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Google have their flaws (I never trust any new product of theirs will last), but on the whole, I am happy using their products and services. I have got enough

by yaseer 5y ago

Google have their flaws (I never trust any new product of theirs will last), but on the whole, I am happy using their products and services. I have got enough value out of Google search, Gmail and Google docs over the years to make the privacy trade-off worthwhile, personally. Facebook and Instagram are products that make me more unhappy as I use them. According to Facebook's Internal research, I am not alone in that. The privacy trade-off is not worth the net negative value.

mft_ 5y ago
I’m with you. I understand the theoretical problems of Google’s business model, but I get great value from their products, and until such a point as I experience or perceive direct harm, I’m okay to roll with them. (I deleted Instagram within of two weeks of joining, and Facebook many years ago.)
- yaseer 5y ago
  I think most people's objections to Google and Amazon are macro objections to harm their business does to the world, not the individual consumer. I shop on Amazon like I eat steaks. I get individual value out of Amazon and the steak, but at macro scale, Amazon is harming other businesses, and my steaks increase carbon emissions (amongst other things).
  - blitzar 5y ago
    Yeah, but have you tried the alternatives to amazon? Got to say the competition is really not doing itself any favours. Same price / more + $6.50 in postage arriving in 4 days time. And you are going to harass me with emails because now you have it...
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      The alternatives are much better. I try to cut out all middlemen and buy from the brand directly if possible, assuming that I will get the highest quality product / least chance of counterfeit that way. Then I go to the big box stores’ websites that do not have 3rd party sellers or offer the ability to filter them out. And then I might go to Amazon. Amazon prices are notoriously high for any liquid or household product bought regularly, Costco and Target and Walmart are way cheaper for those.
    - krono 5y ago
      Chicken and the egg. It's the exact opposite here in the Netherlands, where Amazon has only recently started to gain some ground.
    - asddubs 5y ago
      I did buy a power supply for my laptop on lenovo.com recently, just because I had 0 confidence that if i bought it on amazon it wouldn't be a fake. I checked out the site for a local electronics retailer first, but apparently they also started allowing third party sellers on their platform. In any case, it ended up being half the amazon price anyway
      - tialaramex 5y ago
        Making my life difficult certainly isn't how to get me to use your direct retail site rather than Amazon. My preferred boots have a catalogue number. It's printed inside the boots, it's printed on the box they come in, it has remained the same for many years and it clearly identifies the exact model of boots and foot size. If you type that number in to the manufacturer's own retail web site they're confused, what can this possibly be? It's unclear to them apparently, maybe I want er... women's boots? [What even are women's boots? Answer: The same boots, but limited to small foot sizes. I actually have size 10 feet.] When I type the same code into Amazon, unsurprisingly it matches a product advertised by a seller, because the sellers have a strong incentive to advertise codes that result in sales. I get the exact product I want, admittedly it still doesn't auto-select the correct size but at least I'm on a page showing the product I want, one drop-down away from buying my boots. So, Amazon gets the sale and the manufacturer misses out on what's presumably a considerable gap between their wholesale price and the retail price I'd have paid on their own store.
        ramphastidae 5y ago
        > So, Amazon gets the sale and the manufacturer misses out on what's presumably a considerable gap between their wholesale price and the retail price I'd have paid on their own store. So you are knowingly paying more than MSRP because you can’t be bothered with using keywords to search the manufacturer’s website instead? Weird. How often and how many boots are you buying that this would be worth the trade off?
        mcintyre1994 5y ago
        They're not saying that. They're assuming that Amazon (or the seller on their platform) buys at a wholesale price below what the manufacturer charges as retail on their own website. So the manufacturer loses out on the difference if you buy from Amazon instead of direct. That's broadly going to be true whether the Amazon retail price ends up being higher or lower than the manufacturer's retail price.
    - deergomoo 5y ago
      > Same price / more + $6.50 in postage arriving in 4 days time It’s unfortunate, because free postage is a complete myth that everyone now expects. A company the size of Amazon can afford to burn money for years and years until they’re at the point where they have their own logistics network and make the numbers work. There are very few companies that can do that—or that should, really.
      - twobitshifter 5y ago
        I had read an article that said Amazon requires sellers to offer them the lowest price and provide free shipping to get top position in search results. The consequence of this is that prices have now risen by the cost of free shipping.
    - FridayoLeary 5y ago
      Amazon.com really is shockingly, atrociously poor. They barely even bother searching your keywords, for example. Even Google does a better job of searching then the native search engine. It beggars belief that they leave such basic features like filters so broken. But yeah, they have unreal fulfilment times plus guaranteed money back if something goes wrong. They accomplish this by treating everybody else like dirt.
    - chrischen 5y ago
      Maybe the harm increases prices overall, so you never know. Take hassle free returns and credit card points. Both features look like pro-consumer policies but end up forcing all online retailers to bake the cost into their prices. At the end of the day consumers just get no choice on this cost.
csee 5y ago
> According to Facebook's Internal research, I am not alone in that. I think the core point is probably true, but I wouldn't be 100% confident about this statement. The research seems murky. https://archive.md/SPpNW https://archive.md/SPpNW
laserlight 5y ago
> I have got enough value out of Google search, Gmail and Google docs over the years to make the privacy trade-off worthwhile, personally. This statement assumes that Google services are of high quality because they exploit users' privacy. I don't think that trade-off is necessary. Google could offer its services with high quality and without violating users' privacy.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  Many of Google services allow users to take advantage of data collection. For example I once received a notification along the lines of "based on your location and traffic, you should leave at 3pm to catch your 5pm flight". I did nothing, I just received my flight ticket on my Gmail account, Google algorithms did the rest. This is just one example. I find personalized search and suggestions rather good, and I regularly use location history to remember where I was on a particular date. This is of course a byproduct of data collection for monetization purposes, but I like the fact that you can get something useful out of it. Also, Google does a rather good job of not leaking your personal data. I am not talking about state actors level threats, but unlike with Facebook, it doesn't have a tendency to show pictures of you getting drunk to your boss.
  - addicted 5y ago
    None of that requires Google to collect your data. A simple one time parse with creating a calendar event and notification based on a Google Maps lookup should be sufficient. None of that even requires Google to retain any personal identifying information.
  - moolcool 5y ago
    Google's "plane ticket in the inbox" logic is extremely handy, but it's also not very clever. If a family member forwards me their itinerary so I can pick them up from the airport, for example, Google will still remind me that I have to depart soon, even though I'm just at home.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    https://theprint.in/politics/asked-google-for-emails-sent-between-pdps-waheed-parra-pakistan-based-terrorists-jk-police/677122/ https://theprint.in/politics/asked-google-for-emails-sent-be... the problem is when governments ask google access to data which otherwise they could not obtain. in this recent case, the idea was to access gmail or google drive because that contains "unencrypted" whatsapp backs. so all the e2e and a thir party managed to be the achilees heel.
sharikous 5y ago
Good for you I guess. I replaced Google search with Brave and DDG, Google Docs is not so useful for me (bad support for math formulas) and Gmail is just a default service I use from a client I don't happen to see much value in the product you mention. The main reason I use them is because of inertia and the need to jump through hoops with my Android phone to use alternatives. And interestingly I see Facebook and Whatsapp as very valuable for keeping in contact with people I am physically far from. So I guess my experience is sort of the opposite
- lumost 5y ago
  curious, I'm not a fan of organizing my own docs collection or being unable to collaborate on docs/share them via urls - I also dislike bespoke native apps for most tasks that are comfortable in the browser. Have you found equivalent services to gmail and docs without the privacy risks? it wouldn't be too bad to spend a dollar or two a month for something with less privacy tradeoffs.
- yaseer 5y ago
  I agree, WhatsApp is (or was historically) a great product I got value from. Unfortunately I think Facebook's incentives will compromise the product's quality. It's why many move to signal and telegram.
- agustif 5y ago
  I wanted to build a science paper research platform, and math support was big on the list, the outlineapp team had an open issue to support LaTeX. You might be interested in that as a docs replacement maybe
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  Doesn't Brave just take its results from google? They are pretty hard to avoid, being an effective monopoly.
  - wutbrodo 5y ago
    > They are pretty hard to avoid, being an effective monopoly. Im confused by this claim. Is it really that difficult to avoid Google search? It seems to me that it just requires going to bing.com, or changing the default search in your browser. Also, Brave Search uses its own index, not google results.
adminscoffee 5y ago
news.google.com makes me fairly said but i have to go out of my way to see that. although sometimes google forces to to see trending stories as to which i cringe especially when i really don't want to care about what bad things are happening on a particular days. it sounds selfish but if i could block all news sites i would
therealmarv 5y ago
The problem is not Google or advertising (for me). There is a trend among governments world wide to get your Google data when you are at the wrong time at the wrong place or searching the wrong thing at the wrong time. That's the real danger. Not what kind of advertisement you prefer.
onetimemanytime 5y ago
>>I have got enough value out of Google search, Gmail and Google docs over the years to make the privacy trade-off worthwhile, personally. You are assuming that no one else would have provided the same stuff with less intrusion, killing competitors (will come home later to roost) etc.
eli 5y ago
Did you see how they intentionally added artificial delays to non AMP ads? Or bid up their own ads to exactly what they calculated was the most a customer was willing to pay instead of running a fair auction?
- agustif 5y ago
  Just use AdBlock, Ublock, SponsorBlock, or Any Ad Blocker. The web is just so much more usable and beautiful without ads... You can also use ddg with ! to search on google, never did it myself.
- yaseer 5y ago
  Unfortunately yes, I think the objections to Google and Amazon are based on harms to the world, not to me as the consumer. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056196
shoto_io 5y ago
We decided to go for Office365 for our 3 person startup, and against G docs or whatever they call it nowadays. I gotta say it sucks! OneDrive isn’t syncing properly. Working with people outside your org is hell. We’re going to switch to Google soon enough.
- Closi 5y ago
  Eh, I've got to say again that my experience is the opposite, so I guess everyone has different views on this! I'll agree the Sync isn't as good as Google, but I find the Microsoft Office 365 apps so much better if you need to spend lots of time in them every day. I've used the google alternatives and there are always limitations you end up hitting (As an example, I was working in google docs the other day and was pretty surprised that I couldn't even choose a custom page size and in order to set a custom page size I had to download an add-in - this sort of thing means the products just don't feel as built-out as the Microsoft ones). Never found an issue sharing things with clients - you just drop the files into a folder and send them a sharing link (and decide to allow them to edit or not).
  - shoto_io 5y ago
    Yeah, maybe I’m just dumb and can’t figure it out properly. I dump files on my computer and they don’t end up on my colleagues laptop. So we end up resetting OneDrive on his Mac, which sometimes solves the issue. I have shared links with clients but then they suddenly can’t access the folder any longer. So I share it again. I agree that the apps are good, but only in the desktop version. The web apps have still a long way to go.
    - easton 5y ago
      Yeah, OneDrive for Mac is where OneDrive for Windows was up until two or so years ago when they finally made it stable. They are apparently working on it, but when they haven't even been able to recompile for M1 I don't know when that work will appear.
  - sagarm 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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3grdlurker 5y ago
Have you actually weighed the value that you're getting out of Google services versus the privacy that you (and people) are trading off? Because I feel that people are blindly saying that and are overestimating the value. Let's see: * Google Maps - great navigation and place accuracy, in exchange for your real-time geolocation and social media posts tagging places * YouTube - free video hosting in exchange for your data being fed to ML algorithms, which make them billions; also now a great source of disinformation * Google Photos - free image hosting also in exchange of your enabling of their billion-dollar ML-based businesses I think I'm making the point in the above examples that they're making more money than what we're turning over, but please feel free to tell me--what other great value do we derive from Google products do we derive from our data?
- lern_too_spel 5y ago
  The users are evaluating benefit vs. harm to themselves. For them, they can either use a free product or pay for a product that is far less useful to them that still collects the same data.
  - 3grdlurker 5y ago
    Yeah so the problem with that response is that you can say the exact same thing about Facebook, so it now doesn’t make sense that that’s being made as a point in favor of Google.
    - lern_too_spel 5y ago
      It explains why people use Google and Facebook. They're not stupid. Facebook can get away with much more abuse of its users and still provide net benefit because the users benefit from the network effect, which no competitor has tried to mitigate. Users of most Google products can migrate to competitors more easily.
sandworm101 5y ago
>> to make the privacy trade-off worthwhile, personally. Maybe now. Maybe Today. But what about your privacy in the future? That data is now totally out of your control. Maybe you will feel differently in a few years. Maybe the laws will change and your past browsing history will be googleable by your ex wife. Data is forever. It should never be handed over solely on the basis of current promises.
deleted 5y ago
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webmobdev 5y ago
It's easy to be Google free though with the following alternatives: 1. Gmail: Vivadi Mail (free), Fastmail, Protonmail, Tutanota etc. (Best look for an IMAP provider to make migration easy). 2. Google Docs: LibreOffice (if you don't care about collaboration) or MS Office or Pages. 3. Google Search: Create custom search engines on your browser for IMDB, Wikipedia, StackOverfow, Reddit etc etc. And use Yandex for the rest as it conveniently offers a link to resume search with Bing, Yahoo or Google if you are not satisfied with their search result. (Note though that Yandex is just as intrusive as Google, but its biggest plus is that it is a non-US company. A major annoyance with it though is that it often prioritizes Russian language sites). 4. Android: Saifish OS is currently the best, though apps are lacking for it. Otherwise, "Google Free" Android forks are the next best option. 5. Chrome: Firefox (even though it is becoming just as shitty) or its forks. Vivaldi browser is a distant second.
- mrkramer 5y ago
  I think alternatives are not relevant since single apps do not matter but ecosystem is what matters. For example this is how Google's ecosystem works(my personal experience): Google Search > Gmail > YouTube. I first started using Google Search then I started using Gmail and finally in order to create YouTube account I needed a Gmail account.
  - jsnell 5y ago
    As far as I know, you've never needed to create a Gmail account for YouTube. You need a Google account, but those aren't necessarily Gmail ones. To create a non-Gmail Google account, just click on "use my current email address instead" in the account creation screen.
    - mrkramer 5y ago
      I didn't know that since I use Gmail since always but you get my point. More apps in family of apps more synergies. Here is what Google says about Google Account: "Sign in to your Google Account, and get the most out of all the Google services that you use. Your account helps you do more by personalising your Google experience and offering easy access to your most important information from anywhere." Getting back to YouTube yea tbh it would be kind of anticompetitive if Google required exclusively Gmail to use YouTube. My bad.
sneedler 5y ago
>Gmail I set up an email server on my VPS but I went back to using Gmail after a while because it's so damn convenient. It's one of the few things that I don't see myself ever giving up. Nowadays I pretty much only use my email server to spam my friends with funny emails that appear to come from mcafee@belize.mansion
- arcatech 5y ago
  How is Gmail more convenient in this case?
fishywang 5y ago
I agree with you. To add to it, Google also have top notch security capabilities. Yes they have my data (privacy), but I know that my data is safe with them and will very very unlikely be hacked by/leaked to 3rd parties (security).
- freebuju 5y ago
  Google cannot secure your data against the real criminals. The 3 letter agencies.
  - 8ytecoder 5y ago
    If we extend that logic, no one can. Not collecting may not be an option either.
systemvoltage 5y ago
Instead of pushing back on all Big Tech, I am seeing endless bickering about what dystopian company to follow. Current state: Apple and Google are the 'good' guys. Facebook and Microsoft are the 'bad' guys. Twitter is in the background at the moment. Tiktok is HN's absolute lovely darling. No one cares that its Chinese. This keeps changing like a drunk game of russian roulette, mixed with some partisan politics, anti-billionairism, etc. If it were year 2005, we would all be singing in unison to take down Oracle, IBM and Microsoft - have a startup spirit of optimism. I haven't seen that lately on HN.
- tqi 5y ago
  That's because for many there is no consistent principle underlying their criticisms, they start with a list of companies they like/dislike or view as with/against them and work backwards.
- mrkramer 5y ago
  They are all bad if people trade their personal/private information for "free" use of those services. The key part is let people know they are trading their personal data in exchange for "free" access to whatever free of charge service these companies offer.
  - duud 5y ago
    I am fairly confident that the average user understands that their YouTube, FB, Insta etc usage is funded by targeted ads and doesn't really care. Sure they might not understand the full extent of the targeting but let them learn about factory farming, forced labour, the prison/military industrial complex and many other evils first. Maybe with information campaigns run via targeted ads :)
darepublic 5y ago
Nah they are overrated. Google docs is thoroughly mediocre the only plus is that it's free. And finally fed up enough with Google workspace that I'm moving off it. Their documentation is terrible. Gmail is good but will pay for a comparable replacement and then can finally wash my hands of this parasitic company
- criddell 5y ago
  > Google docs is thoroughly mediocre the only plus is that it's free. Are there any collaborative office suites that are excellent?
chrischen 5y ago
The problem I have with Google isn't that their products deliver value or not, it's that their products are obviously not free, and the cost is opaque to the consumer. But I do know the cost must be extremely high because they are extremely profitable and that profit must be coming from some place. The business model of most Google products rely on their costs to be completely detached from the consumer. And this is extremely insidious and anti-competitive because a consumer has no idea what businesses are paying Google, the business has no idea what the consumer is getting in exchange, and the information balance is totally lop-sided (Google has it all). The cost I'm talking about isn't just privacy (which is not the focal point here at all). The cost is that they exploit our data to create a one-sided marketplace where they can extract the highest value from merchants and consumers. This creates maximum value for Google and screws over competitors, consumers, and businesses. Even if you don't click on any Google ads, you are still paying for them because many business are forced to use them to survive given that Google has a massive share of the advertising business. The businesses you interact with simply mark up all costs, and you ultimately end up paying for them. It's anti-competitive because this detachment of the cost-benefit feedback loop means consumers are no longer making any conscious choice of Google product vs competitor product, because they think the Google product is free! FB business model happens to be much the same way, except rather than free product to get your attention they just outright manipulate you for your attention which is more obviously anti-consumer.
- JoshCole 5y ago
  The expected value of an ad conversion for a user is going to be positive or they wouldn’t have converted. Therefore the cost is not high, it is negative. So you don’t know the cost when you claim to know it. Being the product doesn’t mean being the victim; I don’t pay for my friendships. Google trades getting better at helping people for helping them and uses an auction system to decide what help slots get filled with offers of help.
faeriechangling 5y ago
Zuckerberg doesn’t need to benefit peoples lives, he just needs to make not using his service socially destructive enough that you will use his service anyways.

by yaseer 5y ago

mft_ 5y ago

I’m with you. I understand the theoretical problems of Google’s business model, but I get great value from their products, and until such a point as I experience or perceive direct harm, I’m okay to roll with them. (I deleted Instagram within of two weeks of joining, and Facebook many years ago.)

yaseer 5y ago
I think most people's objections to Google and Amazon are macro objections to harm their business does to the world, not the individual consumer. I shop on Amazon like I eat steaks. I get individual value out of Amazon and the steak, but at macro scale, Amazon is harming other businesses, and my steaks increase carbon emissions (amongst other things).
- blitzar 5y ago
  Yeah, but have you tried the alternatives to amazon? Got to say the competition is really not doing itself any favours. Same price / more + $6.50 in postage arriving in 4 days time. And you are going to harass me with emails because now you have it...
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The alternatives are much better. I try to cut out all middlemen and buy from the brand directly if possible, assuming that I will get the highest quality product / least chance of counterfeit that way. Then I go to the big box stores’ websites that do not have 3rd party sellers or offer the ability to filter them out. And then I might go to Amazon. Amazon prices are notoriously high for any liquid or household product bought regularly, Costco and Target and Walmart are way cheaper for those.
  - krono 5y ago
    Chicken and the egg. It's the exact opposite here in the Netherlands, where Amazon has only recently started to gain some ground.
  - asddubs 5y ago
    I did buy a power supply for my laptop on lenovo.com recently, just because I had 0 confidence that if i bought it on amazon it wouldn't be a fake. I checked out the site for a local electronics retailer first, but apparently they also started allowing third party sellers on their platform. In any case, it ended up being half the amazon price anyway
    - tialaramex 5y ago
      Making my life difficult certainly isn't how to get me to use your direct retail site rather than Amazon. My preferred boots have a catalogue number. It's printed inside the boots, it's printed on the box they come in, it has remained the same for many years and it clearly identifies the exact model of boots and foot size. If you type that number in to the manufacturer's own retail web site they're confused, what can this possibly be? It's unclear to them apparently, maybe I want er... women's boots? [What even are women's boots? Answer: The same boots, but limited to small foot sizes. I actually have size 10 feet.] When I type the same code into Amazon, unsurprisingly it matches a product advertised by a seller, because the sellers have a strong incentive to advertise codes that result in sales. I get the exact product I want, admittedly it still doesn't auto-select the correct size but at least I'm on a page showing the product I want, one drop-down away from buying my boots. So, Amazon gets the sale and the manufacturer misses out on what's presumably a considerable gap between their wholesale price and the retail price I'd have paid on their own store.
      - ramphastidae 5y ago
        > So, Amazon gets the sale and the manufacturer misses out on what's presumably a considerable gap between their wholesale price and the retail price I'd have paid on their own store. So you are knowingly paying more than MSRP because you can’t be bothered with using keywords to search the manufacturer’s website instead? Weird. How often and how many boots are you buying that this would be worth the trade off?
        mcintyre1994 5y ago
        They're not saying that. They're assuming that Amazon (or the seller on their platform) buys at a wholesale price below what the manufacturer charges as retail on their own website. So the manufacturer loses out on the difference if you buy from Amazon instead of direct. That's broadly going to be true whether the Amazon retail price ends up being higher or lower than the manufacturer's retail price.
  - deergomoo 5y ago
    > Same price / more + $6.50 in postage arriving in 4 days time It’s unfortunate, because free postage is a complete myth that everyone now expects. A company the size of Amazon can afford to burn money for years and years until they’re at the point where they have their own logistics network and make the numbers work. There are very few companies that can do that—or that should, really.
    - twobitshifter 5y ago
      I had read an article that said Amazon requires sellers to offer them the lowest price and provide free shipping to get top position in search results. The consequence of this is that prices have now risen by the cost of free shipping.
  - FridayoLeary 5y ago
    Amazon.com really is shockingly, atrociously poor. They barely even bother searching your keywords, for example. Even Google does a better job of searching then the native search engine. It beggars belief that they leave such basic features like filters so broken. But yeah, they have unreal fulfilment times plus guaranteed money back if something goes wrong. They accomplish this by treating everybody else like dirt.
  - chrischen 5y ago
    Maybe the harm increases prices overall, so you never know. Take hassle free returns and credit card points. Both features look like pro-consumer policies but end up forcing all online retailers to bake the cost into their prices. At the end of the day consumers just get no choice on this cost.

csee 5y ago

> According to Facebook's Internal research, I am not alone in that. I think the core point is probably true, but I wouldn't be 100% confident about this statement. The research seems murky. https://archive.md/SPpNW https://archive.md/SPpNW

laserlight 5y ago

> I have got enough value out of Google search, Gmail and Google docs over the years to make the privacy trade-off worthwhile, personally. This statement assumes that Google services are of high quality because they exploit users' privacy. I don't think that trade-off is necessary. Google could offer its services with high quality and without violating users' privacy.

GuB-42 5y ago
Many of Google services allow users to take advantage of data collection. For example I once received a notification along the lines of "based on your location and traffic, you should leave at 3pm to catch your 5pm flight". I did nothing, I just received my flight ticket on my Gmail account, Google algorithms did the rest. This is just one example. I find personalized search and suggestions rather good, and I regularly use location history to remember where I was on a particular date. This is of course a byproduct of data collection for monetization purposes, but I like the fact that you can get something useful out of it. Also, Google does a rather good job of not leaking your personal data. I am not talking about state actors level threats, but unlike with Facebook, it doesn't have a tendency to show pictures of you getting drunk to your boss.
- addicted 5y ago
  None of that requires Google to collect your data. A simple one time parse with creating a calendar event and notification based on a Google Maps lookup should be sufficient. None of that even requires Google to retain any personal identifying information.
- moolcool 5y ago
  Google's "plane ticket in the inbox" logic is extremely handy, but it's also not very clever. If a family member forwards me their itinerary so I can pick them up from the airport, for example, Google will still remind me that I have to depart soon, even though I'm just at home.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  https://theprint.in/politics/asked-google-for-emails-sent-between-pdps-waheed-parra-pakistan-based-terrorists-jk-police/677122/ https://theprint.in/politics/asked-google-for-emails-sent-be... the problem is when governments ask google access to data which otherwise they could not obtain. in this recent case, the idea was to access gmail or google drive because that contains "unencrypted" whatsapp backs. so all the e2e and a thir party managed to be the achilees heel.

sharikous 5y ago

Good for you I guess. I replaced Google search with Brave and DDG, Google Docs is not so useful for me (bad support for math formulas) and Gmail is just a default service I use from a client I don't happen to see much value in the product you mention. The main reason I use them is because of inertia and the need to jump through hoops with my Android phone to use alternatives. And interestingly I see Facebook and Whatsapp as very valuable for keeping in contact with people I am physically far from. So I guess my experience is sort of the opposite

lumost 5y ago
curious, I'm not a fan of organizing my own docs collection or being unable to collaborate on docs/share them via urls - I also dislike bespoke native apps for most tasks that are comfortable in the browser. Have you found equivalent services to gmail and docs without the privacy risks? it wouldn't be too bad to spend a dollar or two a month for something with less privacy tradeoffs.
yaseer 5y ago
I agree, WhatsApp is (or was historically) a great product I got value from. Unfortunately I think Facebook's incentives will compromise the product's quality. It's why many move to signal and telegram.
agustif 5y ago
I wanted to build a science paper research platform, and math support was big on the list, the outlineapp team had an open issue to support LaTeX. You might be interested in that as a docs replacement maybe
FridayoLeary 5y ago
Doesn't Brave just take its results from google? They are pretty hard to avoid, being an effective monopoly.
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  > They are pretty hard to avoid, being an effective monopoly. Im confused by this claim. Is it really that difficult to avoid Google search? It seems to me that it just requires going to bing.com, or changing the default search in your browser. Also, Brave Search uses its own index, not google results.

adminscoffee 5y ago

news.google.com makes me fairly said but i have to go out of my way to see that. although sometimes google forces to to see trending stories as to which i cringe especially when i really don't want to care about what bad things are happening on a particular days. it sounds selfish but if i could block all news sites i would

therealmarv 5y ago

The problem is not Google or advertising (for me). There is a trend among governments world wide to get your Google data when you are at the wrong time at the wrong place or searching the wrong thing at the wrong time. That's the real danger. Not what kind of advertisement you prefer.

onetimemanytime 5y ago

>>I have got enough value out of Google search, Gmail and Google docs over the years to make the privacy trade-off worthwhile, personally. You are assuming that no one else would have provided the same stuff with less intrusion, killing competitors (will come home later to roost) etc.

eli 5y ago

Did you see how they intentionally added artificial delays to non AMP ads? Or bid up their own ads to exactly what they calculated was the most a customer was willing to pay instead of running a fair auction?

agustif 5y ago
Just use AdBlock, Ublock, SponsorBlock, or Any Ad Blocker. The web is just so much more usable and beautiful without ads... You can also use ddg with ! to search on google, never did it myself.
yaseer 5y ago
Unfortunately yes, I think the objections to Google and Amazon are based on harms to the world, not to me as the consumer. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056196

shoto_io 5y ago

We decided to go for Office365 for our 3 person startup, and against G docs or whatever they call it nowadays. I gotta say it sucks! OneDrive isn’t syncing properly. Working with people outside your org is hell. We’re going to switch to Google soon enough.

Closi 5y ago
Eh, I've got to say again that my experience is the opposite, so I guess everyone has different views on this! I'll agree the Sync isn't as good as Google, but I find the Microsoft Office 365 apps so much better if you need to spend lots of time in them every day. I've used the google alternatives and there are always limitations you end up hitting (As an example, I was working in google docs the other day and was pretty surprised that I couldn't even choose a custom page size and in order to set a custom page size I had to download an add-in - this sort of thing means the products just don't feel as built-out as the Microsoft ones). Never found an issue sharing things with clients - you just drop the files into a folder and send them a sharing link (and decide to allow them to edit or not).
- shoto_io 5y ago
  Yeah, maybe I’m just dumb and can’t figure it out properly. I dump files on my computer and they don’t end up on my colleagues laptop. So we end up resetting OneDrive on his Mac, which sometimes solves the issue. I have shared links with clients but then they suddenly can’t access the folder any longer. So I share it again. I agree that the apps are good, but only in the desktop version. The web apps have still a long way to go.
  - easton 5y ago
    Yeah, OneDrive for Mac is where OneDrive for Windows was up until two or so years ago when they finally made it stable. They are apparently working on it, but when they haven't even been able to recompile for M1 I don't know when that work will appear.
- sagarm 5y ago

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3grdlurker 5y ago

Have you actually weighed the value that you're getting out of Google services versus the privacy that you (and people) are trading off? Because I feel that people are blindly saying that and are overestimating the value. Let's see: * Google Maps - great navigation and place accuracy, in exchange for your real-time geolocation and social media posts tagging places * YouTube - free video hosting in exchange for your data being fed to ML algorithms, which make them billions; also now a great source of disinformation * Google Photos - free image hosting also in exchange of your enabling of their billion-dollar ML-based businesses I think I'm making the point in the above examples that they're making more money than what we're turning over, but please feel free to tell me--what other great value do we derive from Google products do we derive from our data?

lern_too_spel 5y ago
The users are evaluating benefit vs. harm to themselves. For them, they can either use a free product or pay for a product that is far less useful to them that still collects the same data.
- 3grdlurker 5y ago
  Yeah so the problem with that response is that you can say the exact same thing about Facebook, so it now doesn’t make sense that that’s being made as a point in favor of Google.
  - lern_too_spel 5y ago
    It explains why people use Google and Facebook. They're not stupid. Facebook can get away with much more abuse of its users and still provide net benefit because the users benefit from the network effect, which no competitor has tried to mitigate. Users of most Google products can migrate to competitors more easily.

sandworm101 5y ago

>> to make the privacy trade-off worthwhile, personally. Maybe now. Maybe Today. But what about your privacy in the future? That data is now totally out of your control. Maybe you will feel differently in a few years. Maybe the laws will change and your past browsing history will be googleable by your ex wife. Data is forever. It should never be handed over solely on the basis of current promises.

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webmobdev 5y ago

It's easy to be Google free though with the following alternatives: 1. Gmail: Vivadi Mail (free), Fastmail, Protonmail, Tutanota etc. (Best look for an IMAP provider to make migration easy). 2. Google Docs: LibreOffice (if you don't care about collaboration) or MS Office or Pages. 3. Google Search: Create custom search engines on your browser for IMDB, Wikipedia, StackOverfow, Reddit etc etc. And use Yandex for the rest as it conveniently offers a link to resume search with Bing, Yahoo or Google if you are not satisfied with their search result. (Note though that Yandex is just as intrusive as Google, but its biggest plus is that it is a non-US company. A major annoyance with it though is that it often prioritizes Russian language sites). 4. Android: Saifish OS is currently the best, though apps are lacking for it. Otherwise, "Google Free" Android forks are the next best option. 5. Chrome: Firefox (even though it is becoming just as shitty) or its forks. Vivaldi browser is a distant second.

mrkramer 5y ago
I think alternatives are not relevant since single apps do not matter but ecosystem is what matters. For example this is how Google's ecosystem works(my personal experience): Google Search > Gmail > YouTube. I first started using Google Search then I started using Gmail and finally in order to create YouTube account I needed a Gmail account.
- jsnell 5y ago
  As far as I know, you've never needed to create a Gmail account for YouTube. You need a Google account, but those aren't necessarily Gmail ones. To create a non-Gmail Google account, just click on "use my current email address instead" in the account creation screen.
  - mrkramer 5y ago
    I didn't know that since I use Gmail since always but you get my point. More apps in family of apps more synergies. Here is what Google says about Google Account: "Sign in to your Google Account, and get the most out of all the Google services that you use. Your account helps you do more by personalising your Google experience and offering easy access to your most important information from anywhere." Getting back to YouTube yea tbh it would be kind of anticompetitive if Google required exclusively Gmail to use YouTube. My bad.

sneedler 5y ago

>Gmail I set up an email server on my VPS but I went back to using Gmail after a while because it's so damn convenient. It's one of the few things that I don't see myself ever giving up. Nowadays I pretty much only use my email server to spam my friends with funny emails that appear to come from mcafee@belize.mansion

arcatech 5y ago
How is Gmail more convenient in this case?

fishywang 5y ago

I agree with you. To add to it, Google also have top notch security capabilities. Yes they have my data (privacy), but I know that my data is safe with them and will very very unlikely be hacked by/leaked to 3rd parties (security).

freebuju 5y ago
Google cannot secure your data against the real criminals. The 3 letter agencies.
- 8ytecoder 5y ago
  If we extend that logic, no one can. Not collecting may not be an option either.

systemvoltage 5y ago

Instead of pushing back on all Big Tech, I am seeing endless bickering about what dystopian company to follow. Current state: Apple and Google are the 'good' guys. Facebook and Microsoft are the 'bad' guys. Twitter is in the background at the moment. Tiktok is HN's absolute lovely darling. No one cares that its Chinese. This keeps changing like a drunk game of russian roulette, mixed with some partisan politics, anti-billionairism, etc. If it were year 2005, we would all be singing in unison to take down Oracle, IBM and Microsoft - have a startup spirit of optimism. I haven't seen that lately on HN.

tqi 5y ago
That's because for many there is no consistent principle underlying their criticisms, they start with a list of companies they like/dislike or view as with/against them and work backwards.
mrkramer 5y ago
They are all bad if people trade their personal/private information for "free" use of those services. The key part is let people know they are trading their personal data in exchange for "free" access to whatever free of charge service these companies offer.
- duud 5y ago
  I am fairly confident that the average user understands that their YouTube, FB, Insta etc usage is funded by targeted ads and doesn't really care. Sure they might not understand the full extent of the targeting but let them learn about factory farming, forced labour, the prison/military industrial complex and many other evils first. Maybe with information campaigns run via targeted ads :)

darepublic 5y ago

Nah they are overrated. Google docs is thoroughly mediocre the only plus is that it's free. And finally fed up enough with Google workspace that I'm moving off it. Their documentation is terrible. Gmail is good but will pay for a comparable replacement and then can finally wash my hands of this parasitic company

criddell 5y ago
> Google docs is thoroughly mediocre the only plus is that it's free. Are there any collaborative office suites that are excellent?

chrischen 5y ago

The problem I have with Google isn't that their products deliver value or not, it's that their products are obviously not free, and the cost is opaque to the consumer. But I do know the cost must be extremely high because they are extremely profitable and that profit must be coming from some place. The business model of most Google products rely on their costs to be completely detached from the consumer. And this is extremely insidious and anti-competitive because a consumer has no idea what businesses are paying Google, the business has no idea what the consumer is getting in exchange, and the information balance is totally lop-sided (Google has it all). The cost I'm talking about isn't just privacy (which is not the focal point here at all). The cost is that they exploit our data to create a one-sided marketplace where they can extract the highest value from merchants and consumers. This creates maximum value for Google and screws over competitors, consumers, and businesses. Even if you don't click on any Google ads, you are still paying for them because many business are forced to use them to survive given that Google has a massive share of the advertising business. The businesses you interact with simply mark up all costs, and you ultimately end up paying for them. It's anti-competitive because this detachment of the cost-benefit feedback loop means consumers are no longer making any conscious choice of Google product vs competitor product, because they think the Google product is free! FB business model happens to be much the same way, except rather than free product to get your attention they just outright manipulate you for your attention which is more obviously anti-consumer.

JoshCole 5y ago
The expected value of an ad conversion for a user is going to be positive or they wouldn’t have converted. Therefore the cost is not high, it is negative. So you don’t know the cost when you claim to know it. Being the product doesn’t mean being the victim; I don’t pay for my friendships. Google trades getting better at helping people for helping them and uses an auction system to decide what help slots get filled with offers of help.

faeriechangling 5y ago

Zuckerberg doesn’t need to benefit peoples lives, he just needs to make not using his service socially destructive enough that you will use his service anyways.