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How to live without Google (2017)
- nottorp 8y agoGmail is the main problem. I use it as a backup email and as an ID for registering about everywhere. Thing is, what is a reliable email alternative that is certain to be around long term, that I can use to register? Google can afford to keep gmail up for my foreseeable life time, what other email services (free or paid) can I trust with that? Edit: I do have my own domain, but I don't consider that as reliable as something maintained by a large organization.
- auslander 8y ago> what is a reliable email alternative that is certain to be around long term iCloud email
- nottorp 8y agoUh... I'm not sure I trust Apple's online services. Technically, I mean. How many times did they change their email solution in the past 10 years? I think it was called mobile.me at one point? And before anyone goes into Apple fanboy mode, I'm typing this on a macbook pro, my phone is an iPhone, and my desktop is a Hackintosh ;)
- auslander 8y agoI have a hack too :) iCloud will stay. And I'll bet all old adresses are still working.
- sgjohnson 8y agoOr Outlook
- breakingcups 8y agoWhat are you most concerned with? Keeping the email address active yourself for new mail or keeping your mail archive? For the first point, you are already set. You have your own custom domain and can point that to any provider you find trustworthy, including Gmail, Fastmail, ProtonMail, Outlook, etc. For the second point, nobody is as responsible for keeping proper backups as you are. Every provider could go under or have a glitch, as unlikely as it is with the bigger providers. Every provider allows you to take your data out, be it through reular syncing or downloading periodic snapshots.
- nottorp 8y agoHmm no, I know how to handle my own mail. My concern is that gmail is a good backup solution that always works, including when I'm in the middle of nowhere with no time or inclination to fix my custom domain. What I'm most concerned with is the email address as identity. It's the key to all my online accounts via the reset password form. Jumping from provider to provider with my own custom domain works the same, but with more hassle. I'd rather move (my identity) to another online service, as long as I'm reasonably certain that my email addy will exist for 20+ years.
- auslander 8y ago> the key to all my online accounts Most services support primary email/login change
- nottorp 8y ago> Most services support primary email/login change They do, but would you like to do that every couple years if, say fastmail or any other service goes out of bussiness? Do you even remember all of them, so you can change the email in time if your provider gives you advance warning that they're shutting down? Long term, it's complicated.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoYou buy your own domain, and change the MX record if you move. Yes, you have to plan ahead unfortunately until someone comes along and offers an "email address for life" you can forward anywhere.
- csunbird 8y agoIt does not matter if you do not use GMail, google/microsoft/<insert any other popular email provider here> has all your emails anyways, since everybody sends you emails from those domains.
- erinnh 8y agoQuite the difference between <insertproviderhere> having all your emails and <insertallprovidershere> having all your emails if they were to pitch together.
- sureaboutthis 8y agoAnd if they didn't get it from Google, they'd get it from someone else. Just like they did for centuries before email came around.
- nukeop 8y agoHuge difference between Google being aware that an email alias <name>@<domain> exists and it having access to the contents of all your emails including purchases, subscriptions, login patterns, GPS data, connections to other emails, etc.
- phil9987 8y agoFor a couple of month I have set duckduckgo as my standard search engine, but I often do not get satisfactory results. Is this because I am used to the Google results or does duckduckgo indeed not prioritize in a good way?
- ipidov 8y agoYou can't have personalized, targeted results without being tracked.
- nukeop 8y agoPersonalized and targeted results aren't good results.
- ipidov 8y agoDidn't say they are, but I have a feeling that this is exactly what the original commenter is missing
- erinnh 8y agoI have the same issue where DDG sometimes just doesn't give relevant search results. That's when I use Google. But I also use temporary containers and no google accounts, so I'm not getting personalized results and they're still better.
- rovr138 8y agoThe fact someone doesn’t have an account does not mean they aren’t being tracked or that google (or any platform) can’t create a profile for you. Not saying it’s effective with the containers you’re using though.
- fluffycat 8y agoI beg to differ, they are actually essential in my case.
- privacywall 8y agoAlot of people can't live without Google because the search results are very unique. In that case, we suggest downloading PrivacyWall. It's free and it will block Google tracking along with 3000+ ad trackers. We built it so anyone on Windows can use the web and protect your privacy. PrivacyWall does not have any conflicts of interest. Alot of users are not aware that DuckDuckGo makes money from ads, so they do track you. http://www.privacywall.org http://www.privacywall.org
- accatyyc 8y agoAds doesn’t mean they have to track you. I assume (and it seems like) DDG targets their ads based on your search query and not personal information, and afaik they are very open about this.
- tagawa 8y agoThat's right - please see my comment above for a bit more detail.
- TotempaaltJ 8y ago> Alot of users are not aware that DuckDuckGo makes money from ads, so they do track you. This is a lie, from what I can tell? DDG's ads aren't exactly inconspicuous, and they claim plenty of times that they're targeted exclusively on current search query keywords. So no history or tracking involved.
- tagawa 8y agoCorrect, our advertising is context-based, not based on a profile or search history. In other words, if you search for "car" you might see a car-related ad, but car-related ads won't then follow you around. Incidentally it's also possible to disable ads in our settings: https://duckduckgo.com/settings https://duckduckgo.com/settings (Disclaimer: DuckDuckGo staff)
- rbinv 8y agoYou should stop advertising your product in all of your comments.
- antoniobg 8y agoI've tried with DuckDuckGo for 2/3 months, and the images search, something that I use quite a lot, was pretty unsatisfactory.
- jayalpha 8y agoMore like a piece of advertisement for DDG. Avoiding google is tricky.Not impressed.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoSoes anyone know if the Vivaldi browser supports multiple users / instances the way Chrome does?
- more-entropy 8y agoYeah, we have a plenty alternative services, but only two dominated mobile OS (and three desktop). Isn't you are looking for a problem in a wrong direction?
- sureaboutthis 8y agoI am glad so many people are pointing to these articles lately. It gives them something to do and keeps them off the streets.
- envolt 8y agoFor Maps - Well, I don't trust Apple either. Waze was good, but now Google has it.
- chimen 8y agoStill early for a release (work in progress/use at your own risk) but I'm having real fun working on dnsadblock.com. Within days it made me switch from Chrome to Firefox. As soon as I changed my DNS server Chrome tried to contact it's mothership roughly 146,000 times in just 24 hours. Being able to see the actual numbers is something scary.
- propogandist 8y agoHave you tried the ungoogled Chromium build? Not sure why anyone would use Chrome. Separately, if you have android you should install Netguard, the no root firewall, to see how often most apps are phoning home + block them from capturing unnecessary data.
- fooblat 8y agoI find startpage.com to give a lot better results than DDG. I never seem to hear about others using it. Is it just not well known?
- akskos 8y agoI use it. But comparing it to DDG is a bit unfair IMHO since startpage is basically a proxy to google search.
- lizhaohui 8y agoYou will find out the answer if you live in China
- vinni2 8y agoFor me where I live (Northern Europe) apple maps and open street maps or any other maps for that matter suck big time. Google maps is the only app which can search for places in a meanfingul way. I search for an ATM nearby but I get results which are 400kms away in apple maps.
- BasicObject 8y agoHow are Bing maps in your area?
- GuB-42 8y agoDid you try HERE WeGo? Originally made by Nokia. I tried it on a trip to Helsinki in 2015 and IIRC, it worked better than Google Maps.
- rlv-dan 8y agoOne thing I like about them is the offline mode which is great when traveling abroad. However their app is less that enjoyable to use.
- vinni2 8y agoYes I have. It is a bit better but unfortunately it is most of the times outdated. It doesn’t keep up with changes in the road network. I also bike a lot and finding bike routes is especially hard in HERE WeGo or other maps. Google maps is the only reliable one.
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoI'm making micro steps forth and back. Ditched Chrome, using Brave. Tried DuckDuckGo but - very subjective - it has results that don't work for me, so I'm mostly back to Google. Removed Google Maps, mostly use Maps.me now. Remove Google mobile Mails app, now using Nine.
- realradicalwash 8y agoand DeepL instead of translate, at least if your language is supported. the translations are really good.
- spurgu 8y agoYeah generally a lot better than Google Translate.
- gurusblogger1 8y agois it even possible?
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoThere's a continuum. For some people, it's probably virtually impossible. For some people, there's one or two services that don't yet have reasonable replacements. And some people seem to have completely removed it from their lives and are doing fine. Google has so many services that everybody's use will be different.
- clydethefrog 8y agoThis personal account showed it's at least very difficult. Many website use code supported by Google. https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-up-everything-1830565500#_ga=2.109788613.1339556351.1549309045-1494158073.1547676718 https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-u...
- 0xferruccio 8y agoNot using Google is just the tip of the iceberg! There’s so much information you leave out there just by browsing the internet ( https://everysiteknows.ferrucc.io https://everysiteknows.ferrucc.io ) or clicking on things. I also don’t see any alternatives to Google Analytics, Google Adsense, Google Fonts and Google DNS. All these services are something most users don’t opt-in for and are the kind of side businesses that feed the data that makes google the best search engine out there
- sgjohnson 8y agoGoogle DNS? Easy. Cloudflare DNS. 1.1.1.1 1.0.0.1
- faissaloo 8y agoI'm surprised they neglected to mention invidio.us as an alternative way to access YouTube, it's a step above using DuckDuckGo for YouTube imo.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ilovecaching 8y agoI think it’s funny that people try to cut FAANG out of their lives and still use Linux, which is primarily contributed to by FAANG and other corporations like Intel and IBM. Also DuckDuckGo is so slow. I mean how are they supposed to compete with Google’s edge network? Then they have innacurate results, the first result is usually a deceiving looking ad, and you have to take them at their word that they aren’t also selling your data.
- AnonymousPlanet 8y agoAnd use what? Windows 10? That's like using FB as your operating system.
- richsu-ca 8y agoAbout Google Drive, the article says: "This also means your files are never stored on a single server in the cloud" The assumption that all the files in Google Drive is in a single server is false. You can sync Google Drive on one or more computers and have local backup copies too. That is also not mentioned.
- GlenTheMachine 8y agoDoes anyone have a good alternative to Google Voice?
- Marsymars 8y agoDepends a bit on which specific workflows you're using Google Voice to enable, but as someone not living in America (so don't have access to Google Voice), I can give you a succinct answer to that: No. If I want to be able to answer phone calls on my PC, my only options are either an SIP softphone, or a Mac/iPhone using Continuity.
- GlenTheMachine 8y agoI primarily want two things: 1) one phone number that calls all my phones, and 2) voicemail that sends me a text and/or email with a transcription of the message
- Marsymars 8y agoYeah, there's no general solution... basically you need all the hassle that comes with configuring and using a hosted SIP provider for those features you want.
- lemcoe9 8y agoYou can find a SIP provider (Flowroute, SIP.US, SIPSTATION.com, Twilio, OnSIP, and many more) that will allow you to either use a desk phone or a software-based phone with a telephone number of your choosing. It's never free, and you can expect to pay $0.009 - $0.02 per-minute for all calls. Disclaimer: I work for one of the companies that I listed in parentheses.
- auiya 8y agoSwapping out a select few of Google's products isn't the same as "living without Google". Until you've blacklisted their entire netblock range from your usage[1], you don't realize just how many tendrils they have in every aspect of your Internet experience. And good luck getting around the other tech giants' oligopoly of the web as well[2]. The Internet isn't a fun "wild-west frontier" anymore, it's now completely commercialized into a handful of super large silos, with mostly no way around them. [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... [2] https://gizmodo.com/life-without-the-tech-giants-1830258056 https://gizmodo.com/life-without-the-tech-giants-1830258056
- rick22 8y agoHas anyone used tor regularly for a long time for news consumption and as a social interaction with like minded people ?
- deathwarmedover 8y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15246716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15246716