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What I Use Instead of Google

294 points by kmclean 6y ago

JAlexoid 6y ago
Moving to Apple Maps is basically stabbing yourself in the face. OSM would be a better solution. If only an email service as good as Gmail existed anywhere on this planet :(
- bribri 6y ago
  I'm running Amazon WorkMail for $5 a month under my own domain. It's very bare bones but it does what I need.
- klodolph 6y ago
  When was the last time you used Apple Maps?
- zingplex 6y ago
  Isn't OSM a major data source for Apple Maps? Edit: I checked, the OSM wiki actually has a page about it [1] [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Apple https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Apple
- oarsinsync 6y ago
  > Moving to Apple Maps is basically stabbing yourself in the face. After doing some basic A/B testing (checking Google Maps, Waze and Apple Maps for routing guidance) and establishing that Apple Maps has been giving me earlier arrival times through different routing guidance (and actually delivering on that earlier arrival time, by means of actually using it), I've determined that's less likely to be true, if you're in a city that has been refreshed recently. Combined with the (potentially anti-competitive) use of private APIs on both the iPhone and Apple Watch, enabling the phone lockscreen to always display routing guidance, and the watch to provide haptic feedback for routing guidance, Apple Maps has become a superior experience as far as driving goes. This is all if you're already a sucker in their eco-system, and happen to live in a city they care about, which I am. EDIT: At the same time.. > Moving to Apple Maps is basically stabbing yourself in the face. If you're taking this from the perspective of moving from one megacorp to another, rather than quality of service, then yes, there's basically no difference here. Apple today is claiming to care, in a similar manner to Google's old mission statement of "dont be evil". Apple have been pretty clear that their interest in your privacy only extends as far as lip service goes, given the lack of E2E encryption on iCloud storage for the majority of your data. 2 decades ago Google was "don't be evil" and here we are today. Where do we think Apple will be in a decade or two from now? So yes, in that respect, don't stab yourself in the face, and don't use any megacorp products.
  - cageface 6y ago
    We techies like to believe that we can find technical solutions to these problems but I think this is misguided. Even for a very technical user completely untangling yourself from FAANG is a lot of work and a massive inconvenience. And if this kind of privacy is really only available to a small technical elite then how much good is it anyway? Privacy is only really valuable when it's accessible to everyone. Respect for user privacy is going to have to come from regulation.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  > If only an email service as good as Gmail existed anywhere on this planet Office 365, which is Microsoft Exchange under the hood?
- jlelse 6y ago
  I use Here WeGo for maps and I'm quite happy with it.
powersnail 6y ago
> I suspect means it [DDG] would be a perfectly fine replacement for most people I suspect otherwise. DDG is as good as Google in certain topics, especially programming-related topics. But otherwise, not so good. Sometimes, it feels like it simply has indexed less pages than Google. But I still use DDG as much as possible, only !g when the results are unsatisfactory. I don't know how much it actually help DDG, though, since it doesn't seem to get much better over the past few years.
- Retric 6y ago
  IMO, their general results are close enough my preference for DDG’s UI is a major factor. Where Google wins is better parsing of math and conversions. ex: “37 * 5 gallons in liters”
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  My experience is that DDG still isn't as good as Google historically was, but Google itself has actually gotten worse, to the point that they're now about the same. The main problem seems to be that Google will no longer surface anything that isn't on a major site, so even when you know that the thing you're looking for exists, it can't find it. Obviously this also implies that it's missing a ton of stuff you didn't know existed but would have wanted to see.
  - kenhwang 6y ago
    That's what I noticed as well. I didn't switch over to DDG because it was better, I did because Google just got much worse and so cluttered with ads and knowledge blocks that were wrong more often than not.
  - idiocrat 6y ago
    > Google will no longer surface anything that isn't on a major site I like this search engine very much. It has all the "alternative" stuff. https://wiby.me/ https://wiby.me/
    - duffyjp 6y ago
mgh2 6y ago
I will suggest a more balanced and practical approach: All of Google’s unethical practices are supported by its advertising business, so the only replacement I will consider is the search engine, but even here there are no good alternatives. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25614705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25614705
executesorder66 6y ago
I've been looking for something like sync.com but free and opensource. Does such a thing exist? I'm planning on setting up my own nextcloud server, and they also have their own file manager system (Nextcloud Files), which is great for keeping files in sync across devices. And although it's nice to edit a text file that's stored on a cloud server from any of your devices, I want to be able to use more powerful desktop applications to edit/organize other files. e.g. beets for music, digikam for bulk organizing the directory structure of my photos. Darktable for editing photos. Does anyone know of a workflow that lets me do all the organizing/editing on a desktop, but still keep it all in sync with my other devices via a cloud server?
- comex 6y ago
  If you're just looking for personal sync (as opposed to collaboration), Syncthing [1] is a common recommendation, though personally I've had better luck with Unison [2]. [1] https://syncthing.net https://syncthing.net [2] https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
  - executesorder66 6y ago
    Thanks, I already use syncthing for some stuff, and it's great. However I should clarify: One of the reasons I want to move my data to a cloud server is that I am running out of space for more hard drives on my PC. So syncthing will work for editing stuff on my local and syncing the changes with my cloud server. But I don't want to store all my data on cloud _and_ on my local PC. I want something where it is usually stored on the cloud server, but where I can bulk edit/organize the data selectively on my local machine.
    - wtmt 6y ago
      Do you have local (non-cloud) backups? If yes, that's great, but otherwise I wouldn't recommend a cloud-only (or a single backup) approach to storing important data.
      - 6y ago
jerheinze 6y ago
Using YouTube with Firefox Containers is in no way anonymous. Instead try to use it with the Tor Browser (also checkout the Invidious project).
- paulcarroty 6y ago
  No way, Google constantly blocks TOR with tons of their captcha.
  - jerheinze 6y ago
    That's why I mentioned the Invidious project which is a YouTube frontend. Also solving the ReCaptcha is for most of us not an insurmountable task, it's definitely worth the cost if you want some real privacy.
nurusr12211 6y ago
I prefer using the best technology over endless virtue signaling.
- nine_k 6y ago
  Research prototypes are usually very haphazard and have a ton of rough edges. But this is how you try making something new to eventually work, and maybe even become the polished "best available".
  - nurusr12211 6y ago
    These articles are not about supporting a new or better product. It's always around virtue signaling because google = bad... she says it right there in the second paragraph.
- spamuel 6y ago
  I'd take a technology hit to break from Google, but the McMorality of the author was certainly nauseating.
- Hitton 6y ago
  I don't care about virtue signalling, best technology is worthless when google's legendarily horrendous customer service/algorithms can screw you at any moment. So for me: GMail, GDrive, GCP, etc. are too risky; even though I use Firefox because of its customizability I could use Chrome(based) browser; GMaps and Youtube are fine; I use neither Google's nor Cloudflare's DNS, they have too much of my data as it is anyway and frankly speed difference between DNS providers is negligible; only time I don't act completely rationally is good ol' search - because I'm worried about google's monopoly I try to use/support an alternative.
- Dirlewanger 6y ago
  Ok, Google.
eating555 6y ago
I've checked Linode. Why it's price is much lower than others like AWS, Azure or GCP? Because of some drawback?
- import 6y ago
  Linode has a fixed price strategy and focused on being a VPS provider.
- bserge 6y ago
  It's the other way around, AWS/etc are more expensive. Linode is just a VPS provider, and it's been great for me for the past 6 years. There are cheaper alternatives, though.
- 0xbadcafebee 6y ago
  Cloud providers like AWS are more expensive because what they provide is a completely different set of services and guarantees, so their value [and cost] is much higher. There are actually much cheaper VPS providers than Linode. Check out lowendbox.com for deals. I've had a Linode for years and it's completely underwhelming for the cost. I'd try out multiple different cheaper VPS providers instead, maybe even use multiple for redundancy at the same cost as Linode.
- itsnot2020 6y ago
  Well their offering is much simpler than that of AWS, Azure or GCP. I've been using them for over 5 years now without any issues, it's often the case that you get what you pay for but Linode do a very good job for their price point (yes they've had their issues but so have Gandi, Digital Ocean, ... any other competitor).
yeuxardents 6y ago
This is a business opportunity to provide services at a minimal cost for people. Say 1$ per month per service. Email - 1$ Calendar - 1$ Document Collab - 1$ Each addon a calculated minimalist approach to each. I still recall what gmail was when it was invite only back in the early aughts. I would still utilize that gmail client. I do NOT need gmail as it is today. And I would certainly pay 1$ per month for that service. (E) For a minimal and basic interface, along with a low cost, I and certainly others that I know who are tech illiterate, would pay that low cost for simplicity + privacy.
- oarsinsync 6y ago
  The pricing you're suggesting may not be commercially viable. That there exists paid alternatives today at a higher price point, when being sold as a dedicated service, suggests that anyone providing these services for free is doing so at a loss. They're likely able to do so because it entrenches their existing profitable businesses. It's unlikely that $12/year per account will be break-even, let alone profitable, as a standalone business.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Yeah, these customers who care enough about this stuff will also drop you if you make the slightest mistake. And with $3/user/mo you don't have much margin. You'll get wrecked. But there's good business in it if I'm wrong. So I wish you good luck.
- abawany 6y ago
  Mailbox.org offers email, calendar, and some docs/storage functionality for 2.5E/m .
  - sundarurfriend 6y ago
    Sounds like there's even a 1 € per month plan [1], with smaller limits. There's also Tutanota with a €12/year plan, offering a little bit less but with end-to-end encrypted email and calendars. [1] https://mailbox.org/en/services#e-mail-account https://mailbox.org/en/services#e-mail-account [2] https://tutanota.com/pricing/ https://tutanota.com/pricing/
mattvot 6y ago
I did something similar a few weeks ago and found that https://rclone.org/ https://rclone.org/ worked for me to automatically port Google Photos data to a Nextcloud instance with WebDAV. That being said, it cannot pull the original quality images, only the compressed version.
- vvanpo 6y ago
  Perkeep devs built a tool to grab the originals: https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp#gphotos-cdp https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp#gphotos-cdp
  - skinkestek 6y ago
    I'm afraid Google will lock me out of my account if I use anything like this?
    - jtbayly 6y ago
      Why?
      - skinkestek 6y ago
        In addition to their always valid "because we can" this would also add another: revenge.
        jtbayly 6y ago
        But are there any reports of people who use this getting locked out of their account? That would make me very leery as well. Otherwise, I wouldn't personally be worried, especially as the goal is to get off Google in the first place.
vinni2 6y ago
Every time I try to get out of google they (my colleagues) pull me back in. They share documents in google docs and google drive. I have no choice but to keep my google account.
- bdefore 6y ago
  Would they accept you using a work-related Google account?
  - firecall 6y ago
    I always make a “work” google account if the company isn’t already using GSuite. Never use my own Gmail account for work. Or my own FB account for that matter! I don’t need FB locking my account as it’s connected to some clients dodgy FB ads :-/
  - vinni2 6y ago
    They don’t mind which gmail account I use. I work at a university so we don’t have gsuite. I guess it’s a good idea to use a separate account for this but I don’t want to create yet another google account.
- ricc 6y ago
  Keeping Google as a secondary/special purpose account should be fine. I would personally consider that as “already gotten out of Google”.
- hairofadog 6y ago
  Firefox Containers are extremely helpful in this regard. I put off using them for a long time because i thought it would be a hassle but it’s super easy and keeps your work-related google activity segregated from the rest of your digital life. It also helps a lot with switching between google accounts; before I used containers I was constantly fighting with Google’s account switcher, which more often than not just straight-up didn’t work (it would either act like I had switched accounts but I hadn’t, or it would put me into a sort of endless “which account do you want to use / enter your password” loop.
dmytton 6y ago
Moving large numbers of files - like the 50k of Google Photos the author mentions - can be done using https://rclone.org https://rclone.org. Set up Google Photos as a source and then use the copy command to move it to a different location[1]. There are a lot of different commands which work with many different cloud storage systems e.g. sync everything one way locally to a backup, mount a FUSE filesystem, do two-way sync, etc. [1] https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_copy/ https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_copy/
- oarsinsync 6y ago
  Beware that using rclone with google photos may result in lower quality images and missing metadata. Below is taken from the rclone website: Limitations Downloading Images When Images are downloaded this strips EXIF location (according to the docs and my tests). This is a limitation of the Google Photos API and is covered by bug #112096115. The current google API does not allow photos to be downloaded at original resolution. This is very important if you are, for example, relying on "Google Photos" as a backup of your photos. You will not be able to use rclone to redownload original images. You could use 'google takeout' to recover the original photos as a last resort Downloading Videos When videos are downloaded they are downloaded in a really compressed version of the video compared to downloading it via the Google Photos web interface. This is covered by bug #113672044. Source: https://rclone.org/googlephotos/#limitations https://rclone.org/googlephotos/#limitations
- darkfirefly 6y ago
  If you want to save Google Photos, use Google Takeout to download it. It allowed you to download all of your google-related-data, including photos.
- budafish 6y ago
  As others have said Google Photos backup via RClone has some caveats, mainly not downloading at original quality. Google Takeout does solve this but but in weird hierarchies. I stumbled on a new project which simulates a browser download using a headless Chrome Developer tools session[0]. Looks interesting, supports continuation and can be ran on a cron job. Worth a look. [0] https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp
idownvoted 6y ago
As an aside: As more and more techies repeatedly fail to decouple their digital belongings from Google‘s infrastructure, it should become clear how strong the lock-in effect of cloud services is in general and in particular their proper UX. EG.: one of gmails main selling points always was the „available anywhere“ web interface and its quick, and useful search.
cosmotic 6y ago
If you have to use Chrome for selenium; use a docker container https://hub.docker.com/r/selenium/standalone-chrome https://hub.docker.com/r/selenium/standalone-chrome
- kmclean 6y ago
  That's a good idea! I hadn't thought about using docker.
systemvoltage 6y ago
Google is such an insane value. $5 you get GSuite, auth, drive, chat, meet, and a bunch of things. Folks that are privacy concious are equally deluded. It's marketing and you're falling for it. ProtonMail doesn't have stellar record for privacy (or any Swiss company in general). There has been several discussions about this on HN, and otherwise where many have compared email services and rated their privacy claims. FastMail seems to be the worst of all. Migadu seems to be good but an extremely bad value for your $. Stick with Google. It's not fashionable but a bargain. You're commodicized on the internet unless you run your own services. Don't let any marketing fool you. I'd rather be in iron clad hands of Google's engineering and security practices than a 30 people company with no fricking clue about security. This is often not part of the discussion.
- ricardo81 6y ago
  Saying folks that are privacy conscious 'deluded' is a bit of a stretch as well as assuming their reasons for deciding. You list a bunch of services Google provide for that $5 and yes, no doubt you can extract good value if you want to use all those things, and also don't mind relinquishing privacy for the content you choose to put on there. FWIW Gsuite is more like $7/m where I am. For me personally, you can list those bunch of things and gmail is the only really useful, day to day tool - mainly because their spam filtering is better than most. Essentially that's where the only value is, for me. Also bear in mind Google's history of retiring products, hardly 'iron clad' reliability. For me, their lack of privacy ethos compounds the problem of them having a monopoly on search, and to a large extent information discovery. That, alongside their huge reach in how they can gather information on people to aid advertising, via Chrome, Android, DNS, analytics... that huge list. Sleep walking into a society where a handful of large corps know everything about you isn't necessary.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- benzoate 6y ago
  My reason for not using google services goes beyond privacy. I also do not want to contribute to or reward Google’s monopoly practices
uniqueid 6y ago
The thing this article doesn't cover is that while you can (and imo should) make all these changes, Google will still track much of what you do online. The internet is rotten with linked media, amp pages, blogs, and ads hosted on Google servers. If you want off Google, you should use something like Pi-hole to lessen that. Since it's DNS level only, I imagine even that won't make you invisible to Google. This was a great read, but Google has a million other ways to collect data about you, against your will. That deserves a mention.
- kmclean 6y ago
  Yeah this is a fair point! I found the rhetoric in the de-goggling community to be a bit purist and defeatist at times and I'm more of a "better done than perfect" kind of person, but I also don't want to be unrealistic about Google's reach or suggest this is all it takes to escape it. I updated the post to reflect these thoughts. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
  - uniqueid 6y ago
    Cheers. I enjoyed reading your post. The amount of research you put into it showed.
    - kmclean 6y ago
      Thanks so much!
wtmt 6y ago
> Maps → Apple maps If Apple were a different company, it would've made maps available for use on web browsers and non-Apple devices. That could also help in a more rapid improvement of maps as opposed to the mostly-useless state it's been in (except for a few countries and regions in certain countries that Apple likes and works more on). > and still a little YouTube (anonymously in a Firefox container) If a Firefox Container is an option, then I'd rather prefer Startpage to DDG for search. Most of the time, I end up performing the search on DDG at least twice (the second time with a bang command to go to Startpage or Google) or I have a heuristic that DDG won't help and just go to the other search engines. > DNS → Cloudflare DNS Others to consider are Quad9 (9.9.9.9) and NextDNS (if you want ad and tracker blocking lists to be configured at the DNS level, sorta like a Pi-Hole, but on the cloud). > I feel like I've won a lot by doing all this. I own my data now, so Google can't arbitrarily take it away from me, which gives me peace of mind. I'm no longer part of their ad ecosystem, being tracked all around the internet and having my attention sold to the highest bidder. The "Google can't arbitrarily take it away" is a good argument, but "I'm no longer part of their ad ecosystem, being tracked all around the internet" requires a lot more effort than just avoiding using google.com, youtube.com, gmail.com, etc. I'm not saying that the current transitions are useless, but that there's more to it.
- reaktivo 6y ago
  Apple Maps is available on the web, DDG uses it for it's own maps
  - hairofadog 6y ago
    I was going to mention this too. However, to be fair to the parent commenter, Apple Maps on the web is only a recent development, it lacks a ton of the features of Google Maps on the web, and its world-wide coverage isn’t great. There’s also the fact that there’s no direct web interface for it, so if you were going to tell someone using a browser to “just use Apple Maps”, they would have to jump through some mental hoops to find a way to do that. All that said, I’m optimistic and hope they move in that direction.
    - 6y ago
dusted 6y ago
I'm all for getting out of the cloud, but moving from one company, to multiple other companies seems to have achieved nothing but diversify and multiply the amount of terms you've had to agree to (they will all tell you the same thing in the end: if they block your account, or lose your data, it's your problem). The only real solution is self-hosting[1], which is becoming a bit difficult with email these days. [1] No, a rented server in some datacenter is not self-hosting, self-hosting is when you can walk into a room and point to the box that stores your mail.
- dusted 6y ago
  Down to -1 now, I take that as a clear sign that someone does not want to think too much about just how bad our situation has become :) (or they're trying to sell a SaaS and therefore need me to be wrong), nice :)
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    It's amazing how this place is called "Hacker" News and downvotes opinions that are not mainstream enough or not corporate-friendly enough. You are right that self-hosting means that your data sits on your devices, and this should be made possible to most users without having to pay 3rd party services, buy domains, pay for VPSes and learn to manage servers. (edit: hah, the downvotes are coming already!)
- skinkestek 6y ago
  > they will all tell you the same thing in the end: if they block your account, or lose your data, it's your problem Still there's a huge gap between "might do that according to the contract" and "does so on a regular basis and is well known to have no official way to appeal".
  - dusted 6y ago
    There's also a huge gap between the number of proton mail users and gmail accounts, percentage-wise, it'd be interesting to see how many percent of gmail/protonmail users has problems and. I'm sure we will see the most silly examples from gmail, we have to, because they have the most users, and so the greatest chance of hitting strange edge-cases. And with edge-case, I don't meen technical ones only, but also customer-support ones.. If you've got support for many more people, then more people are going to have a bad experience, and even more likely that someone has a rare (in percent of total experiences) terrible one. I'm the one entirely against any cloud stuff, I just don't buy the argument that other providers are necessarily better. The bigger you are, the more interactions you do with your clients, the more likely that you will mess it up big-time for some of them.
logicchains 6y ago
I try to use Bing for all my searches (set it as the browser default), but at least a third of the time I end up needing to open Google and search there instead. Anyone got any tips for getting better results out of Bing? It doesn't help that when I'm using a VPN, searching for an English term often causes Bing to deliver a bunch of results in the native language of the place the VPN is located, rather than in English.
- crocodiletears 6y ago
  The quote and plus search operators are your friends for that last third. I don't think Bing tailors its search results as aggressively as Google does, so you sometimes have to be more explicit with domain-specific searches.
- paulcarroty 6y ago
  Makes sense to try duckduckgo or startpage? My Bing using experience was extremely bad for all non-tech, maybe except sport.
  - s5ma6n 6y ago
    I have the same bad experience with DDG and it is so slow. I found Bing relatively better and it is constantly improving with new features.
    - skinkestek 6y ago
      Maybe 2021 will be the year when I give Bing a real chance? (I was simultaneously deeply impressed and worried last year when a colleague of mine showed that Bing also returns results from company intranets if they are set up correctly and you are signed in to Bing with your work account.)
    - FabHK 6y ago
      DDG can be localised to a country in a drop-down menu on the left above the results.
  - 6y ago
johnmpage 6y ago
Your list neglects a huge data vacuum, scooping up your personal data: the Android OS on your phone, which Google develops. My recommendation to replace: eOS by the eFoundation (https://e.foundation/ https://e.foundation/)
zan5hin 6y ago
Instead of Google Analytics look at Matomo. Since you are self-hosting Nextcloud, standing up a self-hosted Matomo instance won't be difficult. https://matomo.org https://matomo.org
cbradford 6y ago
Here is a similar write up on how to exit google http://www.scorchedweb.com/uncategorized/exit-the-goolag/ http://www.scorchedweb.com/uncategorized/exit-the-goolag/
rurban 6y ago
Re Firefox vs Chrome: On Fedora chrome is unusable with newer video formats, you have to use Firefox. Which is better in all aspects.
karlzt 6y ago
Recommendations for good, helpful, non-toxic tools: https://goodreports.com/ https://goodreports.com/
comeonseriously 6y ago
> Maps → Apple maps HERE Maps is good.
- zoomablemind 6y ago
  +1 HERE We Go, they also have an app and support the offline maps. Very handy. Basically, Nokia Maps.
dhimes 6y ago
Google's gotten weird. Yesterday I was doing some keyword planning and got a negative (-) cpc and cost. I looked everywhere to try to determine what that meant and didn't find anything. They have online chat support, so I tried that. I got routed to a sales rep who called me on the phone and who, after taking all my information while basically ignoring my question, finally heard me. She didn't know the answer. She sent me a support link which was the same one that routed me to her. I told her this and all she could say was she was sorry and she couldn't help unless I was ready to launch a campaign. I honestly don't think she knew anything. I'm suspicious that these are indy workers getting routed prospects by Google. I don't know. The whole thing was sleazy. Years ago when I managed to get someone on the line she stayed with me until my problem was solved. And this wasn't even a problem (or maybe it was? wouldn't be the first bug I found on their site). I was just asking a question.
- modeitsch 6y ago
  I planned a google ad campaign with a 200 TOTAL budget. A google representative helped me setting up the account, after 4 days she calls me back and said that my ad is doing very well, And it’s already holding at 800$. Till now google didn’t give me back my money with claiming that I don’t have prof. They are not willing to listen to there own phone systems recording’s because they know that I’m right. So basically WE ARE NOT THE CUSTOMER WE ARE THE PRODUCT
  - RealStickman_ 6y ago
    How's the legality of recording a call if the other party does that as well?
    - cj 6y ago
      If there's a message that says "This call may be recorded..." then I would consider that to be adequate consent for either party to record the call, not just 1 party. But IANAL.
    - tjoff 6y ago
      In a lot of places it is legal to record a call as long as one of the parties (that is yourself) is in on it. That is, you can't record a call between two other people but you can always record a call that yourself are participating in.
whoknew1122 6y ago
Interesting to see what others use. I'm a bit curious about using CloudFlare's DNS though. If you take a stand against Google's societal impact, why switch to CloudFlare? CloudFlare's 'content neutral' stance enables a lot of hate speech and other, more disgusting material. It seems odd to have ethical concerns about Google, but not CloudFlare.
- kmclean 6y ago
  I haven't done as much research about CloudFlare. I generally appreciate their views on privacy and the internet, but I have heard some really sketchy things about the way they route traffic and what you're describing sounds worrisome for sure! I find it extremely hard to be an ethical consumer these days and honestly just get burnt out learning about all the horrible things people and companies with lots of money get away with, so I need to pace myself and take it in manageable doses. I will spend some time learning about Cloudflare this year.
- glial 6y ago
  I am against censorship but also don’t support companies who actively promote hate speech via recommendations. I’m ok with anyone having a blog but not OK with FB/Google creating conspiracy theory rabbit holes to drive engagement. This is a distinction I wish more people made.
- kbelder 6y ago
  Because I think censoring hate speech can have a worse societal impact than being a neutral host. CloudFlare is, from my viewpoint, behaving more ethically.
blisterpeanuts 6y ago
When it comes to technology, people prefer one-stop shopping. Google's email, mapping, mobile OS, search, calendars, video, photos are all free and best-of-class or at least good enough to be satisfactory to 80% of the people, who think they're getting a bargain even as they put more and more of their personal information in Google's hands. It seems as though there's no way to break this voluntary-monopoly. Waze came along with brilliant innovations like BLE devices monitoring traffic in underpasses etc. (my company makes some of the devices they use) and finding best alternative routes, and an innovative UX, so Google simply bought them, problem solved. There's a whole menagerie of alternatives to Youtube, but they're like ants next to an elephant. And of course, Youtube itself was bought by Google; they've advanced it technically, but it was better in the old days, less censorship and better remuneration for creators. Like a lot of other techies, I've switched to DDG for searches and I don't really miss Google search. Probably I use !g about once or twice a month. It seems to me there's lots of opportunities to improve on Google's offerings; Apple seems uninterested in competing head-to-head aside from its mobile phone OS, but there are still innovations out there waiting to be discovered. Perhaps some here will be among those future billionaires, giving us better alternatives to The Goog which in my opinion has gotten a little too big for its britches.
- swiftcoder 6y ago
  > Apple seems uninterested in competing head-to-head aside from its mobile phone OS, I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple keep nibbling at Google's software business as it transitions more fully to an added-value services model. Little moves like Apple Music on android, Apple TV+ on Android-based TVs... One could see a similar play occurring with fitness, books, and maybe even maps in the services-centric Apple future.
0x53 6y ago
I did something extremely similar: https://mallocate.com/blog/removing-google/ https://mallocate.com/blog/removing-google/
FabHK 6y ago
Good recommendations. To minimize Youtube tracking, I use the fantastic `youtube-dl` to get the movie (or only audio) locally, then keep it or discard it as the case may be.
- tmpUserA 6y ago
  As far as I understand, to track users, website use : IP, Cookie/LocalStorage, Fingerprinting. I wonder if youtube-dl really helps ? It doesn't change the IP, you can refuse/clear cookies in your browser, and for fingerprinting, isn't scraping via youtube-dl make you even more unique among other regular browser users ?
  - FabHK 6y ago
    Good question. A) IP - use a VPN. youtube-dl == browser B) Cookies - youtube-dl doesn't retain cookies, I presume. youtube-dl >= browser C) Fingerprinting - good question. I'd hope youtube-dl doesn't offer as many avenues. Can it identify you from one visit to the next? Beats me!
iou 6y ago
> GoogleDNS -> CloudflareDNS It's better for sure, just from trying a couple (OpenDns, cloudflare, quad9) I really love the offering from nextDNS https://nextdns.io https://nextdns.io It somewhat smashes together the features of pi-hole and opendns with the features like DoT or DoH as you get in cloudflare
- buildbot 6y ago
  Seconding NextDNS, it’s well worth the price for the features and privacy. And not having to administer a piHole, which was always slightly unstable for me.
iou 6y ago
An extra degoogling Google Keep -> Joplin (https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/) I tried a lot of note taking apps and liked this one for its simplicity (just markdown) and cross platform support. Then just store sync it all either via boxcryptor or nextcloud.
- XCSme 6y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion, I have been looking for a good note-taking app forever, this looks interesting!
  - modeitsch 6y ago
    is there a way to import all my google keep notes ?
    - unilock 6y ago
      Personally, I went from Google Keep to Standard Notes to NextCloud Notes, but the process is similar to go from Standard Notes to Joplin. There's instructions for how to transfer from Google Keep to Standard Notes here[1]. Then, export from Standard Notes via a "Decrypted" data archive[2], extract the plain text files from the resulting archive (I don't recall the exact path), rename them all from .txt to .md using zmv or a similar pattern-based file renaming program, and import them to Joplin as-is[3]. You'll lose formatting, unfortunately, and probably other things like attachments and checkboxes -- I'm not entirely sure, as I didn't use any of the more advanced features of Google Keep. There's also instructions to go from Standard Notes to Joplin directly[4], bypassing plain text. That might preserve formatting and such. Your mileage may vary, as they say. [1] https://standardnotes.org/help/35/how-can-i-import-my-notes-from-google-keep https://standardnotes.org/help/35/how-can-i-import-my-notes-... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/StandardNotes/comments/5sf0id/you_can_now_export_all_your_notes_as_plain_txt/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StandardNotes/comments/5sf0id/you_c... [3] https://joplinapp.org/#importing-from-markdown-files https://joplinapp.org/#importing-from-markdown-files [4] https://programadorwebvalencia.com/migrate-notes-from-standard-notes-to-joplin/ https://programadorwebvalencia.com/migrate-notes-from-standa...
Netcob 6y ago
That little downtime recently that in some places looked like Google had deleted my account got me quite a shock and made me re-evaluate my dependence on Google too. For anyone looking for a simple self-hosted file sync system I'd recommend Seafile though. It has delta sync (like Dropbox) and great performance. I finally switched to it after years of increasing frustration with Nextcloud, which has none of these things.
perryizgr8 6y ago
> Maps → Apple maps I can't find Apple maps in the play store. Is there another alternative?
mcwoods 6y ago
Problem is on the phone side. There is a duopoly; Apple or Google. Neither is great. We should be able to have control over this, as it is increasingly being the way in which the majority of the public have access to their information (photos, docs, etc). Same on the desktop we have MS, Apple. Yes Linux (variations) are available on both, more so on desktop, but not a real possibility for most consumes.
ericholscher 6y ago
We’re trying to build a competitor to Google ads, targeted at developers: https://www.ethicalads.io/ https://www.ethicalads.io/ As developers we understand the most how privacy is violated across the Internet. If we can’t contribute to the change in the ecosystem, we don’t have much hope for the rest of the industry.
bluGill 6y ago
Has anyone compared all the photo alternatives? I need a good place to store my family photos and share with my wife. Email and search are easy, email is standard so anyone can do the same features more or less. Search has no lock-in so you can just try whatever. Photos doesn't seems to be either, and I don't personally want to invest the time to try them all.
- kmclean 6y ago
  I'm curious about this, too.. I'm trying out a couple of different ones now, but Google photos is pretty hard to beat, especially its semantic searching. Also I know there are loads of them I haven't tried yet.
mro_name 6y ago
Chapeau, good move. Your honesty is impressive. IMO paying money and thus enabling humane businesses to thrive is key.

294 points by kmclean 6y ago

Moving to Apple Maps is basically stabbing yourself in the face. OSM would be a better solution. If only an email service as good as Gmail existed anywhere on this planet :(

bribri 6y ago
I'm running Amazon WorkMail for $5 a month under my own domain. It's very bare bones but it does what I need.
klodolph 6y ago
When was the last time you used Apple Maps?
zingplex 6y ago
Isn't OSM a major data source for Apple Maps? Edit: I checked, the OSM wiki actually has a page about it [1] [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Apple https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Apple
oarsinsync 6y ago
> Moving to Apple Maps is basically stabbing yourself in the face. After doing some basic A/B testing (checking Google Maps, Waze and Apple Maps for routing guidance) and establishing that Apple Maps has been giving me earlier arrival times through different routing guidance (and actually delivering on that earlier arrival time, by means of actually using it), I've determined that's less likely to be true, if you're in a city that has been refreshed recently. Combined with the (potentially anti-competitive) use of private APIs on both the iPhone and Apple Watch, enabling the phone lockscreen to always display routing guidance, and the watch to provide haptic feedback for routing guidance, Apple Maps has become a superior experience as far as driving goes. This is all if you're already a sucker in their eco-system, and happen to live in a city they care about, which I am. EDIT: At the same time.. > Moving to Apple Maps is basically stabbing yourself in the face. If you're taking this from the perspective of moving from one megacorp to another, rather than quality of service, then yes, there's basically no difference here. Apple today is claiming to care, in a similar manner to Google's old mission statement of "dont be evil". Apple have been pretty clear that their interest in your privacy only extends as far as lip service goes, given the lack of E2E encryption on iCloud storage for the majority of your data. 2 decades ago Google was "don't be evil" and here we are today. Where do we think Apple will be in a decade or two from now? So yes, in that respect, don't stab yourself in the face, and don't use any megacorp products.
- cageface 6y ago
  We techies like to believe that we can find technical solutions to these problems but I think this is misguided. Even for a very technical user completely untangling yourself from FAANG is a lot of work and a massive inconvenience. And if this kind of privacy is really only available to a small technical elite then how much good is it anyway? Privacy is only really valuable when it's accessible to everyone. Respect for user privacy is going to have to come from regulation.
Nextgrid 6y ago
> If only an email service as good as Gmail existed anywhere on this planet Office 365, which is Microsoft Exchange under the hood?
jlelse 6y ago
I use Here WeGo for maps and I'm quite happy with it.

powersnail 6y ago

> I suspect means it [DDG] would be a perfectly fine replacement for most people I suspect otherwise. DDG is as good as Google in certain topics, especially programming-related topics. But otherwise, not so good. Sometimes, it feels like it simply has indexed less pages than Google. But I still use DDG as much as possible, only !g when the results are unsatisfactory. I don't know how much it actually help DDG, though, since it doesn't seem to get much better over the past few years.

Retric 6y ago
IMO, their general results are close enough my preference for DDG’s UI is a major factor. Where Google wins is better parsing of math and conversions. ex: “37 * 5 gallons in liters”
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
My experience is that DDG still isn't as good as Google historically was, but Google itself has actually gotten worse, to the point that they're now about the same. The main problem seems to be that Google will no longer surface anything that isn't on a major site, so even when you know that the thing you're looking for exists, it can't find it. Obviously this also implies that it's missing a ton of stuff you didn't know existed but would have wanted to see.
- kenhwang 6y ago
  That's what I noticed as well. I didn't switch over to DDG because it was better, I did because Google just got much worse and so cluttered with ads and knowledge blocks that were wrong more often than not.
- idiocrat 6y ago
  > Google will no longer surface anything that isn't on a major site I like this search engine very much. It has all the "alternative" stuff. https://wiby.me/ https://wiby.me/
  - duffyjp 6y ago

mgh2 6y ago

I will suggest a more balanced and practical approach: All of Google’s unethical practices are supported by its advertising business, so the only replacement I will consider is the search engine, but even here there are no good alternatives. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25614705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25614705

executesorder66 6y ago

I've been looking for something like sync.com but free and opensource. Does such a thing exist? I'm planning on setting up my own nextcloud server, and they also have their own file manager system (Nextcloud Files), which is great for keeping files in sync across devices. And although it's nice to edit a text file that's stored on a cloud server from any of your devices, I want to be able to use more powerful desktop applications to edit/organize other files. e.g. beets for music, digikam for bulk organizing the directory structure of my photos. Darktable for editing photos. Does anyone know of a workflow that lets me do all the organizing/editing on a desktop, but still keep it all in sync with my other devices via a cloud server?

comex 6y ago
If you're just looking for personal sync (as opposed to collaboration), Syncthing [1] is a common recommendation, though personally I've had better luck with Unison [2]. [1] https://syncthing.net https://syncthing.net [2] https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
- executesorder66 6y ago
  Thanks, I already use syncthing for some stuff, and it's great. However I should clarify: One of the reasons I want to move my data to a cloud server is that I am running out of space for more hard drives on my PC. So syncthing will work for editing stuff on my local and syncing the changes with my cloud server. But I don't want to store all my data on cloud _and_ on my local PC. I want something where it is usually stored on the cloud server, but where I can bulk edit/organize the data selectively on my local machine.
  - wtmt 6y ago
    Do you have local (non-cloud) backups? If yes, that's great, but otherwise I wouldn't recommend a cloud-only (or a single backup) approach to storing important data.
    - 6y ago

jerheinze 6y ago

Using YouTube with Firefox Containers is in no way anonymous. Instead try to use it with the Tor Browser (also checkout the Invidious project).

paulcarroty 6y ago
No way, Google constantly blocks TOR with tons of their captcha.
- jerheinze 6y ago
  That's why I mentioned the Invidious project which is a YouTube frontend. Also solving the ReCaptcha is for most of us not an insurmountable task, it's definitely worth the cost if you want some real privacy.

nurusr12211 6y ago

I prefer using the best technology over endless virtue signaling.

nine_k 6y ago
Research prototypes are usually very haphazard and have a ton of rough edges. But this is how you try making something new to eventually work, and maybe even become the polished "best available".
- nurusr12211 6y ago
  These articles are not about supporting a new or better product. It's always around virtue signaling because google = bad... she says it right there in the second paragraph.
spamuel 6y ago
I'd take a technology hit to break from Google, but the McMorality of the author was certainly nauseating.
Hitton 6y ago
I don't care about virtue signalling, best technology is worthless when google's legendarily horrendous customer service/algorithms can screw you at any moment. So for me: GMail, GDrive, GCP, etc. are too risky; even though I use Firefox because of its customizability I could use Chrome(based) browser; GMaps and Youtube are fine; I use neither Google's nor Cloudflare's DNS, they have too much of my data as it is anyway and frankly speed difference between DNS providers is negligible; only time I don't act completely rationally is good ol' search - because I'm worried about google's monopoly I try to use/support an alternative.
Dirlewanger 6y ago
Ok, Google.

eating555 6y ago

I've checked Linode. Why it's price is much lower than others like AWS, Azure or GCP? Because of some drawback?

import 6y ago
Linode has a fixed price strategy and focused on being a VPS provider.
bserge 6y ago
It's the other way around, AWS/etc are more expensive. Linode is just a VPS provider, and it's been great for me for the past 6 years. There are cheaper alternatives, though.
0xbadcafebee 6y ago
Cloud providers like AWS are more expensive because what they provide is a completely different set of services and guarantees, so their value [and cost] is much higher. There are actually much cheaper VPS providers than Linode. Check out lowendbox.com for deals. I've had a Linode for years and it's completely underwhelming for the cost. I'd try out multiple different cheaper VPS providers instead, maybe even use multiple for redundancy at the same cost as Linode.
itsnot2020 6y ago
Well their offering is much simpler than that of AWS, Azure or GCP. I've been using them for over 5 years now without any issues, it's often the case that you get what you pay for but Linode do a very good job for their price point (yes they've had their issues but so have Gandi, Digital Ocean, ... any other competitor).

yeuxardents 6y ago

This is a business opportunity to provide services at a minimal cost for people. Say 1$ per month per service. Email - 1$ Calendar - 1$ Document Collab - 1$ Each addon a calculated minimalist approach to each. I still recall what gmail was when it was invite only back in the early aughts. I would still utilize that gmail client. I do NOT need gmail as it is today. And I would certainly pay 1$ per month for that service. (E) For a minimal and basic interface, along with a low cost, I and certainly others that I know who are tech illiterate, would pay that low cost for simplicity + privacy.

oarsinsync 6y ago
The pricing you're suggesting may not be commercially viable. That there exists paid alternatives today at a higher price point, when being sold as a dedicated service, suggests that anyone providing these services for free is doing so at a loss. They're likely able to do so because it entrenches their existing profitable businesses. It's unlikely that $12/year per account will be break-even, let alone profitable, as a standalone business.
renewiltord 6y ago
Yeah, these customers who care enough about this stuff will also drop you if you make the slightest mistake. And with $3/user/mo you don't have much margin. You'll get wrecked. But there's good business in it if I'm wrong. So I wish you good luck.
abawany 6y ago
Mailbox.org offers email, calendar, and some docs/storage functionality for 2.5E/m .
- sundarurfriend 6y ago
  Sounds like there's even a 1 € per month plan [1], with smaller limits. There's also Tutanota with a €12/year plan, offering a little bit less but with end-to-end encrypted email and calendars. [1] https://mailbox.org/en/services#e-mail-account https://mailbox.org/en/services#e-mail-account [2] https://tutanota.com/pricing/ https://tutanota.com/pricing/

mattvot 6y ago

I did something similar a few weeks ago and found that https://rclone.org/ https://rclone.org/ worked for me to automatically port Google Photos data to a Nextcloud instance with WebDAV. That being said, it cannot pull the original quality images, only the compressed version.

vvanpo 6y ago
Perkeep devs built a tool to grab the originals: https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp#gphotos-cdp https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp#gphotos-cdp
- skinkestek 6y ago
  I'm afraid Google will lock me out of my account if I use anything like this?
  - jtbayly 6y ago
    Why?
    - skinkestek 6y ago
      In addition to their always valid "because we can" this would also add another: revenge.
      - jtbayly 6y ago
        But are there any reports of people who use this getting locked out of their account? That would make me very leery as well. Otherwise, I wouldn't personally be worried, especially as the goal is to get off Google in the first place.

vinni2 6y ago

Every time I try to get out of google they (my colleagues) pull me back in. They share documents in google docs and google drive. I have no choice but to keep my google account.

bdefore 6y ago
Would they accept you using a work-related Google account?
- firecall 6y ago
  I always make a “work” google account if the company isn’t already using GSuite. Never use my own Gmail account for work. Or my own FB account for that matter! I don’t need FB locking my account as it’s connected to some clients dodgy FB ads :-/
- vinni2 6y ago
  They don’t mind which gmail account I use. I work at a university so we don’t have gsuite. I guess it’s a good idea to use a separate account for this but I don’t want to create yet another google account.
ricc 6y ago
Keeping Google as a secondary/special purpose account should be fine. I would personally consider that as “already gotten out of Google”.
hairofadog 6y ago
Firefox Containers are extremely helpful in this regard. I put off using them for a long time because i thought it would be a hassle but it’s super easy and keeps your work-related google activity segregated from the rest of your digital life. It also helps a lot with switching between google accounts; before I used containers I was constantly fighting with Google’s account switcher, which more often than not just straight-up didn’t work (it would either act like I had switched accounts but I hadn’t, or it would put me into a sort of endless “which account do you want to use / enter your password” loop.

dmytton 6y ago

Moving large numbers of files - like the 50k of Google Photos the author mentions - can be done using https://rclone.org https://rclone.org. Set up Google Photos as a source and then use the copy command to move it to a different location[1]. There are a lot of different commands which work with many different cloud storage systems e.g. sync everything one way locally to a backup, mount a FUSE filesystem, do two-way sync, etc. [1] https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_copy/ https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_copy/

oarsinsync 6y ago
Beware that using rclone with google photos may result in lower quality images and missing metadata. Below is taken from the rclone website: Limitations Downloading Images When Images are downloaded this strips EXIF location (according to the docs and my tests). This is a limitation of the Google Photos API and is covered by bug #112096115. The current google API does not allow photos to be downloaded at original resolution. This is very important if you are, for example, relying on "Google Photos" as a backup of your photos. You will not be able to use rclone to redownload original images. You could use 'google takeout' to recover the original photos as a last resort Downloading Videos When videos are downloaded they are downloaded in a really compressed version of the video compared to downloading it via the Google Photos web interface. This is covered by bug #113672044. Source: https://rclone.org/googlephotos/#limitations https://rclone.org/googlephotos/#limitations
darkfirefly 6y ago
If you want to save Google Photos, use Google Takeout to download it. It allowed you to download all of your google-related-data, including photos.
budafish 6y ago
As others have said Google Photos backup via RClone has some caveats, mainly not downloading at original quality. Google Takeout does solve this but but in weird hierarchies. I stumbled on a new project which simulates a browser download using a headless Chrome Developer tools session[0]. Looks interesting, supports continuation and can be ran on a cron job. Worth a look. [0] https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp

idownvoted 6y ago

As an aside: As more and more techies repeatedly fail to decouple their digital belongings from Google‘s infrastructure, it should become clear how strong the lock-in effect of cloud services is in general and in particular their proper UX. EG.: one of gmails main selling points always was the „available anywhere“ web interface and its quick, and useful search.

cosmotic 6y ago

If you have to use Chrome for selenium; use a docker container https://hub.docker.com/r/selenium/standalone-chrome https://hub.docker.com/r/selenium/standalone-chrome

kmclean 6y ago
That's a good idea! I hadn't thought about using docker.

systemvoltage 6y ago

Google is such an insane value. $5 you get GSuite, auth, drive, chat, meet, and a bunch of things. Folks that are privacy concious are equally deluded. It's marketing and you're falling for it. ProtonMail doesn't have stellar record for privacy (or any Swiss company in general). There has been several discussions about this on HN, and otherwise where many have compared email services and rated their privacy claims. FastMail seems to be the worst of all. Migadu seems to be good but an extremely bad value for your $. Stick with Google. It's not fashionable but a bargain. You're commodicized on the internet unless you run your own services. Don't let any marketing fool you. I'd rather be in iron clad hands of Google's engineering and security practices than a 30 people company with no fricking clue about security. This is often not part of the discussion.

ricardo81 6y ago
Saying folks that are privacy conscious 'deluded' is a bit of a stretch as well as assuming their reasons for deciding. You list a bunch of services Google provide for that $5 and yes, no doubt you can extract good value if you want to use all those things, and also don't mind relinquishing privacy for the content you choose to put on there. FWIW Gsuite is more like $7/m where I am. For me personally, you can list those bunch of things and gmail is the only really useful, day to day tool - mainly because their spam filtering is better than most. Essentially that's where the only value is, for me. Also bear in mind Google's history of retiring products, hardly 'iron clad' reliability. For me, their lack of privacy ethos compounds the problem of them having a monopoly on search, and to a large extent information discovery. That, alongside their huge reach in how they can gather information on people to aid advertising, via Chrome, Android, DNS, analytics... that huge list. Sleep walking into a society where a handful of large corps know everything about you isn't necessary.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
benzoate 6y ago
My reason for not using google services goes beyond privacy. I also do not want to contribute to or reward Google’s monopoly practices

uniqueid 6y ago

The thing this article doesn't cover is that while you can (and imo should) make all these changes, Google will still track much of what you do online. The internet is rotten with linked media, amp pages, blogs, and ads hosted on Google servers. If you want off Google, you should use something like Pi-hole to lessen that. Since it's DNS level only, I imagine even that won't make you invisible to Google. This was a great read, but Google has a million other ways to collect data about you, against your will. That deserves a mention.

kmclean 6y ago
Yeah this is a fair point! I found the rhetoric in the de-goggling community to be a bit purist and defeatist at times and I'm more of a "better done than perfect" kind of person, but I also don't want to be unrealistic about Google's reach or suggest this is all it takes to escape it. I updated the post to reflect these thoughts. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
- uniqueid 6y ago
  Cheers. I enjoyed reading your post. The amount of research you put into it showed.
  - kmclean 6y ago
    Thanks so much!

wtmt 6y ago

> Maps → Apple maps If Apple were a different company, it would've made maps available for use on web browsers and non-Apple devices. That could also help in a more rapid improvement of maps as opposed to the mostly-useless state it's been in (except for a few countries and regions in certain countries that Apple likes and works more on). > and still a little YouTube (anonymously in a Firefox container) If a Firefox Container is an option, then I'd rather prefer Startpage to DDG for search. Most of the time, I end up performing the search on DDG at least twice (the second time with a bang command to go to Startpage or Google) or I have a heuristic that DDG won't help and just go to the other search engines. > DNS → Cloudflare DNS Others to consider are Quad9 (9.9.9.9) and NextDNS (if you want ad and tracker blocking lists to be configured at the DNS level, sorta like a Pi-Hole, but on the cloud). > I feel like I've won a lot by doing all this. I own my data now, so Google can't arbitrarily take it away from me, which gives me peace of mind. I'm no longer part of their ad ecosystem, being tracked all around the internet and having my attention sold to the highest bidder. The "Google can't arbitrarily take it away" is a good argument, but "I'm no longer part of their ad ecosystem, being tracked all around the internet" requires a lot more effort than just avoiding using google.com, youtube.com, gmail.com, etc. I'm not saying that the current transitions are useless, but that there's more to it.

reaktivo 6y ago
Apple Maps is available on the web, DDG uses it for it's own maps
- hairofadog 6y ago
  I was going to mention this too. However, to be fair to the parent commenter, Apple Maps on the web is only a recent development, it lacks a ton of the features of Google Maps on the web, and its world-wide coverage isn’t great. There’s also the fact that there’s no direct web interface for it, so if you were going to tell someone using a browser to “just use Apple Maps”, they would have to jump through some mental hoops to find a way to do that. All that said, I’m optimistic and hope they move in that direction.
  - 6y ago

dusted 6y ago

I'm all for getting out of the cloud, but moving from one company, to multiple other companies seems to have achieved nothing but diversify and multiply the amount of terms you've had to agree to (they will all tell you the same thing in the end: if they block your account, or lose your data, it's your problem). The only real solution is self-hosting[1], which is becoming a bit difficult with email these days. [1] No, a rented server in some datacenter is not self-hosting, self-hosting is when you can walk into a room and point to the box that stores your mail.

dusted 6y ago
Down to -1 now, I take that as a clear sign that someone does not want to think too much about just how bad our situation has become :) (or they're trying to sell a SaaS and therefore need me to be wrong), nice :)
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  It's amazing how this place is called "Hacker" News and downvotes opinions that are not mainstream enough or not corporate-friendly enough. You are right that self-hosting means that your data sits on your devices, and this should be made possible to most users without having to pay 3rd party services, buy domains, pay for VPSes and learn to manage servers. (edit: hah, the downvotes are coming already!)
skinkestek 6y ago
> they will all tell you the same thing in the end: if they block your account, or lose your data, it's your problem Still there's a huge gap between "might do that according to the contract" and "does so on a regular basis and is well known to have no official way to appeal".
- dusted 6y ago
  There's also a huge gap between the number of proton mail users and gmail accounts, percentage-wise, it'd be interesting to see how many percent of gmail/protonmail users has problems and. I'm sure we will see the most silly examples from gmail, we have to, because they have the most users, and so the greatest chance of hitting strange edge-cases. And with edge-case, I don't meen technical ones only, but also customer-support ones.. If you've got support for many more people, then more people are going to have a bad experience, and even more likely that someone has a rare (in percent of total experiences) terrible one. I'm the one entirely against any cloud stuff, I just don't buy the argument that other providers are necessarily better. The bigger you are, the more interactions you do with your clients, the more likely that you will mess it up big-time for some of them.

logicchains 6y ago

I try to use Bing for all my searches (set it as the browser default), but at least a third of the time I end up needing to open Google and search there instead. Anyone got any tips for getting better results out of Bing? It doesn't help that when I'm using a VPN, searching for an English term often causes Bing to deliver a bunch of results in the native language of the place the VPN is located, rather than in English.

crocodiletears 6y ago
The quote and plus search operators are your friends for that last third. I don't think Bing tailors its search results as aggressively as Google does, so you sometimes have to be more explicit with domain-specific searches.
paulcarroty 6y ago
Makes sense to try duckduckgo or startpage? My Bing using experience was extremely bad for all non-tech, maybe except sport.
- s5ma6n 6y ago
  I have the same bad experience with DDG and it is so slow. I found Bing relatively better and it is constantly improving with new features.
  - skinkestek 6y ago
    Maybe 2021 will be the year when I give Bing a real chance? (I was simultaneously deeply impressed and worried last year when a colleague of mine showed that Bing also returns results from company intranets if they are set up correctly and you are signed in to Bing with your work account.)
  - FabHK 6y ago
    DDG can be localised to a country in a drop-down menu on the left above the results.
- 6y ago

johnmpage 6y ago

Your list neglects a huge data vacuum, scooping up your personal data: the Android OS on your phone, which Google develops. My recommendation to replace: eOS by the eFoundation (https://e.foundation/ https://e.foundation/)

zan5hin 6y ago

Instead of Google Analytics look at Matomo. Since you are self-hosting Nextcloud, standing up a self-hosted Matomo instance won't be difficult. https://matomo.org https://matomo.org

cbradford 6y ago

Here is a similar write up on how to exit google http://www.scorchedweb.com/uncategorized/exit-the-goolag/ http://www.scorchedweb.com/uncategorized/exit-the-goolag/

rurban 6y ago

Re Firefox vs Chrome: On Fedora chrome is unusable with newer video formats, you have to use Firefox. Which is better in all aspects.

karlzt 6y ago

Recommendations for good, helpful, non-toxic tools: https://goodreports.com/ https://goodreports.com/

comeonseriously 6y ago

> Maps → Apple maps HERE Maps is good.

zoomablemind 6y ago
+1 HERE We Go, they also have an app and support the offline maps. Very handy. Basically, Nokia Maps.

dhimes 6y ago

Google's gotten weird. Yesterday I was doing some keyword planning and got a negative (-) cpc and cost. I looked everywhere to try to determine what that meant and didn't find anything. They have online chat support, so I tried that. I got routed to a sales rep who called me on the phone and who, after taking all my information while basically ignoring my question, finally heard me. She didn't know the answer. She sent me a support link which was the same one that routed me to her. I told her this and all she could say was she was sorry and she couldn't help unless I was ready to launch a campaign. I honestly don't think she knew anything. I'm suspicious that these are indy workers getting routed prospects by Google. I don't know. The whole thing was sleazy. Years ago when I managed to get someone on the line she stayed with me until my problem was solved. And this wasn't even a problem (or maybe it was? wouldn't be the first bug I found on their site). I was just asking a question.

modeitsch 6y ago
I planned a google ad campaign with a 200 TOTAL budget. A google representative helped me setting up the account, after 4 days she calls me back and said that my ad is doing very well, And it’s already holding at 800$. Till now google didn’t give me back my money with claiming that I don’t have prof. They are not willing to listen to there own phone systems recording’s because they know that I’m right. So basically WE ARE NOT THE CUSTOMER WE ARE THE PRODUCT
- RealStickman_ 6y ago
  How's the legality of recording a call if the other party does that as well?
  - cj 6y ago
    If there's a message that says "This call may be recorded..." then I would consider that to be adequate consent for either party to record the call, not just 1 party. But IANAL.
  - tjoff 6y ago
    In a lot of places it is legal to record a call as long as one of the parties (that is yourself) is in on it. That is, you can't record a call between two other people but you can always record a call that yourself are participating in.

whoknew1122 6y ago

Interesting to see what others use. I'm a bit curious about using CloudFlare's DNS though. If you take a stand against Google's societal impact, why switch to CloudFlare? CloudFlare's 'content neutral' stance enables a lot of hate speech and other, more disgusting material. It seems odd to have ethical concerns about Google, but not CloudFlare.

kmclean 6y ago
I haven't done as much research about CloudFlare. I generally appreciate their views on privacy and the internet, but I have heard some really sketchy things about the way they route traffic and what you're describing sounds worrisome for sure! I find it extremely hard to be an ethical consumer these days and honestly just get burnt out learning about all the horrible things people and companies with lots of money get away with, so I need to pace myself and take it in manageable doses. I will spend some time learning about Cloudflare this year.
glial 6y ago
I am against censorship but also don’t support companies who actively promote hate speech via recommendations. I’m ok with anyone having a blog but not OK with FB/Google creating conspiracy theory rabbit holes to drive engagement. This is a distinction I wish more people made.
kbelder 6y ago
Because I think censoring hate speech can have a worse societal impact than being a neutral host. CloudFlare is, from my viewpoint, behaving more ethically.

blisterpeanuts 6y ago

When it comes to technology, people prefer one-stop shopping. Google's email, mapping, mobile OS, search, calendars, video, photos are all free and best-of-class or at least good enough to be satisfactory to 80% of the people, who think they're getting a bargain even as they put more and more of their personal information in Google's hands. It seems as though there's no way to break this voluntary-monopoly. Waze came along with brilliant innovations like BLE devices monitoring traffic in underpasses etc. (my company makes some of the devices they use) and finding best alternative routes, and an innovative UX, so Google simply bought them, problem solved. There's a whole menagerie of alternatives to Youtube, but they're like ants next to an elephant. And of course, Youtube itself was bought by Google; they've advanced it technically, but it was better in the old days, less censorship and better remuneration for creators. Like a lot of other techies, I've switched to DDG for searches and I don't really miss Google search. Probably I use !g about once or twice a month. It seems to me there's lots of opportunities to improve on Google's offerings; Apple seems uninterested in competing head-to-head aside from its mobile phone OS, but there are still innovations out there waiting to be discovered. Perhaps some here will be among those future billionaires, giving us better alternatives to The Goog which in my opinion has gotten a little too big for its britches.

swiftcoder 6y ago
> Apple seems uninterested in competing head-to-head aside from its mobile phone OS, I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple keep nibbling at Google's software business as it transitions more fully to an added-value services model. Little moves like Apple Music on android, Apple TV+ on Android-based TVs... One could see a similar play occurring with fitness, books, and maybe even maps in the services-centric Apple future.

0x53 6y ago

I did something extremely similar: https://mallocate.com/blog/removing-google/ https://mallocate.com/blog/removing-google/

FabHK 6y ago

Good recommendations. To minimize Youtube tracking, I use the fantastic `youtube-dl` to get the movie (or only audio) locally, then keep it or discard it as the case may be.

tmpUserA 6y ago
As far as I understand, to track users, website use : IP, Cookie/LocalStorage, Fingerprinting. I wonder if youtube-dl really helps ? It doesn't change the IP, you can refuse/clear cookies in your browser, and for fingerprinting, isn't scraping via youtube-dl make you even more unique among other regular browser users ?
- FabHK 6y ago
  Good question. A) IP - use a VPN. youtube-dl == browser B) Cookies - youtube-dl doesn't retain cookies, I presume. youtube-dl >= browser C) Fingerprinting - good question. I'd hope youtube-dl doesn't offer as many avenues. Can it identify you from one visit to the next? Beats me!

iou 6y ago

> GoogleDNS -> CloudflareDNS It's better for sure, just from trying a couple (OpenDns, cloudflare, quad9) I really love the offering from nextDNS https://nextdns.io https://nextdns.io It somewhat smashes together the features of pi-hole and opendns with the features like DoT or DoH as you get in cloudflare

buildbot 6y ago
Seconding NextDNS, it’s well worth the price for the features and privacy. And not having to administer a piHole, which was always slightly unstable for me.

iou 6y ago

An extra degoogling Google Keep -> Joplin (https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/) I tried a lot of note taking apps and liked this one for its simplicity (just markdown) and cross platform support. Then just store sync it all either via boxcryptor or nextcloud.

XCSme 6y ago
Thanks for the suggestion, I have been looking for a good note-taking app forever, this looks interesting!
- modeitsch 6y ago
  is there a way to import all my google keep notes ?
  - unilock 6y ago
    Personally, I went from Google Keep to Standard Notes to NextCloud Notes, but the process is similar to go from Standard Notes to Joplin. There's instructions for how to transfer from Google Keep to Standard Notes here[1]. Then, export from Standard Notes via a "Decrypted" data archive[2], extract the plain text files from the resulting archive (I don't recall the exact path), rename them all from .txt to .md using zmv or a similar pattern-based file renaming program, and import them to Joplin as-is[3]. You'll lose formatting, unfortunately, and probably other things like attachments and checkboxes -- I'm not entirely sure, as I didn't use any of the more advanced features of Google Keep. There's also instructions to go from Standard Notes to Joplin directly[4], bypassing plain text. That might preserve formatting and such. Your mileage may vary, as they say. [1] https://standardnotes.org/help/35/how-can-i-import-my-notes-from-google-keep https://standardnotes.org/help/35/how-can-i-import-my-notes-... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/StandardNotes/comments/5sf0id/you_can_now_export_all_your_notes_as_plain_txt/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StandardNotes/comments/5sf0id/you_c... [3] https://joplinapp.org/#importing-from-markdown-files https://joplinapp.org/#importing-from-markdown-files [4] https://programadorwebvalencia.com/migrate-notes-from-standard-notes-to-joplin/ https://programadorwebvalencia.com/migrate-notes-from-standa...

Netcob 6y ago

That little downtime recently that in some places looked like Google had deleted my account got me quite a shock and made me re-evaluate my dependence on Google too. For anyone looking for a simple self-hosted file sync system I'd recommend Seafile though. It has delta sync (like Dropbox) and great performance. I finally switched to it after years of increasing frustration with Nextcloud, which has none of these things.

perryizgr8 6y ago

> Maps → Apple maps I can't find Apple maps in the play store. Is there another alternative?

mcwoods 6y ago

Problem is on the phone side. There is a duopoly; Apple or Google. Neither is great. We should be able to have control over this, as it is increasingly being the way in which the majority of the public have access to their information (photos, docs, etc). Same on the desktop we have MS, Apple. Yes Linux (variations) are available on both, more so on desktop, but not a real possibility for most consumes.

ericholscher 6y ago

We’re trying to build a competitor to Google ads, targeted at developers: https://www.ethicalads.io/ https://www.ethicalads.io/ As developers we understand the most how privacy is violated across the Internet. If we can’t contribute to the change in the ecosystem, we don’t have much hope for the rest of the industry.

bluGill 6y ago

Has anyone compared all the photo alternatives? I need a good place to store my family photos and share with my wife. Email and search are easy, email is standard so anyone can do the same features more or less. Search has no lock-in so you can just try whatever. Photos doesn't seems to be either, and I don't personally want to invest the time to try them all.

kmclean 6y ago
I'm curious about this, too.. I'm trying out a couple of different ones now, but Google photos is pretty hard to beat, especially its semantic searching. Also I know there are loads of them I haven't tried yet.

mro_name 6y ago

Chapeau, good move. Your honesty is impressive. IMO paying money and thus enabling humane businesses to thrive is key.