7 ms·

delays not cancels.. Either ways, my WhatsApp was deleted yesterday, FB early last year... Now I just need to wean off of Google...

by yumraj 6y ago

liquidify 6y ago
>>wean off of Google That sounds tough. Too bad google can't just change back to how they were in the beginning. At least just actually hold their old motto above greed and money every now and then.
- sky_rw 6y ago
  I was presently surprised at how easy the transition from Chrome onto Brave was. Multiple profile support with a great import tool. Switched to from GMail to ProtonMail as well. The only thing I can't figure out is how to get off google calendar.
  - mxuribe 6y ago
    Funny enough, as i've been looking to move away from G, i thought calendar element would be easy...but its not. (Well, its not s tough, just not a direct nor free transition.) The default android claendar app doesn't connect to a calendar via, say, nextcloud (calDav if i recall correctly)...One has to actually get/use a different app. I think the one that most folks recommmend for nextcloud is not free. (It is not expensive, so that is not the challenge.) Its fine for me since i am moving away from G apps...but my partner, she is meh-ok with some of their default apps...like the default android calendar app, though she would like to connect that app to our nextcloud cal...Again, nothing major, but just all these little annoyances that exhibit the super tight integration that was built into android with G services. Anyway, yeah calendar is annoying to ween off from G. Yuck!
    - jonwest 6y ago
      If you install fDroid via the APK on their site you can install DAVx for free, which is likely the for-pay app you talked about for bringing your calendars in from a CalDAV server. Still not as easy or native as installing a Google Calendar account, but it does work and generally works quite well.
      - mxuribe 6y ago
        Ok, DAVx must be the name - i see to recall the mobile app having "dav" in its name. Thanks! Actually I'm quite ok paying for this app...I like to support developers, especially if an app is open source. But, my annoyance is less about paying for an app, and more about google's calendar - which is forced upon an android user - not playing nice with caldav...And forces a person to sidestep things. I was a really big fan when android first came out, thinking i would have plenty of freedom (or at least a reasonable amount of freedom) of bending my phone's OS - at least when compared to Apple's ios very restrictive approach...Wow, how things have changed! I feel like android is too locked down. Ok, some might think that ios is still more restrictive...But, to me, both ios and android are tech prisons just different colors of paint on the wall. I say that last statement with my fingers crossed and praying for pinePhone and other linux-y type phones to really make it mainstream!
  - at-fates-hands 6y ago
    > I was presently surprised at how easy the transition from Chrome onto Brave was Mine was the move from Chrome/Firefox back to Opera. I'm still puzzled what happened to Firefox. I was using the Developer Edition and the last two years the performance is really suspect. I don't have a million tabs open, don't have a ton of add-ons running and it still lags horribly, crashes and new tabs take forever to open I thought at first it was either my network connection or maybe a system issue. Switched to Opera and was like, "Nah man, it was definitely the browser." I'm in the same book with my calendar. I have multiple calendars several family members share. I tried using outlook.com calendars and although I prefer their UI, it wouldn't import Google calendars. If you have any recommendations, I'm all ears. Its the last thing I need to rid myself of Google.
- yumraj 6y ago
  Well, I don't use Chrome or Google search (for most part). Had moved to iOS from Android last year.. I'm finding Gmail to be most difficult to transition off of. I do have personal domain and use Zoho with it, but I think there is this mental block.. It will happen..
  - submeta 6y ago
    I migrated my mails from Gmail to fastmail.com two years ago and never looked back. Imported all my google mail, so I did not loose anything. What I love about fastmail is their pure focus on mailing. It’s a beautiful product with many useful features. For instance you can create as many alias names as you like (although I heard there is a limit, but I haven’t hit that yet). I create an alias for any new website I sign up. I also have aliasses that serve as a base-name (for instance mypurchases@fastmail.com) and can be used multiple times like so for instance: amazon@mypurchases.fastmail.com. Edit: I am also using my personal domain instead of @fastmail.com You never know when / if you need to leave a service provider again, and you don‘t want to change your email address again.
    - 458aperta 6y ago
      I'm sold. If I pay $3/month can I migrate all of my dozen Google accounts? I have an email for each product in my portfolio and switching back and forth. I would gladly pay a subscription fee if it means Google isn't reading my emails to sell me ads.
      - submeta 6y ago
        I had four gmail addresses. Imported a ton of emails from these accounts into my fastmail account. The alias feature is something I haven’t seen anywhere else, at least not so polished. Previously I hated signing up with my personal email address on sites I‘d use only once to shop for bicycle parts or whatnot.
        458aperta 6y ago
        can you explain more about the alias feature? what makes it special? Because I think this could be a killer feature as I have that exact same problem when signing up to websites
cheschire 6y ago
Just wait till you try getting off amazon during a pandemic...
- kortilla 6y ago
  It’s... not difficult at all? A myriad of grocery chains offer curbside pickup and/or delivery. Walmart delivers, Home Depot, blah blah blah. What makes it so difficult?
  - helmholtz 6y ago
    Yep. It was laughably easy. In fairness, I replaced it with shopping.google.com for a bit. It helped, however, that I value minimalism a lot, and I also kept an eye out for where I was buying electronics from, where I was buying household stuff from etc. Slowly I just started going directly to the source.
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    I tried this locally. The COVID-reduced workforce at the local grocery chains screwed up every order I tried to make, and Walmart is a greater evil in my book than Amazon.
imheretolearn 6y ago
Good luck doing so and let me know how you did it!
- brink 6y ago
  If only Firefox OS has succeeded. Between Android or iOS, I don't see iOS as being much better. At least I can still side-load applications in Android if it gets banned by the censors.
  - imheretolearn 6y ago
    I concur. Given current offerings from the Big G, I find it either inconvenient or requiring massive efforts to wean off of them.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinephone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinephone
- yumraj 6y ago
  Chrome -> Firefox, Safari, Brave -- Done Google Search -> DDG -- Done Android -> iOS -- Done Gmail -> Personal domain email (pending, work started) TV OS from Android -> Dumb TV (very hard) YouTube -> ? (limited use, very hard) Google Classroom (for kids) -> ? (very hard) Google Maps (noted by helmholtz below ) -> ? (very hard) ...
  - eertami 6y ago
    >Android -> iOS This is just going out of the frying pan and into the fryer. (I assume you mean stock/Google powered Android here.) Replacing one user-hostile walled garden with another user-hostile walled garden is hardly an improvement. I'd suggest Google Android -> Open-source Android ROM, though I know it can cause issues with some banking apps, annoyingly.
    - 6y ago
loosetypes 6y ago
For maybe the first time I can recall I wasn’t able to locate a webpage via google search yesterday. (Described in my last comment if anyone knows the source) Seemed like every attempt to better describe it as a query took me further from what I was looking for. Results were all (from my perspective) SEO hijacking, clearly having nothing to do with my search. And that was behind the wall of advertisements and their own google cards of noise they plug up front. Going to the next page of results was surprisingly difficult. First time I’ve considered, maybe this is the wrong tool for traversing the memory palace of one’s interactions with the internet.
- 458aperta 6y ago
  Honestly I've stopped using Chrome and always use DDG, and Firefox is my default web browser now. I've ditched Chrome for good as Firefox is just as good and I feel less creeped out. I think the era of "free stuff for your data" is over. People have witnessed the true cost of a zero barrier social network services which is the division of society and people creating their own realities and clashing with others (ex. flat earthers, trump etc.) Going forward I expect lot of these decentralized, run-by-donations services to trend upwards. We will still have FB, Google, and the likes but as they lose users their pervasiveness will have to increase to compensate for the loss in users. This is good. This is what blockchain should've been but couldn't.
  - duke_core 6y ago
    I used to love Firefox so much before but recently its starting to feel less user friendly than freakin' Chrome the way it shoves changes down my throat. I still cant even stand that huge address bar that goes down to my taskbar, that was one of the major reasons I moved away from firefox just because of how ugly that and the address bar zoom was
    - astronautjones 6y ago
      i agree that they should revert this to how it was before, but if you want, you can fix it: https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/08/how-to-restore-the-old-firefox-address-bar/ https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/08/how-to-restore-the-old-fir...
bentcorner 6y ago
I've switched to DDG several years ago and don't miss anything. I still use gmail but only because of inertia. I could switch to some other provider but haven't felt the need yet. The hardest replacement for me is Maps. Their search and traffic data always work for me. They have a webapp and mobile app that are excellent. I could do without the ads but recognize it's the tradeoff for using their app. Nothing I've tried gets close to a replacement. (I've heard good things about Apple Maps on iOS, but I have an android phone)
- mekoka 6y ago
  As someone who's been using DDG for the past three years, I'd love to nudge more people toward it, but when I think of how often I have to prefix my search with !g to find what I'm looking for, I don't think DDG is quite there yet. The only thing keeping me from going back to Google is that I despise it more than I'm annoyed with DDG.
  - mkl 6y ago
    Technically you don't ever have to prefix with "!g"; you can put it anywhere in the search box. I find DDG gives me what I need >90% of the time, and often when it fails, Google fails too.
    - throwaway2245 6y ago
      I often find I get better results from Google when I'm making purchasing decisions, identifying where I can buy a product locally or for a good price, which disappoints me because that's data I definitely don't want Google to have about me.
      - judge2020 6y ago
        Sounds like they've successfully optimized a big profit source.
    - freedomben 6y ago
      Wow, thank you! It's such a pita to prefix it, I had no idea you could postfix it and it will work!
thelittleone 6y ago
Wean of google is tough and want to do the same. The most problematic being Gmail. Because although its possible now to migrate emails to new service (e.g. Fastmail), I have many accounts created to sites using that gmail address. I seem to recall seeing a Gmail plugin that helped identify signups.
- clircle 6y ago
  I migrated to Fastmail a few years ago. I set all my mails to forward from Gmail to Fastmail so I don't miss anything. I slowly changed my logins from gmail to fastmail, no rush.
  - nsomaru 6y ago
    Did you set up an auto responder to notify senders of the change?
    - clircle 6y ago
      No, I've never had too many people email my personal address, so easy enough to just write an email to inform them.

delays not cancels.. Either ways, my WhatsApp was deleted yesterday, FB early last year... Now I just need to wean off of Google...

by yumraj 6y ago

delays not cancels.. Either ways, my WhatsApp was deleted yesterday, FB early last year... Now I just need to wean off of Google...

liquidify 6y ago

>>wean off of Google That sounds tough. Too bad google can't just change back to how they were in the beginning. At least just actually hold their old motto above greed and money every now and then.

sky_rw 6y ago
I was presently surprised at how easy the transition from Chrome onto Brave was. Multiple profile support with a great import tool. Switched to from GMail to ProtonMail as well. The only thing I can't figure out is how to get off google calendar.
- mxuribe 6y ago
  Funny enough, as i've been looking to move away from G, i thought calendar element would be easy...but its not. (Well, its not s tough, just not a direct nor free transition.) The default android claendar app doesn't connect to a calendar via, say, nextcloud (calDav if i recall correctly)...One has to actually get/use a different app. I think the one that most folks recommmend for nextcloud is not free. (It is not expensive, so that is not the challenge.) Its fine for me since i am moving away from G apps...but my partner, she is meh-ok with some of their default apps...like the default android calendar app, though she would like to connect that app to our nextcloud cal...Again, nothing major, but just all these little annoyances that exhibit the super tight integration that was built into android with G services. Anyway, yeah calendar is annoying to ween off from G. Yuck!
  - jonwest 6y ago
    If you install fDroid via the APK on their site you can install DAVx for free, which is likely the for-pay app you talked about for bringing your calendars in from a CalDAV server. Still not as easy or native as installing a Google Calendar account, but it does work and generally works quite well.
    - mxuribe 6y ago
      Ok, DAVx must be the name - i see to recall the mobile app having "dav" in its name. Thanks! Actually I'm quite ok paying for this app...I like to support developers, especially if an app is open source. But, my annoyance is less about paying for an app, and more about google's calendar - which is forced upon an android user - not playing nice with caldav...And forces a person to sidestep things. I was a really big fan when android first came out, thinking i would have plenty of freedom (or at least a reasonable amount of freedom) of bending my phone's OS - at least when compared to Apple's ios very restrictive approach...Wow, how things have changed! I feel like android is too locked down. Ok, some might think that ios is still more restrictive...But, to me, both ios and android are tech prisons just different colors of paint on the wall. I say that last statement with my fingers crossed and praying for pinePhone and other linux-y type phones to really make it mainstream!
- at-fates-hands 6y ago
  > I was presently surprised at how easy the transition from Chrome onto Brave was Mine was the move from Chrome/Firefox back to Opera. I'm still puzzled what happened to Firefox. I was using the Developer Edition and the last two years the performance is really suspect. I don't have a million tabs open, don't have a ton of add-ons running and it still lags horribly, crashes and new tabs take forever to open I thought at first it was either my network connection or maybe a system issue. Switched to Opera and was like, "Nah man, it was definitely the browser." I'm in the same book with my calendar. I have multiple calendars several family members share. I tried using outlook.com calendars and although I prefer their UI, it wouldn't import Google calendars. If you have any recommendations, I'm all ears. Its the last thing I need to rid myself of Google.
yumraj 6y ago
Well, I don't use Chrome or Google search (for most part). Had moved to iOS from Android last year.. I'm finding Gmail to be most difficult to transition off of. I do have personal domain and use Zoho with it, but I think there is this mental block.. It will happen..
- submeta 6y ago
  I migrated my mails from Gmail to fastmail.com two years ago and never looked back. Imported all my google mail, so I did not loose anything. What I love about fastmail is their pure focus on mailing. It’s a beautiful product with many useful features. For instance you can create as many alias names as you like (although I heard there is a limit, but I haven’t hit that yet). I create an alias for any new website I sign up. I also have aliasses that serve as a base-name (for instance mypurchases@fastmail.com) and can be used multiple times like so for instance: amazon@mypurchases.fastmail.com. Edit: I am also using my personal domain instead of @fastmail.com You never know when / if you need to leave a service provider again, and you don‘t want to change your email address again.
  - 458aperta 6y ago
    I'm sold. If I pay $3/month can I migrate all of my dozen Google accounts? I have an email for each product in my portfolio and switching back and forth. I would gladly pay a subscription fee if it means Google isn't reading my emails to sell me ads.
    - submeta 6y ago
      I had four gmail addresses. Imported a ton of emails from these accounts into my fastmail account. The alias feature is something I haven’t seen anywhere else, at least not so polished. Previously I hated signing up with my personal email address on sites I‘d use only once to shop for bicycle parts or whatnot.
      - 458aperta 6y ago
        can you explain more about the alias feature? what makes it special? Because I think this could be a killer feature as I have that exact same problem when signing up to websites

cheschire 6y ago

Just wait till you try getting off amazon during a pandemic...

kortilla 6y ago
It’s... not difficult at all? A myriad of grocery chains offer curbside pickup and/or delivery. Walmart delivers, Home Depot, blah blah blah. What makes it so difficult?
- helmholtz 6y ago
  Yep. It was laughably easy. In fairness, I replaced it with shopping.google.com for a bit. It helped, however, that I value minimalism a lot, and I also kept an eye out for where I was buying electronics from, where I was buying household stuff from etc. Slowly I just started going directly to the source.
- Karunamon 6y ago
  I tried this locally. The COVID-reduced workforce at the local grocery chains screwed up every order I tried to make, and Walmart is a greater evil in my book than Amazon.

imheretolearn 6y ago

Good luck doing so and let me know how you did it!

brink 6y ago
If only Firefox OS has succeeded. Between Android or iOS, I don't see iOS as being much better. At least I can still side-load applications in Android if it gets banned by the censors.
- imheretolearn 6y ago
  I concur. Given current offerings from the Big G, I find it either inconvenient or requiring massive efforts to wean off of them.
- fsflover 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinephone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinephone
yumraj 6y ago
Chrome -> Firefox, Safari, Brave -- Done Google Search -> DDG -- Done Android -> iOS -- Done Gmail -> Personal domain email (pending, work started) TV OS from Android -> Dumb TV (very hard) YouTube -> ? (limited use, very hard) Google Classroom (for kids) -> ? (very hard) Google Maps (noted by helmholtz below ) -> ? (very hard) ...
- eertami 6y ago
  >Android -> iOS This is just going out of the frying pan and into the fryer. (I assume you mean stock/Google powered Android here.) Replacing one user-hostile walled garden with another user-hostile walled garden is hardly an improvement. I'd suggest Google Android -> Open-source Android ROM, though I know it can cause issues with some banking apps, annoyingly.
  - 6y ago

loosetypes 6y ago

For maybe the first time I can recall I wasn’t able to locate a webpage via google search yesterday. (Described in my last comment if anyone knows the source) Seemed like every attempt to better describe it as a query took me further from what I was looking for. Results were all (from my perspective) SEO hijacking, clearly having nothing to do with my search. And that was behind the wall of advertisements and their own google cards of noise they plug up front. Going to the next page of results was surprisingly difficult. First time I’ve considered, maybe this is the wrong tool for traversing the memory palace of one’s interactions with the internet.

458aperta 6y ago
Honestly I've stopped using Chrome and always use DDG, and Firefox is my default web browser now. I've ditched Chrome for good as Firefox is just as good and I feel less creeped out. I think the era of "free stuff for your data" is over. People have witnessed the true cost of a zero barrier social network services which is the division of society and people creating their own realities and clashing with others (ex. flat earthers, trump etc.) Going forward I expect lot of these decentralized, run-by-donations services to trend upwards. We will still have FB, Google, and the likes but as they lose users their pervasiveness will have to increase to compensate for the loss in users. This is good. This is what blockchain should've been but couldn't.
- duke_core 6y ago
  I used to love Firefox so much before but recently its starting to feel less user friendly than freakin' Chrome the way it shoves changes down my throat. I still cant even stand that huge address bar that goes down to my taskbar, that was one of the major reasons I moved away from firefox just because of how ugly that and the address bar zoom was
  - astronautjones 6y ago
    i agree that they should revert this to how it was before, but if you want, you can fix it: https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/08/how-to-restore-the-old-firefox-address-bar/ https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/08/how-to-restore-the-old-fir...

bentcorner 6y ago

I've switched to DDG several years ago and don't miss anything. I still use gmail but only because of inertia. I could switch to some other provider but haven't felt the need yet. The hardest replacement for me is Maps. Their search and traffic data always work for me. They have a webapp and mobile app that are excellent. I could do without the ads but recognize it's the tradeoff for using their app. Nothing I've tried gets close to a replacement. (I've heard good things about Apple Maps on iOS, but I have an android phone)

mekoka 6y ago
As someone who's been using DDG for the past three years, I'd love to nudge more people toward it, but when I think of how often I have to prefix my search with !g to find what I'm looking for, I don't think DDG is quite there yet. The only thing keeping me from going back to Google is that I despise it more than I'm annoyed with DDG.
- mkl 6y ago
  Technically you don't ever have to prefix with "!g"; you can put it anywhere in the search box. I find DDG gives me what I need >90% of the time, and often when it fails, Google fails too.
  - throwaway2245 6y ago
    I often find I get better results from Google when I'm making purchasing decisions, identifying where I can buy a product locally or for a good price, which disappoints me because that's data I definitely don't want Google to have about me.
    - judge2020 6y ago
      Sounds like they've successfully optimized a big profit source.
  - freedomben 6y ago
    Wow, thank you! It's such a pita to prefix it, I had no idea you could postfix it and it will work!

thelittleone 6y ago

Wean of google is tough and want to do the same. The most problematic being Gmail. Because although its possible now to migrate emails to new service (e.g. Fastmail), I have many accounts created to sites using that gmail address. I seem to recall seeing a Gmail plugin that helped identify signups.

clircle 6y ago
I migrated to Fastmail a few years ago. I set all my mails to forward from Gmail to Fastmail so I don't miss anything. I slowly changed my logins from gmail to fastmail, no rush.
- nsomaru 6y ago
  Did you set up an auto responder to notify senders of the change?
  - clircle 6y ago
    No, I've never had too many people email my personal address, so easy enough to just write an email to inform them.