26 ms·

No More Google

• jimmaswell 6y ago
  How do analytics platforms that don't track me work?
• ProAm 6y ago
  StartPage was acquired by an ad targeting company, I wouldnt use them for search.
  • georgeglue1 6y ago
    It's a mixed bag. There's a bit more context recently released here: https://www.computing.co.uk/news/4017337/privacy-focused-search-engine-startpage-details-system1-investment https://www.computing.co.uk/news/4017337/privacy-focused-sea...
• FreedomToCreate 6y ago
  The issue here is ecosystem. Googles advantage is everything syncs together across there platform seamlessly. Going the no google routes fragments my ability to share photos, share docs and sheets, access easily across platforms.The trade off is being locked out and tracking (which you can limit in privacy settings). Edit: also want to add that there is also a risk with using smaller platforms as they have a high chance of going bust. I employ a strategy of keeping files on both google, iCloud and a personal drive to have redundancy in case of issues. Of course this does make sense if you want to be absolutely invisible
  • asdfk-12 6y ago
    Limiting tracking with google is performative, as they still retain and use all of your data within their system to continue to 'improve our results' (generate revenue). There are enough self-hosted options and third-party paid alternatives that the Google ecosystem lock-in isn't as useful as it once was to me.
  • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    We need open ecosystems then. When I started using a Sandstorm server, it became a method I could share access to things from all sorts of applications through a single interface... but all of the apps and the platform itself are open source. But the problem with locking yourself into a proprietary platform, be it Apple, Google, or Microsoft, is that in order to use service A, that you like, you may also have to put up with services B, C, or D, which suck. For example, you might love Google Photos, but if alongside sharing Google Photos with your friends, you have to deal with Google's endless stream of terrible short-lived chat services, that seamless ecosystem platform isn't really doing you any favors.
    • khrbrt 6y ago
      First I've heard of Sandstorm[0]. Very interesting, I need to give this a try soon. 0: sandstorm.io
  • mark_l_watson 6y ago
    I use Google Workplace, less friction for getting things done. Just my opinion, but if you want a one-stop-shop for a Google replacement, probably Fastmail is your best bet: email+calendar+notes. ProtonMail is less well integrated, but in a year I would bet their email+calendar+vpn+secure data storage will have a better workflow. In addition to Google Workplace, I am also a paying customer of ProtonMail and Fastmail - I just don't use these alternatives right now. Lots of choices is a good thing.
  • 8note 6y ago
    Google's making it harder for me to share photos nowadays. Instead of just sending the picture, it sends a link to a website with the photo
    • blacklight 6y ago
      Install SolidExplorer or similar, share the photo, select SolidExplorer (or any other file explorer) and it's downloaded. From there you can share it anywhere else. It's one more step in the middle though - and it's the reason why I have migrated all of my photos away from Google and to a RPi4 with NextCloud and 7 TB hd.
• antegamisou 6y ago
  arXiv as an alternative to Google Scholar is a bit misleading, since 1. arXiv does not feature any sort of metrics (h-index, citations count) for the author(s) and 2. Probably no author's complete list of non-informal publications would be available on arXiv, which is why it may not be the place to look for some obscure paper of said author(s).
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • dhairya 6y ago
    I'd suggest Semantic Scholar (https://www.semanticscholar.org/ https://www.semanticscholar.org/) as an alternative to Google Scholar. It's maintained by the nonprofit Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and has many useful features (both metrics based and more interesting things like tracing idea influence).
  • brummm 6y ago
    Yeah, it's kind of silly really. Google scholar feeds off the arxiv.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• jason0597 6y ago
  These anti-Google discussions come and go on the front page of Hacker News, but I'd be curious to know how many people actually degoogle their lives drastically after reading such discussions and articles. I believe it's more of a case of "Oh my god, Google is so disgusting! Shame on Google!", and then people open up a new tab in Chrome to search on Google about their next restaurant destination as if nothing happened. Or maybe I'm too pessimistic.
  • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    The barrier to switching is high. Things like Takeout really don't account for the frustration of switching your entire workflow over, getting used to new tools, getting everyone you know to connect to you on a non-Google platform, etc. But if every time this sort of thing comes up, a few of the crowd are nudged to finally make the switch, eventually we'll pick up some momentum. Back in 2013-2014, when I first started telling people switching away from Google was critical, people treated me pretty much like I believed in bigfoot and UFOs. In 2020, a lot of progress has been made, even if it doesn't feel like it. Perception is changing, and the legal system is finally starting to catch up.
  • asdfk-12 6y ago
    Many people in my circle are slowly diversifying away from google utilities, and I think that the low-level anti-google sentiment is useful to spawn new services, especially those that can be deployed and shared from a VPS, or for a relatively small yearly fee (subscription email, sovereign ansible playbooks, mastodon, etc)
  • xlii 6y ago
    You can count me as 1. The only Google service I’m using is Calendar and only because my employer requests it, google search from time to time when I need ambiguous search result (“the movie with woman in red dress on poster”). Not one post though as it was growing in me.
    • californical 6y ago
      Just jumping on as another agreeing on this — it built up in me over time until eventually I decided to go all-in and removed Google entirely. I used to be fully bought in to them. Used to have everything Google. 2 Google Homes, Android, Chrome, Gmail, Calendar, Photos, Chromecast, and everything else. Now I occasionally use YouTube because that’s much harder to replace, but that’s all the data they get on me. Everything else is gone! Feels freeing honestly.
• redvenom 6y ago
  Another option that can replace a lot of Google services is getting your own domain. You can get email with that, and install a bunch of applications to replace a lot of the services like photo sharing. Of course the downside is you have to maintain some of it yourself (but you can get an auto-updating Wordpress installation for sharing photos), and you don't get as much connectivity because you have to promote it yourself. The advantage is that you don't need to worry about Google's whims to shut things down or change policies or whatever. Also typically with your own domain, you get more control over your email. For example, with cPanel you can program in a filter to permanently delete emails you don't want instead of sending them to the trash.
  • cortesoft 6y ago
    You also have to make sure you stay up to date on security patches.
    • redvenom 6y ago
      Honestly, I think a shared server is enough for most people. And with that, the server is patched automatically. Wordpress on cPanel can autoupdate too...so really you don't have to worry much about that.
• 29athrowaway 6y ago
  Many of your email recipients will be Gmail, or its enterprise version. So many email messages will be on Gmail even if you move away from Gmail.
• reificator 6y ago
  As usual on these lists, no alternatives to Music, and no alternatives to Voice. Voice is the big one for anyone who's still on it I think.
  • coldtea 6y ago
    Google Music? Isn't there Apple, Amazon, Spotify, and tons of others?
    • reificator 6y ago
      See above replies, for the feature that matters most to me (seamless playback between subscription and personally uploaded tracks) Apple seems like the only actual competitor.
  • throwaway123x2 6y ago
    Yup, this is me. There is no alternative to Google Voice, which is sad... it's such a neat service.
    • tyingq 6y ago
      Anveo.com isn't free, but it is cheap, and replaces Google Voice for what I needed. The call flow stuff is cool.
      • reificator 6y ago
        Opposite of where I was in 2008/2009 or whenever it was, free is not a requirement and honestly I probably wouldn't migrate to another free service. Thanks for the suggestion!
    • swlkr 6y ago
      There is textnow, not sure how many missing features there are though
    • toomuchtodo 6y ago
      I moved my Google Voice number to OpenPhone [1] (YC S18). No relation besides being a paid ($10/month) customer. If you have T-Mobile in the US, they have a similar offering called DIGITS [2] you might try (although OpenPhone offers more features for the price). [1] https://www.openphone.co https://www.openphone.co [2] https://www.t-mobile.com/offers/t-mobile-digits https://www.t-mobile.com/offers/t-mobile-digits
• X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
  It's kind of funny that the least fleshed out section (ads) is where they absolutely can not afford to lose users.
  • stingraycharles 6y ago
    I’d argue that the advertisers go where the audience is. If people would stop using search, advertisers would lose interest in Adwords.
    • X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
      There's roughly two needs for advertisers right? Price sensitive and inventory sensitive, sure almost no one else can compete with the sheer number of eyeballs google delivers, but surely someone can compete in terms of cost. One of the spaces where the advertising game is still figuring things out is the podcast space.
• Igelau 6y ago
  Anyone using any of these email services? I'm not looking for a workplace product, I just want to be able to get myself out of Gmail reliance and gradually get my family away from it too.
  • davefp 6y ago
    +1 for Fastmail
  • redvenom 6y ago
    I use GMX as one of my email providers. The web interface isn't that bad, but I have it set up with IMAP and it works just like anything else. The front page of GMX is a news site. It's more old-school with folders rather than tags and priority boxes but I never liked those anyway.
  • Splendor 6y ago
    Another happy Fastmail user here.
  • kossae 6y ago
    I can highly recommend FastMail. This is the exact scenario I was in, and it has performed far better than Gmail in almost every aspect.
  • keyme 6y ago
    The key is to use your own domain for email. The rest doesn't matter as much. Email is not secure, no matter what service you use. It is transferred in plain text between providers.
    • yabones 6y ago
      Security is not absolute. There are many different types when we talk about email: 1. Encryption in transit - Yes, indeed unencrypted SMTP is common. SMIME and GPG are not as common as they should be 2. Encryption at rest, server side - 99% of providers don't do this 3. Account security - supporting MFA, u2F etc 4. Application security - If there is an official application, does it store saved mail property (ie, not in a big dumb PST file) So yes, somebody could sniff some plaintext SMTP email regardless of your provider, but the other features are very valid and important.
• airstrike 6y ago
  Saw the alternatives to Google Sheets, clicked on Coda wanting to learn more and guess what I got? Welcome to Coda Coda is an all-in-one doc that brings words, data, and teams together. Sign up to make a doc for free. [Sign up with Google]
  • BlewisJS 6y ago
    > "You can also sign up with your email or SSO." https://coda.io/signup/email https://coda.io/signup/email
  • mdifrgechd 6y ago
    Yeah I found it funny that most of the linked sites had "Download the app from the google play store" at the top of their page.
• KarimDaghari 6y ago
  Honestly, for me, the hardest one to replace is YouTube. I think the best I can do is to create an account specifically for it + use firefox containers.
  • thehermit 6y ago
    Same, I'm rid of Google except for Youtube. There are just too many creators I follow there that I really enjoy to give it up. A few upload their videos to Patreon (usually for early access) and I think if I ever manage to ditch Youtube that is how it's going to happen.
  • kgwxd 6y ago
    Do you post content there or just subscribe and/or comment? If just sub/comment, you can use an RSS reader to "subscribe" to channels and give up commenting.
  • redvenom 6y ago
    I think there is also a difference between lock in and just using a service. If your primary email is Gmail, it's hard to switch and it's worse than YouTube. With YouTube, if Google decides to lock you out, you can more easily move to PeerTube or another service. I also recommend that if you create content for YouTube, you also upload it elsewhere.
    • jimmaswell 6y ago
      Switching from gmail and forwarding to your new address sounds easy unless you insist on deleting it and changing every account referencing the old email.
      • arsenico 6y ago
        Forwarding to a new address doesn’t solve the whole Google problem, as GMail still stores and processes all your emails.
    • beached_whale 6y ago
• skrebbel 6y ago
  Wow, I didn't know about https://wego.here.com https://wego.here.com and both the UX and the map design are miles ahead of Google's, to my taste. Nice!
  • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    HERE used to be the de facto choice for maps on Windows Mobile, and has always been great to use. I think Bing Maps also used their data predominantly as well.
  • randlet 6y ago
    It looks nice and seems very fast but doesn't seem like it has walking & biking paths in my area.
• zmarty 6y ago
  Google Photos alternatives?
  • jzymbaluk 6y ago
    iCloud photo
  • geogra4 6y ago
    If you're an Amazon prime user you get free unlimited photo storage
  • acd 6y ago
    Smugmug
  • CharlesW 6y ago
    Dropbox Photos
  • vishnumohandas 6y ago
    I’m building one[1]! Please do sign up if you’d like to get an early invite (~2 weeks from now), I could really use the early feedback. Thanks! [1]: https://ente.io https://ente.io
• anonytrary 6y ago
  This is a great compilation, but it sort of misses the point. The problem isn't that Google owns all of the services we use. It's that someone owns them and even if you switch to a handful of independent services (which is a worse UX), someone else is snooping on you. Google's value proposition is that if you're inside the Google family of services, each service is made better due to having a unified analytics and user profiling. This is a double-edged sword: 1. A single service has full visibility into your habits 2. The upper bound for the efficacy of each service is higher. Is this worth it to you? That's the question you should be asking yourself.
  • albertop 6y ago
    Related discussion and the biggest counterpoint. If Google disconnects you, you are disconnected from all services. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24965432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24965432
  • ricardo81 6y ago
    To be fair, many of the alternatives are privacy focused and data collection is more likely to be anonymised.
  • pessimizer 6y ago
    I had to read this comment multiple times because I assumed that "a single service has full visibility into your habits" was obviously an extreme negative compared to many services each having visibility into some of your habits. I'm still not sure I understand your comment, but I would add that that even with multiple services, each can buy data from each other and from brokers, bringing the situation with them closer to a multiple-google situation. Problems like this cannot be solved by technology. edit: Being all Google may ultimately be more similar to the Apple proposition, where they actively fight their users to maximize their own profits, but also actively fight others for the complete possession of their users. As an Apple customer, you know that if your usage is irrelevant to their bottom line, they'll generally protect you from third parties. The reason it's not obvious that Google could be that way is because they're an ad company.
• denysvitali 6y ago
  Any good alternative to Gboard for Android? Possibly an Open Source one?
• Dirlewanger 6y ago
  Opera as a non-tracking alternative? It's almost entirely owned by Chinese interests. And Cloudflare as a non-tracking alternative?? This site needs to revisit some of its alternatives.
• blunte 6y ago
  Seeing Notion ranked so highly makes me wonder what other people do that's so different from me. I try to like it (I was an early paid adopter, and now my company uses it so I must too), but there are so many points of friction that most of my effort is spent fighting it rather than using it. Does the general typing latency not bother people? There's a noticeable delay between pressing a key and seeing a character appear. Other apps, Electron-based even, don't seem so slow. But then you type something like a/b and you realize why it's so slow. About half of the things a technical person might type while writing notes or documentation result in some "helpful" popup which must be canceled. I have a long laundry list of usability issues, but from all appearances their company has been growing and selling but not making good on the promises of addressing feedback. My team and I use google docs to get the initial collaborative concepts down, and then one of us manually creates a Notion page with the more permanent result. I sincerely wish to find a collaborative writing/spreadsheet/drawing suite that was open source (paid service even) that could come close to the utility of gdocs.
  • lwigo 6y ago
    They seem to have a very active marketing team. There was even a post on HN about "onboarding" onto Notion recently.
    • blunte 6y ago
      From an investor standpoint, a marketing-first, usability-second (third, fourth maybe?) approach is clearly best. All you need to focus on is that next round of funding that pays off the previous round with a nice profit.
  • mglass3000 6y ago
    I'm really glad someone mentioned this. I have stuck happily with Bookmark OS
  • owenshen24 6y ago
    Agreed. The latency between keypress and result makes it such a pain to use.
  • 6y ago
• 51Cards 6y ago
  How does this have Firefox but not Lockwise under the password apps?
• LVB 6y ago
  Some curious options. Bear Writer as the second place Google Docs alternative? Maybe as a Google Keep alternative.
• kgwxd 6y ago
  Nothing for calendar. The only thing keeping me on Google is a spreadsheet that has a script to query my calendar to make a budget forecast. I haven't found a good alternative calendar with an API.
• agentdrtran 6y ago
  Seeing Zoho, the alternative-universe version of Google where it failed at basically everything, as an alternative listed for a lot of these is hilarious.
  • sigzero 6y ago
    Is it still that poor?
  • mxuribe 6y ago
    Does comment include their paid email hosting plan/service? Because i've been testing them out for the last few months, and they've been great! But, if you have stats and/or info to share, I'd love to hear about before i take the plunge. Also, any alternative to zoho that you could recommend would be greatly appreciated! THanks!
    • sigzero 6y ago
      The email portion looks fine to me. I don't see any glaring omissions. Have you tested the office suite part (write, sheets, etc.)?
      • mxuribe 6y ago
        I've only been interested in, and have been only testing zoho's paid email service. i have no interest in their other offerings like office suite. That being said, much like your findings @sigzero, I've - so far - found zoho's email to be fine (actually quite excellent when the low cost is factored in). I was asking @agentdrtran if they had any more insight for zoho's email service (other than their coment above), because i'm genuinely interested to learn more - if they had any stats or evidence (or even anecdote/experience) to support their claim.
• ricardo81 6y ago
  I've found this list generally useful along the very same lines: https://degoogle.jmoore.dev/ https://degoogle.jmoore.dev/
• crazypython 6y ago
  I'd like to add Jitsi Meet (https://meet.jit.si https://meet.jit.si) works great. I would say from being forced to use Google Meet and using Jitsi Meet, Jitsi's audio quality and reliability are superior to Google Meet.
  • PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    Mostly good but poor echo cancellation. With Skype and Google and I can avoid using headphones - just speakers & mic. Jitsi isn't comfortable for the other person unless I use headphones and no speakers.
• muststopmyths 6y ago
  Doesn't mention Google Domains. Any suggestions for a reliable registrar ?
  • diarrhea 6y ago
    Been very happy with Namecheap. That is maybe not saying terribly much, having moved from GoDaddy (arguably one of the worst out there).
  • ricardo81 6y ago
    I've found InternetBS and Namesilo decent. Used to run a domain related service with thousands of domains and used about a dozen registrars. Older ones tend to have poorer support and dated UIs, the two I mentioned are fairly young and I've had no issues with them.
  • npteljes 6y ago
    I have some at Gandi, for some years now, stable service, good API, straightforward web interface.
  • charsi 6y ago
    Been using name.com for many years without complaint. Cloudflare is also good if you are already using their DNS and they support the TLD you want.
• pb7 6y ago
  Hacker News is incredibly biased against Google. There was recently an informal survey[0] in "Tech Twitter" (i.e. other technical people) regarding opinions about the top tech companies and Google scored second highest overall behind Apple, with something like 85-90% positivity overall across different questions. Facebook, for reference, was something like 35-40%. [0] https://coda.io/@sriram-krishnan/2020-state-of-the-tech-industry-live-twitter-survey-results/large-companies-11 https://coda.io/@sriram-krishnan/2020-state-of-the-tech-indu... Edit: n=3017, 93% are in tech industry.
  • Normal_gaussian 6y ago
    Or perhaps those on your twitter are incredibly biased towards Google? Twitter is repeatedly presented as a general sentiment test, yet this is just not true. Also, what on Earth is "Tech Twitter"? My forays (now abandoned as fruitless) into twitter show it as dispersed as any other social media group - if not more so. I can't imagine anyone being able to run a cross-sectional survey of 'tech' over twitter without massive buy in from either twitter or dozens of disparate groups who would have no interest in measuring tech giant positivity scores.
    • machello13 6y ago
      Yeah, "Tech Twitter" is just whoever follows the guy who made the survey and whoever follows them who saw the retweets. The idea that this survey is anything serious is ridiculous.
      • pb7 6y ago
        I think I was pretty clear that it is an informal survey. With that said, I don't see how that survey data is any more biased one way or another than Hacker News, which was my initial assertion. I didn't make a statement that Twitter is correct and Hacker News is wrong, just that whatever OP perceives to be reality here is far from the case elsewhere.
    • granzymes 6y ago
      Those twitter results seem in line with the general population. Approval ratings by brand: Amazon: 91% Google: 90% YouTube: 90% Netflix: 89% Microsoft: 89% Sonos: 86% Apple: 81% Slack: 78% Instagram: 72% Facebook: 71% Twitter: 61% The reality is that these are very popular companies. https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gfN9bwxFARhIiyxEkQfkVKaf2yc=/0x0:1800x1315/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1315):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19758792/acastro_200219_3914_tech_survey_0008_08.0.jpg https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gfN9bwxFARhIiyxEkQfkVKaf2yc=...
• gerash 6y ago
  The title says "Privacy friendly alternatives that don't track you": Then there are entries for Google authenticator -> Authy, Google weather -> DarkSky (whose Android app was killed), Google Scholar -> Arxiv, etc. I can't take these posts seriously no matter how loud their proponents have become
  • dangero 6y ago
    a lot of the companies listed use google analytics on the exact page being linked
  • pessimizer 6y ago
    Take it as evidence of how difficult it is to avoid Google and continue to function on the web. I use weather.gov.
  • judge2020 6y ago
    Google authenticator is an interesting one given that it literally doesn't use your Google accounts at all (no sync or anything) while Authy has a recovery process for retrieving access to your 2fa secrets if you lose your phone.
• madhadron 6y ago
  Offering arXiv as a substitute for Google Scholar isn't okay. The arXiv is one of the places indexed by Google Scholar. But Google Scholar also indexes most of the journals out there. A better replacement would be PubMed, but even that's pretty specialized.
  • pessimizer 6y ago
    The best substitute for Google Scholar is not accepting cookies from Google Scholar. It still works.
• Justsignedup 6y ago
  I would like to point out: Looking down the list of google services I use for PERSONAL use (and my wife/child) I would easily be paying $100/mo for all the alternative services. I can afford that. Most google users cannot.
• kdamica 6y ago
  I've tried to switch fully to firefox but it's just not good enough, especially on Android. Pages fail to load, get laggy, etc, none of which happens on Chrome. I'd love to ditch Google but it's hard when the second best option is so far behind.
• jungletime 6y ago
  Probably the best way to get away from google is to use the Huawei phones which the USA banned from operating, and their version of android has been de-googled, from google services. You will be getting spied on by China. But at least not by google. The P40 has some amazing cameras. https://consumer.huawei.com/ca/phones/ https://consumer.huawei.com/ca/phones/
  • judge2020 6y ago
    Not sure which is better - the government of China spying on me, or the biggest American tech company which, in return, provides access to immensely valuable services.
• hotpockets 6y ago
  There was an analytics startup focused on privacy that recently launched: https://panelbear.com/ https://panelbear.com/ No idea if it's any good.
• taldo 6y ago
  I (Xoogler) personally don't think Google is as evil as they color it. But the risk of The Algorithm locking me out on a whim is definitely scary. That's why I'm following more of a "have a backup plan" strategy: mostly just making sure I have copies of all I care about in other places. Gmail, Drive, Photos, etc. Sure, changing workflows and stuff would be painful, but not as much as all that PLUS losing all my data. Sure, my gmail address is still the primary (possibly only) contact on many many places, but I think that risk would be outweighed by my domain registration accidentally lapsing, or my servers getting spamlisted, or smaller providers going out of business. Again, it would be infuriating and bothersome, but not the end of the world. That said, I try to keep my personal account for personal stuff, and whenever I want to try something out of the "ordinary layman user" realm, like trying out dev tools or APIs, cloud products, you name it, I'll use a secondary unrelated account just in case The Algorithm finds that odd and ban-worthy.
• hotpockets 6y ago
  There was a privacy focused analytics alternative that recently launched on producthunt: https://panelbear.com https://panelbear.com No idea if it's any good.
• NewOrderNow 6y ago
  Anyone know of a decent alternative to Google Photos? That is my last hold out
  • vishnumohandas 6y ago
    I’m building one[1]! Please sign up for the beta if you’re interested, I could really use some early feedback. :) [1]: https://ente.io https://ente.io
    • NewOrderNow 6y ago
      Your demo video looks good and I am all for encryption! I signed up.
  • nunodonato 6y ago
    It's amazing how there is no good Flickr in 2020
    • NewOrderNow 6y ago
      hah!
    • CharlesW 6y ago
      Flickr is a good Flickr. Also, there's a bunch of Google Photos alternatives mentioned elsewhere in the thread if you're interested in that.
    • fsflover 6y ago
      https://pixelfed.org/ https://pixelfed.org/
  • mceachen 6y ago
    If you want to self-host, you're welcome to try out PhotoStructure: https://photostructure.com/faq/why-photostructure/ https://photostructure.com/faq/why-photostructure/
    • 6y ago
• Firehawke 6y ago
  And yet the site has Clearbit according to UBlock Origin. Talk about hypocritical. https://help.clearbit.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015659148-What-is-Clearbit- https://help.clearbit.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015659148-Wha...
• adamredwoods 6y ago
  Is PinePhone a valid replacement yet? https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/
• chiefalchemist 6y ago
  Of the browsers listed, which if any do multiple users? I silo my clients / projects by giving them their own instance (read: user) of Chrome. If I could get past that then the rest would fall into place.
  • npteljes 6y ago
    Firefox can. Type about:profiles in the address bar and try it out!
    • charsi 6y ago
      This is a pretty useful feature and I have know about it for years. But only started using it a couple of years ago. Since the only google service I use is youtube it gets its own profile. Same for work email and teams which I leave signed in. So very useful to have separate silos like this. Firefox should create UI elements to enable easy switching.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• BuckRogers 6y ago
  In response to how many people are influenced by these sorts of posts, I'm a best of breed person so these articles only inform me further but rarely have much impact. I don't use Google, but that's because Google just isn't the best search engine, DDG is. If I want Google results I use Startpage through DDG since they're anonymous, and will once in a blue moon still tunnel through to Google. I've been meaning to move off of Gmail to Outlook.com for some years. I definitely don't think Gmail is the best, just gave me a lot of space in 2004 during the beta when no one else would. Youtube is Google's only must-have product in my view. The rest is easily replaceable with equivalent or better choices.
  • charsi 6y ago
    Same thoughts on youtube being the only hard to replace google service. I have switched to newpipe as the main client for it. It can even mimic chromecast by sending the video to kodi.
• forsaken 6y ago
  We're trying to build an ad network that stands in stark opposition to Google's tracking: https://www.ethicalads.io/advertising-vision/ https://www.ethicalads.io/advertising-vision/ -- it's still early days, but we're always look for more OSS projects and products to join.
• vishnumohandas 6y ago
  Shameless plug: ente[1] is a privacy focused alternative to Google Photos that I’m building. Please sign up for the beta program if you’re interested, I could really use some beta testers. Thanks! [1]: https://ente.io https://ente.io
• dangero 6y ago
  I don't understand what criteria is used to get on this page. As an example, Airtable uses Google Analytics. What makes you think Airtable doesn't track you? They clearly do.
• abeppu 6y ago
  Some time ago, I switched to google fi. The experience has been pretty positive (monthly bills are low, speeds are decent, the idea of seamlessly switching between networks is appealing). But when I read horror stories of people getting their google accounts terminated, I realize that losing my google account would also remove my ability to receive SMS 2FA codes, and recovering all my accounts would be even more difficult than for a person who is merely dependent on gmail. This would be less of a concern if google had a way to associate separate accounts with each service, users could have confidence that google would actually treat them as distinct, even if they're continually used from the same devices, etc.
  • judge2020 6y ago
    Hopefully Google gets a better grip on this - they already ban YT channels while leaving the rest of the G account in-tact (including in cases of copyright violation, although limited to YT - G Drive copyright probably still affects your entire account), so it's in their power to ban you only on certain services, it's just a mystery.
• at_a_remove 6y ago
  I never -- personally -- used much of Google aside from the search engine. Never GMail. I watched them buy and kill things I was interested in well over a decade ago. At work, I noticed how hard it was to get Chrome off of a machine when first installed and decided against that. Then they rather unceremoniously discontinued their search appliance without giving us much of a transition path, on very short notice, and that was something of a bummer. I used to attend search engine conferences, with special talks given by someone who spent a lot of time analyzing Google's "special sauce." It became increasingly clear to me that search serves the ads, and everything else is a either a distraction or a temporary step in improving search and/or ads.
• 0xdeadbeefbabe 6y ago
  Heh what's the alternative to golang?
  • timbit42 6y ago
    Julia
  • charsi 6y ago
    I use go and angular. Both google projects. I opt out of their services not their tools.
• fdiskl 6y ago
  I try to remove Google where I can, but for search... let's be honest, ddg and qwant just had inferior results. I try to use one of those, but find myself having to type !g or &g on a disturbing number of searches
• fukpaywallsII 6y ago
  if you are only worried about google, you're missing the bigger picture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dZ_lvDgevk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dZ_lvDgevk
• 000000Coffee92 6y ago
  I question duck duck go. Why am I getting ads everywhere for ddg? How are they honestly making enough money to take up billboards and tons of other ads? Willing to change my mind, something just doesn't add up to me, someone please explain
  • fsflover 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Business_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Business_model
• JoshTko 6y ago
  I mean there really is no realistic replacement for youtube at the moment. The youtube breadth of content is at least two orders of magnitude above the next competitor.
• mxskelly 6y ago
  Some weird ones I'm seeing: Airtable doesn't seem to be an alternative to Google Sheets, it seems like a much different application than a generalized spreadsheet that can do math operations. Vimeo isn't really a replacement for YouTube, it's fundamentally different in the types of content it markets itself as being for. The Google Docs alternatives all seem to be note taking applications (except for Zoho), not document editing software. Dark Sky no longer offers an Android app, not really a good replacement for Google Weather.
  • charsi 6y ago
    All of these can be a replacement in some situations. Vimeo can be a good idea if you don't care about discoverability and just want to put your video on the internet without self hosting. These are google alternatives not 1:1 replacements in all cases. Deepl.io (translation service) is a one clear replacement and also superior to anything else.
    • mxskelly 6y ago
      > Vimeo can be a good idea if you don't care about discoverability and just want to put your video on the internet without self hosting. That's a fair point yeah.
• the_arun 6y ago
  There is no competitor for YouTube in content. I might use youtube with a fake id if I want to avoid sharing ton of personal data with Google.
  • charsi 6y ago
    You don't even need a fake ID. If you want a way to 'subscribe' to channels you can just use their RSS feed. All youtube channels have RSS feeds https://danielmiessler.com/blog/rss-feed-youtube-channel/ https://danielmiessler.com/blog/rss-feed-youtube-channel/ https://gist.github.com/tjluoma/fdbc63ceb78a2aecd3d638fd18b6ec6e https://gist.github.com/tjluoma/fdbc63ceb78a2aecd3d638fd18b6...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• miguelr2201 6y ago
  These alternatives should definitely be taken with a huge grain of salt. I don't see how Discord is the third most "privacy-friendly" alternative to Hangouts that doesn't track you while explicitly claiming they "may" collect your email, messages, images, VOIP data, etc. [1] [1] https://discord.com/privacy https://discord.com/privacy
• g42gregory 6y ago
  I used to use Chrome browser for everything, but not anymore. Now I use Firefox, Safari and Brave. I am making preparations to move from Google Apps Mail and Gmail to Fastmail. I would not use Google drive and Google docs for anything. Still use google search, but looking for an alternative as I don’t trust results in many cases. I feel technically they are still better than other search engines, they just heavily manipulate search results.
• markussss 6y ago
  I really want a good alternative to Google Photos. Jottacloud is getting pretty close, but there are problems when using it for photos and backups at the same time.
• chenpengcheng 6y ago
  this is the Google curse. every company will become like Google only if they can. every of them. the only exception is Wikipedia and i donate monthly. I remember how good Google was in the early days. most of the “alternatives” could become much worse when they reach 1/100 of Google scale. I can’t trust “alternatives”.
• avsteele 6y ago
  I have tried to use FF for year now and I am about to dump it. I want Mozilla to succeed, but there's no way I cold recommend it to friends/family, which is the major thing. Non-major websites, and even big name ones like Intuit's (quickbooks etc) are constantly having problems. I had to go into settings: just to get into bitbucket in the past week because of some 'referrer' issue On mobile, it just crashes constantly (e.g. on twitter).
  • ThalesX 6y ago
    I gave Firefox a lot of tries, some times for months, some times for years. Now I'm back to, out of all things, Microsoft Edge. It's been a good experience, and I found the privacy settings (in Europe distribution anyway) a pleasure to disable. Collections are also a pretty nifty addon.
  • zanmat0 6y ago
    Edge has been a near-perfect experience for me on Windows 10. I was a massive FF user for over a decade and the only thing I miss is Gesturefy.
• kseifried 6y ago
  What are the options (ideally Linux based) to synchronize files and data (e.g. contacts) between Google Drive, iCloud and Microsoft OneDrive? I guess we have to do RAICP (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Cloud Providers) now? I get that I can do the clients/rsync dance, but I also want contacts and higher level data.
• kingnothing 6y ago
  Is there an alternative for Google Photos other than iCloud?
• ChrisArchitect 6y ago
  (2018) previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078030
• kerng 6y ago
  I might be one of the lucky ones who never bought into the Google eco-system - even still have a Hotmail email address and it's getting cool again now that many are getting more upset with Google and their business model.
• yreg 6y ago
  So Zoom is supposed to be a privacy-friendly alternative to Hangouts? Also, all those recommended flight engines/sellers absolutely do track everything as if their life depended on it.
• jasonv 6y ago
  I personally ponder the idea of de-FAANGing my life as much as possible. There's something distasteful about these very small number of global companies shaping so much of our human condition. I already dumped Facebook. I feel like I could do Google and Amazon next. I make my living with AWS, so there's that. I'm not sure if Netflix is worth dumping, by din of this criteria. I feel like Apple is the least offensive here, but their app store missteps this year put a harsh light on their relationship to their dev community. Twitter I'm likely to close after the election. I know I need a year off it, no matter what happens. So, maybe I want to de-GAFT.
• illuminated 6y ago
  Here's a more complete list IMO, including not only services (even the services are more relevant), but also apps for various platforms: https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle
• aidenn0 6y ago
  It would be interesting to add up the monthly fees for the top alternatives and see how much it would cost to completely replace google. Just the first few items already put you in the mid double-digits per month.
• abdabab 6y ago
  I’m still looking for a Project Fi alternative that has 2FA. I’ll sleep lot better if I find one.
• mastrsushi 6y ago
  I think it's great users are always attempting to break free from Google. I don't think 3 companies should control half the internet content (I'm sure my measurements are way off). I just see it as inconvenient. Firefox has been well known to underperform Chrome in many areas. The GUI feels dated and clunky. Something about the experience feels very obviously backed by only software political activists, developers, and people who simply haven't moved to Chrome. I also don't see how using Chromium based browser distros is non-Google. I thought part of the problem was that even with those browsers, Google can still blacklist sites it chooses to.
  • charsi 6y ago
    I don't know what in the UI you find so clunky. They seem extremely close to me. If somebody switched my browser without telling me I probably won't notice the difference between firefox and chrome. Even if firefox was a slightly worse product (which I don't think it is) I would still use and recommend it just for its privacy focused features recently. Non-chromium based browsers break google's 100% ownership of the web experience and gives some leverage against undesirable change. So even those are better. On Android only firefox supports addons and easy ad blocking.
• geekraver 6y ago
  You could replace a whole bunch of these with a Synology NAS if you really want to own your own data. DSM has an extensive suite of good apps. https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm
• anatman 6y ago
  I am a Life-Long, grateful Google user who has some thoughts on AdSense that I've considered quite deeply. Adsense allows anyone of any economic standing to access some of the most refined and powerful tools for gathering, using, and sharing knowledge that humanity has ever built. Google's contribution to modern ad tech is, in that sense, an immensely laudable contribution to humankind. The lack of the ability to choose where I spend my valuable attention amounts at some level to a nonconsensual interaction. I am willing to pay for both Google's services and those of the content creator (and I am sensitive to the fairness of that relationship as well), but not being able to choose how I pay has led me to make some personal use decisions that put me in conflict with Google's revenue model. I have to use an ad blocker Security concerns Unhealthy child development Anti-patterns showing in the development of the internet both technologically and socially Google's anticompetitive ad-tech behavior leading to unhealthy browser market share leading to Reduction in diversity of thought in internet technology conversations Centralization of power in ad selection has the unintended side effect of dragging content along with it. Ad personalization (for the sake of maximizing profits in ad sales) led to over-personalization of the types of ads we see (echo chamber effect). Automatic content curation followed the ad-tech model, increasing profits by increasing "engagement." This led to a dangerous strengthening of the echo chamber effect. We're all now used to the central artery of human information being "free" as in beer, but costing us our ability to have a balanced, more-or-less impartial information diet or at least forcing us to work very hard for it. Google, please figure out how to give us another way to pay.
• mickotron 6y ago
  I have mostly degoogled by planning then doing a big bang. I wrote out all the things I depend on, all the things I need to migrate, the alternatives, etc. I researched the alternatives and made a decision to implement it. I then did it in stages. Currently I use my new pixel 3a with grapheneos, no google services, fastmail + k9, ddg, cloudflare dns, signal etc. I still need to sort out office suite. Collabora does have android apks that should just work but I am waiting til it gets into f-droid. The one thing I haven't migrated is Chromecast. Once that is done I will be pretty happy. Note that you will never be totally free of Google. You will still be subjected to google analytics, captcha, dns, chrome (and derivatives), etc. The idea is to be less dependent on their services, reduce Google's capability to harvest your data, and ultimately reduce their influence, power and control.