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> For the most part, I'm now Google free. I don't despise Google as a company but I believe that their core business model is incompatible with privacy. I like

> For the most part, I'm now Google free. I don't despise Google as a company but I believe that their core business model is incompatible with privacy. I like that closing line. It's something I can relate with. I appreciate Google's products, use a Pixel 3 which is a sin I probably shouldn't admit on HN, and I'd love to use their whole ecosystem - Google suite, the Chromebook, Google Home etc - for all my tech needs. The issue is, Google in my eyes is a data analytics company first and foremost. No matter how much I like the design and functionality of their products, if I want to maintain even a small semblance of privacy I can't in good faith support them. Only problem I have now is that their phone is too damn good to ditch...

kiran-rao 7y ago
Have you found any inconveniences in day to day life? Google provides so much information in everyday life (weather, restaurant reviews, calendar, who was the president in 1936, etc) that I would be significantly slower living my life.
- everdrive 7y ago
  The weather problem has been a surprising one. It seems that most weather websites are really terrible. All I ever want to know is the hourly temperature, and hourly precipitation. Google does this easily with a query against "weather [zipcode]". Other services do technically provide this information, but it always seems to be obfuscated, or otherwise hard to obtain. [edit] Here is a very amateurish graphic depicting the difference. https://imgur.com/SofeKKN https://imgur.com/SofeKKN
  - tsomctl 7y ago
    Check out www.weather.gov. There should be a link for the 3 day history on the forecast page of your location.
  - NikkiA 7y ago
    ddg'ing wundergound [zipcode] seems to be about perfect for me: https://i.imgur.com/NfXUOf4.png https://i.imgur.com/NfXUOf4.png
  - keawade 7y ago
    I'm not sure what the problem is as DDG does that as well. I just tried searching "weather [zipcode]" on DDG and the first result is a card with current weather info for that zipcode from DarkSky. The feature is very similar to Google's weather card.
  - PenguinCoder 7y ago
    https://www.weather.gov/ https://www.weather.gov/ and enter your zipcode into the search box on the left. Book mark the resulting page. Simple, no frills, accurate information.
  - asdff 7y ago
    You can bookmark that weather.gov page and once you start glancing at it regularly you know what to look for quickly. For instance the Google precip graph and the green graph towards the bottom are the exact same, google's is just cuter. You can also turn on and off graph elements and bookmark that version of the page if you didn't care about sky cover or whatever. For mobile I use darksky. Gives you hourly precip chance as well as a detailed look at the hour ahead (specifically, the intensity of the rain not whether or not it will happen), but importantly it will push a notification if it's going to rain in x minutes. There are a couple other handy features, and since it's paid it's free of ads. Pretty nice if you bike or walk regularly for commuting. It's scary accurate in my experience; if it says it's going to rain in 8 minutes and stop 13 minutes later, that's exactly what's going to happen.
    - everdrive 7y ago
      I'll check out darksky. And, I concede all your points about bookmarking after turning off all the configs. I just wish the pretty, simple, and easy to retrieve version were more common.
- Aromasin 7y ago
  Not anything significant to be honest. There are alternative applications and hardware for almost everything nowadays. Convincing people that we need devices all running in the same ecosystem was one of the lasting legacy's of Steve Jobs that I realised wasn't really true in reality. For searches I occasionally might have to check Google for a niche search term, but Duck.com returns the right thing for 95% of my queries. In terms of hardware, a Pixel phone, Fire tablet, Surface Book laptop, and Windows desktop fulfil all my needs, with only important docs synched with Dropbox and the rest stored on a couple of flash drives I have on me 24/7. For home automation I made my own using a Raspberry Pi and a bunch of ESP8266's, which does basically everything that big brand alternatives do and more (I can water my plants from my bed!) For software I use Outlook for emails and calendar, OpenOffice for word processing, Prezi for presentations, and admittedly mainly Google Sheets for that kind of data handling, as it's good for collaborating which is the only thing I ever use it for. Trip Advisor is great for reviews. BBC weather is all I use for checking that. Nothing is slower I've found. I just had to experiment with what worked for me, and get the right 'flow' of using them, which I suppose took a few weeks to iron out. The great thing is that doing it this way means I can adapt to my needs, not be forced into using a suite that might not cater to them. It also means most importantly that, for the most part, I don't get snooped on!
- addicted 7y ago
  Honestly, I wonder if that slight delay in finding out who was President in 1963 would have a material negative impact on my life. I suspect not. At the same time, I have a feeling that slowness may have an actual measurable positive impact on my life. A lot of what I do now is frankly pointless and jt may help me focus on more useful things.
- godshatter 7y ago
  If Google shut down operations tomorrow, do you really think you would be unable to find information on the weather, restaurant reviews, use a calendar, or find out who the president was in 1936? Other than the calendar, it's not like they actually keep this information anywhere. Just links to it. I'm guessing that three years or so later you'd be hard-pressed to remember why you thought Google was the only choice for this.
- jjulius 7y ago
  >... I would be significantly slower living my life. Is that a bad thing?
harry8 7y ago
phone is basically a choice between google (any android phone unless you jailbreak and de-goog it, which is a PITA) and apple. Who is less offensive surveilling you? Can you really predict that will still be true in 5 years?
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Dumb phone is a valid choice. And it works just fine, there is absolutely nothing that a smart phone offers that I can not do without, and not having a continuous distraction makes me a lot more productive than I would be otherwise. It's bad enough with the web and 'always on' internet, to have that in my pocket would completely kill my productivity.
  - janlaureys 7y ago
    I appreciate the sentiment but my phone now does so many things that I would really miss if I'd have to get rid of it. GPS and navigation, Mobile Banking, IM because nobody sends text messages anymore, Calendar and quick web searches and a decent camera I'll always carry.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      - GPS and navigation I look at a map before I leave when on foot and in the car I have a navigator. - Mobile Banking Nothing that can't wait until I'm behind a desk. - IM because nobody sends text messages anymore Nobody sends me IM messages because I never used it in the first place. - Calendar Could be useful, once every month or so, but on the whole it is easy enough to do this stuff once I'm back behind my desk, worst case the other side has access and they can send me an invite. This really only comes up when someone on the phone wants to book some kind of appointment when I'm on the road, and in that case I'm actually really happy I am not going to be tempted to look at my phone, it is annoying enough that people expect your phone to be answered at all hours. - quick web searches I do a ton of those, but not when I'm out of the office or meeting people, I've had a case come up once or twice but usually I just make a mental note to check up on something. - a decent camera I'll always carry That's a good one, another one which would work for me would be to have something good to read wherever I go. But those two can be solved quite easily: my dumb phone has a reasonably good camera and there's always a book in my bag.
aclsid 7y ago
Buy Chinese brands like Oppo, Meizu or Xiaomi (mix 3 is awesome). If you get the one with the Chinese rom Google has been removed to an extent that is not possible by end users or are least without switching ROMs which is generally a PIA. The issue then becomes installing something like ApkPure as a replacement for Google play unless you enjoy your Firefox in Chinese. TouchPal is a terrific keyboard as well if you manage to get rid of their ads.
jsgo 7y ago
I'm pretty much in the Apple/Microsoft camp, but I've went with Amazon on the Echo side of things because their offering is more reliable (and more devices support it). What I am getting at is that a lot of us probably make a concession here or there but as long as you're happy/comfortable with it, go for it. The last vestige of Google I voluntarily find myself with is Gmail, but I have a strong feeling once Apple comes with these burner email forwarder things, I'm probably going to switch to Proton or something similar.
m463 7y ago
google is an identification service.

kiran-rao 7y ago

Have you found any inconveniences in day to day life? Google provides so much information in everyday life (weather, restaurant reviews, calendar, who was the president in 1936, etc) that I would be significantly slower living my life.

everdrive 7y ago
The weather problem has been a surprising one. It seems that most weather websites are really terrible. All I ever want to know is the hourly temperature, and hourly precipitation. Google does this easily with a query against "weather [zipcode]". Other services do technically provide this information, but it always seems to be obfuscated, or otherwise hard to obtain. [edit] Here is a very amateurish graphic depicting the difference. https://imgur.com/SofeKKN https://imgur.com/SofeKKN
- tsomctl 7y ago
  Check out www.weather.gov. There should be a link for the 3 day history on the forecast page of your location.
- NikkiA 7y ago
  ddg'ing wundergound [zipcode] seems to be about perfect for me: https://i.imgur.com/NfXUOf4.png https://i.imgur.com/NfXUOf4.png
- keawade 7y ago
  I'm not sure what the problem is as DDG does that as well. I just tried searching "weather [zipcode]" on DDG and the first result is a card with current weather info for that zipcode from DarkSky. The feature is very similar to Google's weather card.
- PenguinCoder 7y ago
  https://www.weather.gov/ https://www.weather.gov/ and enter your zipcode into the search box on the left. Book mark the resulting page. Simple, no frills, accurate information.
- asdff 7y ago
  You can bookmark that weather.gov page and once you start glancing at it regularly you know what to look for quickly. For instance the Google precip graph and the green graph towards the bottom are the exact same, google's is just cuter. You can also turn on and off graph elements and bookmark that version of the page if you didn't care about sky cover or whatever. For mobile I use darksky. Gives you hourly precip chance as well as a detailed look at the hour ahead (specifically, the intensity of the rain not whether or not it will happen), but importantly it will push a notification if it's going to rain in x minutes. There are a couple other handy features, and since it's paid it's free of ads. Pretty nice if you bike or walk regularly for commuting. It's scary accurate in my experience; if it says it's going to rain in 8 minutes and stop 13 minutes later, that's exactly what's going to happen.
  - everdrive 7y ago
    I'll check out darksky. And, I concede all your points about bookmarking after turning off all the configs. I just wish the pretty, simple, and easy to retrieve version were more common.
Aromasin 7y ago
Not anything significant to be honest. There are alternative applications and hardware for almost everything nowadays. Convincing people that we need devices all running in the same ecosystem was one of the lasting legacy's of Steve Jobs that I realised wasn't really true in reality. For searches I occasionally might have to check Google for a niche search term, but Duck.com returns the right thing for 95% of my queries. In terms of hardware, a Pixel phone, Fire tablet, Surface Book laptop, and Windows desktop fulfil all my needs, with only important docs synched with Dropbox and the rest stored on a couple of flash drives I have on me 24/7. For home automation I made my own using a Raspberry Pi and a bunch of ESP8266's, which does basically everything that big brand alternatives do and more (I can water my plants from my bed!) For software I use Outlook for emails and calendar, OpenOffice for word processing, Prezi for presentations, and admittedly mainly Google Sheets for that kind of data handling, as it's good for collaborating which is the only thing I ever use it for. Trip Advisor is great for reviews. BBC weather is all I use for checking that. Nothing is slower I've found. I just had to experiment with what worked for me, and get the right 'flow' of using them, which I suppose took a few weeks to iron out. The great thing is that doing it this way means I can adapt to my needs, not be forced into using a suite that might not cater to them. It also means most importantly that, for the most part, I don't get snooped on!
addicted 7y ago
Honestly, I wonder if that slight delay in finding out who was President in 1963 would have a material negative impact on my life. I suspect not. At the same time, I have a feeling that slowness may have an actual measurable positive impact on my life. A lot of what I do now is frankly pointless and jt may help me focus on more useful things.
godshatter 7y ago
If Google shut down operations tomorrow, do you really think you would be unable to find information on the weather, restaurant reviews, use a calendar, or find out who the president was in 1936? Other than the calendar, it's not like they actually keep this information anywhere. Just links to it. I'm guessing that three years or so later you'd be hard-pressed to remember why you thought Google was the only choice for this.
jjulius 7y ago
>... I would be significantly slower living my life. Is that a bad thing?

harry8 7y ago

phone is basically a choice between google (any android phone unless you jailbreak and de-goog it, which is a PITA) and apple. Who is less offensive surveilling you? Can you really predict that will still be true in 5 years?

jacquesm 7y ago
Dumb phone is a valid choice. And it works just fine, there is absolutely nothing that a smart phone offers that I can not do without, and not having a continuous distraction makes me a lot more productive than I would be otherwise. It's bad enough with the web and 'always on' internet, to have that in my pocket would completely kill my productivity.
- janlaureys 7y ago
  I appreciate the sentiment but my phone now does so many things that I would really miss if I'd have to get rid of it. GPS and navigation, Mobile Banking, IM because nobody sends text messages anymore, Calendar and quick web searches and a decent camera I'll always carry.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    - GPS and navigation I look at a map before I leave when on foot and in the car I have a navigator. - Mobile Banking Nothing that can't wait until I'm behind a desk. - IM because nobody sends text messages anymore Nobody sends me IM messages because I never used it in the first place. - Calendar Could be useful, once every month or so, but on the whole it is easy enough to do this stuff once I'm back behind my desk, worst case the other side has access and they can send me an invite. This really only comes up when someone on the phone wants to book some kind of appointment when I'm on the road, and in that case I'm actually really happy I am not going to be tempted to look at my phone, it is annoying enough that people expect your phone to be answered at all hours. - quick web searches I do a ton of those, but not when I'm out of the office or meeting people, I've had a case come up once or twice but usually I just make a mental note to check up on something. - a decent camera I'll always carry That's a good one, another one which would work for me would be to have something good to read wherever I go. But those two can be solved quite easily: my dumb phone has a reasonably good camera and there's always a book in my bag.

aclsid 7y ago

Buy Chinese brands like Oppo, Meizu or Xiaomi (mix 3 is awesome). If you get the one with the Chinese rom Google has been removed to an extent that is not possible by end users or are least without switching ROMs which is generally a PIA. The issue then becomes installing something like ApkPure as a replacement for Google play unless you enjoy your Firefox in Chinese. TouchPal is a terrific keyboard as well if you manage to get rid of their ads.

jsgo 7y ago

I'm pretty much in the Apple/Microsoft camp, but I've went with Amazon on the Echo side of things because their offering is more reliable (and more devices support it). What I am getting at is that a lot of us probably make a concession here or there but as long as you're happy/comfortable with it, go for it. The last vestige of Google I voluntarily find myself with is Gmail, but I have a strong feeling once Apple comes with these burner email forwarder things, I'm probably going to switch to Proton or something similar.

m463 7y ago

google is an identification service.