21 ms·
Same here: Migrated all my gmail accounts to Fastmail. Took me two days. Migrated Google Docs to Dropbox. And replaced Google Sheets and Doc with a Microsoft su
by submeta 6y ago
Same here: Migrated all my gmail accounts to Fastmail. Took me two days. Migrated Google Docs to Dropbox. And replaced Google Sheets and Doc with a Microsoft subscription (MS Word and MS Excel).
Then there‘s the search engine. I tried hard to replace Google Search with DDG, but I have to admit that Google gives me better search results. Still I would love to leave this also behind.
Finally there is youtube for me. Ain‘t no alternative I know about.
It‘s hard to leave google completely behind.
Edit: Replaced Chrome first with Safari, then with Firefox and never looked back.
Edit 2: Moved all my photos from Google‘s cloud solution to iCloud when I migrated from Android to iDevices.
Edit 3: Fastmail (although a rather smallish company) do a phantastic job with their mail service. Their contact management and calendar are also superb. Fastmail + MailMate on MacOS are a dream-team.
- nowa1000 6y agoFastmail also wants a phone number. I no longer know what mail service to use apart from setting it all up myself.
- alpaca128 6y agomailbox.org does not require a phone number. It also includes its own calendar sync and online office suite(although I've never really tried the office functionality myself). I've been using it for a few years now and I can't complain.
- prox 6y agoI like protonmail myself, take a look at that.
- iimblack 6y agoTutanota seems like the safest and most secure option I’ve been able to find.
- brongondwana 6y agoUnfortunately we still need some kind of signal that you're a unique person at signup to avoid infinite fraud (as it is we still get waves of thousands of accounts at a time who have worked out a way to get their hands on a pile of numbers and are finessing an attack on someone else via us). You can delete the number once you've signed up, though of course that means that if you forget your password is reduces the channels by which we can validate that you're the same person! (this is also quite common: many HN users would be surprised how often people forget passwords)
- hombre_fatal 6y agoThose people can also stop paying you and just wait until you recycle their email address. No password recovery needed when it's up for anyone to grab.
- brongondwana 6y agoApart from that we're no longer recycling email addresses as fast as we used to (except for trials that never paid, they only get prescribed for a short time) that doesn't work so well for getting access to your existing email!
- malinens 6y agoI work for inbox.eu It is based in European Union and has 20 years experience as e-mail provider We do not require phone number for premium users. If You are using free trial version You still need to verify phone number to test e-mail sending (receiving works). It is needed to avoid spammers who signup for free to send spam.
- XCSme 6y agoIs Microsoft Office really so much better than Google Docs in terms of privacy? Or is mostly just the "I hate Google, others are probably better" idea?
- submeta 6y agoI received many documents in that format in the past. Actually that isn’t the case anymore. I just have thousands of legacy documents in doc/x and xlsx format on my computer. Other than that I don‘t use MS Word to create documents anymore. I prefer Emacs/Org + pandoc.
- mlthoughts2018 6y agoThe mere fact that Microsoft actually has real customer support and implements features alone makes it better. I was trying to rotate non-image / non-word-art text in a Google Docs table cell the other day and it’s literally impossible. I ended up having to create it as word art and position it as an image so it appears to be in the table but actually is on top of it When I searched for Google support threads on how to rotate text in Docs, I only found forum posts by Google support agents stating that you can’t do it, which read to me approximately as “fuck you go away.”
- woofie11 6y agoYes. Microsoft Office is dramatically better than Google Docs in terms of privacy. I hate using Office 365 with a passion. The usability is horrible. Google Docs is much more pleasant. But in any environment where privacy or security matters, I'd pick it over Google Docs in a heartbeat. In my day job, I work with data with compliance issues. We use Microsoft technologies and zero Google. As obnoxious as Office 365 is, that's the right choice.
- LegitShady 6y agoWhat's so usable about Google docs? I mainly use Excel and the Google docs version is unbearable in terms of ui speed and more limited in functions.
- 6y ago
- heavyset_go 6y ago> Then there‘s the search engine. I tried hard to replace Google Search with DDG, but I have to admit that Google gives me better search results. Still I would love to leave this also behind. Try Searx[1]. It's a search engine aggregator that works with DDG, Google, and dozens of other search engines. You can self-host it or use one of the public instances. [1] https://github.com/asciimoo/searx https://github.com/asciimoo/searx
- djeiasbsbo 6y agoI use searx and it's great. There are a lot of instances as well, this site has a list: https://searx.space/ https://searx.space/ There even are some which are accessible over Tor.
- fiatjaf 6y agoI've been using https://www.runnaroo.com/ https://www.runnaroo.com/ and it's very good, better than DuckDuckGo in almost everything. Sometimes I still fall back to Google but if that was becoming the norm on DDG, not anymore. Another thing that helps is configuring custom search engines on Firefox. For example, for me typing `gh something` in the address bar does a GitHub search directly and so on.
- chalst 6y agoAny idea why Runnaroo gives you better results than DDG? It doesn't seem to have better data sources.
- chris_f 6y ago>Any idea why Runnaroo gives you better results than DDG? It doesn't seem to have better data sources. Not necessarily better data sources, but different data sources and a slightly different approach. For organic results, the biggest different is that Runnaroo uses Google as the base for web results (similar to Startpage) where DDG uses Bing. Outside of the organic results, Runnaroo's strategy is to integrate results from different vertical specific search engines who specialize in a niche topic. I call these 'Deep Searches' because they are essentially pulled from the database of the vertical source. It's the difference between getting an link to a website's home page vs. landing on the page and using their own search function to see the results. For many queries, I believe this can provide higher quality SERP. For example, see the below results for "parkinson research" [0] or "react.js" [1]. The results are a lot more informationally dense than other search engines. Again, not necessarily better, but different. DDG is still better for many queries(currency conversions, weather, etc), and definitely more polished, but I only launched Runnaroo a few months ago and new features and Deep Search sources are being added almost daily. So TL;DR, Google results (with privacy) plus additional search results from relevant niche and authoritative sources. [0] https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=parkinson+research https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=parkinson+research [1] https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=react.js https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=react.js
- Scarbutt 6y agoHasn't firefox been defunded and likely to no have a future?
- submeta 6y agoIf that was the case I‘d fall back to Safari. Even though my browsing experience wouldn’t be the same anymore (using a dozen addons in Firefox).
- hackstack 6y agoI believe the upcoming version of Safari will have WebExtension support, so at least there's that.
- xigency 6y agoAs far as I can tell they canned most of the Firefox teams driving new features, so that’s how I read the situation.
- Aeolun 6y agoIt’s interesting how those teams have finally been able to pull Firefox out of freefall, only to be sacked.
- viraptor 6y agoThey dropped some side teams, but the deal with Google that we thought wasn't happening actually happened a bit later. They're still good. They had future regardless, it's not the end of the world for them to run a bit more lean.
- dredmorbius 6y agoNo. "Mozilla signs fresh Google search deal worth mega-millions" Moz will likely pocket $400m to $450m a year between now and 2023 from the arrangement, citing internal discussions held earlier this year. https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/14/mozilla_google_search/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/14/mozilla_google_search... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24156813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24156813
- ashtonkem 6y agoDDG works well enough for me on anything but programming. The moment I need to search for anything programming related, Google works much better for me.
- prophesi 6y agoI'd recommend StartPage; essentially a proxy for Google.
- ta17711771 6y agoLove Startpage, and get decent signals from them, but their ownership should be observed closely.
- LOVV 6y agoUnfortunately they started blocking lots of tor exit nodes after they were bought by the advertising company.
- the_af 6y agoOut of curiosity, what's the benefit of replacing Google Docs with Dropbox? I seem to remember HN's readership is occasionally hostile to Dropbox. Myself, I use it but the same drive that would have me ditch Google would also make me ditch Dropbox... (I haven't reached that point, though)
- fossuser 6y agoI ditched both for similar reasons. I didn’t have a really strong need for either though and I do use iCloud to sync among my apple devices.
- submeta 6y agoI also use iCloud for all my iDevices. It‘s not fast or as flexible as Dropbox but privacy wise I prefer them over any other cloud sync solution.
- lern_too_spel 6y agoiCloud is the only one with servers in China, so it is objectively the worst privacy-wise.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoYou misunderstand the situation. Chinese users, in China, connect to iCloud servers in China. They are not used for anyone outside China.
- lern_too_spel 6y agoYou misunderstand. Chinese users in China connect to Dropbox and Google Drive servers outside of China, where nothing is available to the Chinese government. Non-Chinese users in China connect to Chinese iCloud proxies in China, which handle data that has already been decrypted using the storage key, which remains outside of China, so anything the user accesses is available to the Chinese government. Chinese users in China have their iCloud data stored in China, where it is all accessible to the Chinese government at any time. Aside from that, there is no meaningful difference in privacy among the services.
- colordrops 6y agoIf it's about privacy, you can still use google search through various proxy search engines as others have mentioned.
- submeta 6y agoThat‘s a good perspective. Never thought about it that way.
- john-shaffer 6y agoI'm not sure if this will work. Google results are absolutely horrible for me, but not for my brother. It may be because they don't have a profile on me, but they have years of data on him. Using a proxy search engine may result in degraded results for someone who is currently getting good results from Google search.
- chris_f 6y ago>It may be because they don't have a profile on me, but they have years of data on him..." That might be true, but I'm not sure. Outside of local searching I am skeptical of the benefits of filter bubbling. I think it is just as likely that you and your brother have different opinions of relevance (even if you were both returned the same exact results unrelated to past activity), and the relevance decisions Google makes more align with your brothers perspective. I am the creator of one of the search engines [0] named in the post. It will return the same exact organic results no matter who you are or what your prior searches were. Feel free to give it a go with your brother and see how it compares for both of you. For organic results, it works like DuckDuckGo does with Bing, but the difference is the main source of our organic results are actually from Google. [0] https://www.runnaroo.com/ https://www.runnaroo.com/
- jeffbee 6y agoYou can use a pejorative if you want, but context is quality. Context-free searching is dumb and the results are bad. An example: if I search for "2020 Honda Insight EX" on Google, I see some mixed bag of stuff about my car. If I then search for "tires" -- no other terms, just tires -- Google shows me shopping results for 195 50/16 car tires, the right size for my car. There are important inputs to my search result that I didn't have to type. Now go to DDG and search for "tires". Useless results only. All advertisements and commercial results, but nothing relevant to me. "Getting out of my filter bubble" did not help me in this use case.
- arkitaip 6y agoAnother Fastmail user here. What's missing for me are Android widgets for mail, calendar and note-taking. Also, their note-taking app needs some work.
- scarface74 6y agoI’m paranoid about my photos. I have them backed up to: - iCloud - iCloud syncs to my Windows PC - Backblaze backs up my Windows PC - Google Drive - One Drive
- kingaillas 6y agoSimilar thing with my photos. All other files can be replaced, what I can't do is re-travel to various locations and re-take the photos I have!
- Proven 6y agoYou could delete them all and solve the problem.
- pantulis 6y agoProbably iCloud Photos is the Apple service that most ties me to a Mac hardware. How's the iCloud syncing to a Windows PC?
- mastazi 6y ago> I tried hard to replace Google Search with DDG, but I have to admit that Google gives me better search results. In those cases where DuckDuckGo is not enough, just append !sp to your search, this will tell DDG to redirect your search to StartPage which is essentially a proxied Google search (the results come from Google but you as a user don't get in direct contact with Google itself).
- chalst 6y agoI think Google's invasion of privacy can be regarded as a kind of "symbiotic parasitism" - they are able to leverage the information they harvest from you to improve search quality. A proxy won't give as good results as letting Google spy on you.
- wizzwizz4 6y agoThey show you results more like those they think you'll want. Woe betide you if you search political things; you'll be trapped in a partisan political filter bubble.
- chalst 6y agoIt is true that what Google judges to be best search quality is not the best for the world.
- mastazi 6y agoYeah from my experience you get the kind of results that you would get from searching in an incognito window i.e. non-personalised (mmm although now that I think of it, they probably have fingerprinting techniques so that they can still track you while incognito)
- Tijdreiziger 6y agoor just !s
- jabirali 6y agoI went basically the same route; got rid of my Google account (GMail, Android, etc.) and switched to an iPhone. The only things left where I indirectly use Google (see below) are precisely Google search and YouTube like you. > Then there‘s the search engine. I tried hard to replace Google Search with DDG, but I have to admit that Google gives me better search results. Still I would love to leave this also behind. I have the same experience; I’ve tried switching multiple times, but at least for scientific topics, I find DDG far inferior to Google Search. My current workaround is to use StartPage.com, which is just a website that searches Google for you, but without letting Google track you. > Finally there is youtube for me. Ain‘t no alternative I know about. If you don’t need to actively publish or comment on videos, you don’t need a Google account to get most of the convenience of YouTube. Personally, I just use a good old RSS client to track my YouTube feeds in the same place I track other content (e.g. HackerNews posts). If you say that you use iDevices, I can recommend “News Explorer”, which syncs your feeds via iCloud (in contrast to all the RSS solutions that require a separate sync account).
- brongondwana 6y agoThanks! We're very proud of our work. Glad to hear that you're having a good experience :)
- fossuser 6y agoThanks - your stuff is really great, I’m a happy user.
- submeta 6y agoAh, the CEO of Fastmail is responding ;) Let me tell you this: It‘s a beautiful product with a very intuitive UI: Every setting is there where I expect it. Also the support is very responsive and very helpful. Thank you! Keep up the good work.
- brongondwana 6y agoYep, I'm a hacker news tragic too :p Thanks for the kind words!
- submeta 6y agoIt‘s good to have you here and a good thing when CEOs keep in touch with their customers, listen to them, and eat their own dog food. - Imagine Tim Cook would have used a MacBook Pro (with the miserable key) and/or listened to the complaints. And a thousand more examples I can think of.
- stilisstuk 6y agoNot an alternative, bit insidious is aborter frontend to YouTube... and om Android there is newpipe. However, for me, the problems are: Maps. Google Maps are great. Calendar: my calender provider online has ICS calendar sharing, not e.g. itip.and imip.
- toastal 6y agoI decided to start becoming an active contributor to OpenStreetMap. If a business isn't on the map, I just ask whoever works there a series of questions and upload the new POI. Some of the maps, like those in Bangkok actually mapped out a lot of footpaths that say go through a mall that save a ton of time walking vs Google Maps.
- nikodunk 6y agoWow! I just realized that for "business" accounts Fastmail is $5/mo and GSuite is $7/mo which is what I'm currently paying. Drop-in replacement for same/less cost & better privacy while supporting a slightly better cause? I'm switching tomorrow.
- hotroddy74 6y agoGoogle censors it's search to make you read nothing but mainstream media lies. All the mainstream media are lying to protect the Democratic criminals and to keep everyone unaware of all the riots and violence being run by intelligence community, Democrat run cities with Democrat mayor's, governor's and city hall. They keep people in the dark about all the chaos and the truth so they can continue to blame Trump for everything making you all think everything will be happy with rainbows and unicorns again it you just vote the bad orange man out. Google censors everything so much it's ridiculous and unusable if you want truth
- ganafagol 6y agoHm your move from google to iCloud begs the question: You don't see any issues moving from one big-vendor-"free"-lock-in solution to another?