

deevolution 8y ago

I think the pendulum is slowly but surely on it's way back towards decentralization. More and more people are getting increasingly concerned about the explotative behavior and control these mega corps have. An enormous amount of progress still needs to be made in terms of viable alternatives, increased awareness by the general masses, and easier accesability for adoption.

atombender 8y ago

I have migrated away from Google for personal stuff, except for Maps, and I've not found any alternatives for my use cases. I'm fine with Apple Maps or Waze for general navigation. But I also use Google Maps for two things. (1) Keeping track of my saved places. These are split into a bunch of lists: Favourites, coffee shops, restaurants I want to try, general places I want to travel, etc. (Because Google Maps' place system is an afterthought, I also have to split it up by area: So I have "NYC coffee", "Berlin coffee", etc., otherwise the list view becomes impossible to use, ugh.) Apple Maps allows you save "favourites", but that's all. My ideal app would let me easily manage lists, add notes and photos and so on, and share the lists to collaborate with people, and group things like Google Map's little-known "My Maps" feature. (2) Keeping location history. I just want the ability to see where I've been, going back forever, as a kind of automatic diary (where was I on July 4, 2016 again? Oh, that was that party). Google Maps is neat in that it magically figures out what transportation method you used to travel, and uses your saved places as a hint to figure out what location you were in at any given moment. I don't want Google to have this data, of course. There's an iOS app called Life Cycle which is pretty good (for example, it has a view showing all the countries you've been to), but it's not fine-grained enough. Day One, an actual diary app, only remembers your location history for 30 days or so. Any tips?

robolange 8y ago
I see people mention Waze frequently as a competitor or alternative to Google Maps. It's useful to remind people that Google also owns Waze, so it's really just another Google product.
clairity 8y ago
build a memex (or help andrew build/release it): http://confreaks.tv/videos/rubyconf2018-building-a-memex-with-ruby http://confreaks.tv/videos/rubyconf2018-building-a-memex-wit...

scrumper 8y ago

> explicitly Chrome-only That’s a thing?! Web developers have already forgotten those ridiculous “Made for Internet Explorer” badges and the mess that caused? We won that fight! Wtf!

pradn 8y ago

While I admire the author's choice, individual actions, even when considered as a whole, are not going to fundamentally change things without regulation or other higher force pushing against a company's practices. Which has more of an effect - fuel efficiency standards or people choosing to buy a hybrid?

coryfklein 8y ago

> Why go through all this trouble? I’ve grown increasingly concerned this past year with how much access Google has to our lives. They are the world’s biggest advertising company and they have access to most of our web browsing I come across this sentiment all the time, but serious question: why does this bother people? Does anybody have practical examples of real harm being done that would have been prevented by deleting Google?

dylan-m 8y ago

I was doing my own, much lighter de-Googling, (also last week). I've been really impressed by the amount of control you get with Fastmail. You can add all the domains and aliases you want, including ones that forward to multiple addresses, the filtering rules are very useful, and everything feels much more transparent than Gmail. I haven't moved all my stuff off Google, and I don't expect to, but I find it really interesting how straightforward it is to move PIM stuff to other services. Contacts, calendars and mail really haven't changed much over the years. There is some stuff missing, but it's refreshing being able to add features by choosing the right software (or, heck, fixing it myself) rather than hoping for Google's unlikely mercy. (Granted, I found this notion harder to stomach until they killed Google Inbox, at which point it became clear they're going all in on not bothering).

craftoman 8y ago

Should we start de-Googling our lifes after the monopolistic market share of smartphones? Most privacy violations exist in Android phones and personally there's no way I could give 1000$ for an Apple phone. If there was a trully open source mobile OS that could run on every mobile CPU with every necessary drivers we could actually build cheap phones without any software from Google. Imagine if phones were like desktops and you could grab a tiny motherboard stick some RAM, a CPU, a flash drive and you were ready to go.

deanmoriarty 8y ago

My main problem in getting away from Google is: who will protect my email/phone accounts as well as Google does with GMail and Google Voice? Sadly, those are the main means of authentication for my multiple financial accounts (for most banks phone and emails are the only 2FA methods available). I am not worried about the privacy issues, I'm mostly worried about Google deciding to terminate my account for some reason. I'm also not worried about getting locked out due to losing my 2FA secrets, since I backup them in multiple places. The obvious solution would be: buy my own domain and then connect it to another email provider or G Suite, right? However, now I have a point of failure that is my domain registrar and my DNS provider, and I'm sure that even the ones that offer strong security (e.g. Gandi with U2F) are more prone to getting successfully hacked than @gmail.com, from both a technical point of view (e.g. attackers violating their systems and change the DNS records for my domain) and social engineering point of view (e.g. crafted support requests pretending to be me and begging to reset my 2FA).

Fudgel 8y ago

Is there a service that will let you upload a video and then it cross posts it to your YouTube & PeerTube & Vimeo etc.? - similar to those apps that can cross-post a social media post to your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. I like the idea of moving away from Google, but I also think it might be good (in terms of content) if you could post to many platforms instead of one.

muvek 8y ago

Your site is really performant Bogdanp. Mind me asking if you use a paid host or something like netlify?

auiya 8y ago

I submit that you did not, in fact, "de-Google" your computer usage. Not entirely at least. You may have reduced your usage of a handful of their core services, but until you're running every device you use through a tunnel that completely filters out their entire IP space like this person[1], you haven't truly discovered just how deep they have their tendrils into your every day Internet usage (fonts, analytics, ads, GCP, etc). [1] - https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-up-everything-1830565500 https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-u...