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After reading so many posts like this, I decided to bite the bullet and start moving off-Google. Funny thing is, ProtonMail and Obsidian are much better than Gm

After reading so many posts like this, I decided to bite the bullet and start moving off-Google. Funny thing is, ProtonMail and Obsidian are much better than Gmail and Keep anyway. I'm still forced to use Google stuff here and there but I'm no longer dependant on them, and coincidentally I've been sleeping much better recently.

skrtskrt 5y ago
the editor for Google Docs is the one really good thing I can't get elsewhere, but I don't do that much important stuff in it - just like planning vacations, etc. Once I'm done editing something, if I want to back it up I can just export it elsewhere
- polski-g 5y ago
  DropBox has a hook into Office's editors.
- gigel82 5y ago
  Microsoft has a very usable online version that's free (with a bit of upsell here and there). Arguably more capable than Google Docs.
  - e40 5y ago
    Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Of course, I'm being a little flippant, but the MS ecosystem is not without its problems. A colleague has 3 MS accounts for dealing with 3 different things (a government contract, a 3rd party company contract, our company account). Because of this, he was in hell for days because of some fubar on the MS side. I have (seemingly!) different MS accounts, for Azure development and Office 365 and I am regularly confused by the various MS websites.
    - mbreese 5y ago
      MS Azure accounts always seemed odd and overly convoluted to me. I had an issue with my personal Microsoft account where I couldn’t sign up for an Azure trial (wanted to kick the tires on Codespaces before it moved to GitHub). Turned out, my account got associated to my kids’ schools MS account because that email address was on a school mailing list. That was a pain (and many hours) to get figured out.
    - skrtskrt 5y ago
      my friends that have one MS/Outlook account at their jobs, which have enterprise support reps for their big enterprise accounts sometimes have multi-day lockout for unknown reason, 2FA failure for days, absurd issues with timezones being inconsistent across MS services, etc.
  - cutler 5y ago
    Wait until you're locked out of your Outlook.com account. No way back.
- Macha 5y ago
  I've really pared down my Google usage with the end of grandfathered GAFYD accounts as the last straw, so down to Sheets, YouTube, and Android as my last google usage. YouTube has no alternative, Android has too much sunk cost, Sheets I'm probably going to go back to Syncthing + Libreoffice I guess. Office 365 is the equivalent alternative, but not sure I feel much better about MS's consumer products than I do about Google.
  - rexreed 5y ago
    Just use Invidious links instead of going directly to YouTube (for example, yewtu.be for the same remainder of the URL) for viewing. If you're talking about hosting videos, use Vimeo. Even when people post youTube links I use the Invidious alternative to stop feeding Google data. Also invidious has embedded download capability on their various sites.
  - iamacyborg 5y ago
    What’s the sunk cost with Android? Apps? It’s very easy to switch to iPhone, I did it a year ago.
    - Macha 5y ago
      Apps and well the alternative to Android for me would be Plasma Mobile or something anyway. Many apps I use (Syncthing, Firefox, file manager, emulators) are forbidden or crippled by Apple policy. While I have a work iPhone 12 so I use both iOS and Android daily, I do actually prefer the Android ecosystem, plus iOS being locked down in terms of installing third party apps is a disqualifier for my personal device. Also bugbears like the headphone jack, though I might be out of luck there in Android in another device rotation.
- Calamitous 5y ago
  For Google docs I switched to using a Synology server. Very nearly as good (better, in some ways) and I don’t have to worry about what Google is up to. The up-front cost and setup time is a stiff investment, but I’m much easier in mind now. The other side of the coin is my wife’s gmail, which is going to be deleted come May. So... we gotta figure that out.
  - rexreed 5y ago
    What sort of collaborative editing does Synology allow? Is there a Nextcloud / Owncloud alternative to Docs / Sheets for collaborative editing?
    - nybble41 5y ago
      > Is there a Nextcloud / Owncloud alternative to Docs / Sheets for collaborative editing? Yes, NextCloud and Owncloud both integrate with OnlyOffice Community Edition[0][1] which supports collaborative editing of text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. [0] https://www.onlyoffice.com/office-for-nextcloud.aspx https://www.onlyoffice.com/office-for-nextcloud.aspx [1] https://www.onlyoffice.com/office-for-owncloud.aspx https://www.onlyoffice.com/office-for-owncloud.aspx
    - Calamitous 5y ago
      Same as Google, afaict. It has a slightly better permissions model, imo (I can create a doc with a password and share the link freely, or I can give specific permissions per user, like Google). Same editing/commenting/viewing interface. My collab needs are pretty light, I only work with a few family and friends, but I haven’t run into anything I wanted to do in Synology that I couldn’t.
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
In my case, I moved to Fastmail... and yeah, the hilarious thing is people remember moving from AOL to Gmail over a decade ago, and think Gmail is still so much better than everything else. Gmail is worst-in-class at this point. It's slow, it's bloated, it's bad at spam filtering compared to the alternatives. They've been riding on people remembering email before Gmail, but not really actually stayed competitive with any modern alternative offering.
- tut-urut-utut 5y ago
  That's so true. Switched to Mailfence recently. I still can't get used to it that whenever I click on something, the action gets done immediately. Its web/mobile client is a bit limited but crazy fast.
- Tozen 5y ago
  Many people consider Gmail as consenting to spyware. Unfortunately, lots of people don't know any better or haven't bothered to take a good look at the account settings or Google's policies. Anybody that knows better, will avoid Gmail like the plague or use it for only the minimum.
- joemi 5y ago
  I tried switching to Fastmail (from Gmail) 7-ish yrs ago, and I ended up switching back to Gmail specifically because the spam filtering was far worse with Fastmail. Is it Fastmail's spam filtering actually better now, or does it just seem that way when you start a new account because you're not getting much spam in general?
  - anamexis 5y ago
    I switched to Fastmail (with my own domain) about a year ago, and haven't had any issues with spam so far.
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    So, I moved to Fastmail in 2016, and I'd say I've never had to get a legitimate email out of my spam folder, and I've never seen obvious spam hit my inbox. I do occasionally get the "my husband left me five mil overseas" type garbage, it's always spam-binned correctly. (Meanwhile, my Gmail account I retain in case someone tries to reach out to it, regularly has emoji-subject-filled spam and other garbage Gmail fails to classify, and also has a deluge of garbage spam coming in... at this point, Gmail is 98% spam for me?) One important point here, and I don't know how long you used Fastmail when you tried it, is that Fastmail uses a personalized spam filter. It probably took me six to eight months to receive enough spam on Fastmail to actually train it. (In the interim, they use a non-personalized filter, which as I said, still worked!) Gmail doesn't seem to be able to make personal spam decisions: When I was regularly using Gmail, some types of regular messages would spam-bin no matter how many times I marked them not spam or classified them as a particular category of mail.
brightball 5y ago
I’m happy with Proton right now too. Really just need a mobile app for the calendar and I’ll be all set.
- triyambakam 5y ago
  There is a mobile Proton calendar app.
  - Quigglez 5y ago
    There is an Android one, but not an iOS one (at least last time I checked a few weeks ago)
  - brightball 5y ago
    Not yet for iOS from what I’ve seen. EDIT: Verified. Not yet for iOS.
  - ornel 5y ago
    I use it, but the requirement to be online in order to add or update entries is quite annoying
moralestapia 5y ago
Obsidian?
- ti00 5y ago
  I'm assuming they are referring to the note taking software: https://obsidian.md/ https://obsidian.md/
  - throwuxiytayq 5y ago
    Correct, it's pretty great and by design immune to Google-like rug pulls.
    - moralestapia 5y ago
      Nice, thanks!
koonsolo 5y ago
So how do you know those services don't pull the same stunt? I use various google services, and do a monthly backup of everything. I guess that's a sane thing to do with any service, even self hosted ones.
- lolinder 5y ago
  > So how do you know those services don't pull the same stunt? It's a questions of eggs per basket. Google wants you to keep everything in their one basket, and the result is that if they arbitrarily terminate your account, you lose everything. If they give you 30 days like OP, you have to remember all the different places you need to download content from. If you split your services up, a sudden termination only affects a few things rather than everything, and a forewarned termination has a much smaller surface area you need to consider.
  - nybble41 5y ago
    > If they give you 30 days like OP, you have to remember all the different places you need to download content from. Google Takeout (takeout.google.com) should give you almost everything in one place. It's a good idea to do this periodically in case you don't get the 30-day notice. Be prepared to download a few dozen GB, though. And there is no "incremental" option.
    - Scea91 5y ago
      Takeout is nice, but I am surprised by the lack of features in other products that would easily allow to import the data from Takeout format. I wanted to migrate from Google Photos to iCloud. Turns out there is no easy way how to import the photos to iCloud without loosing metadata. I gave up and just bought more storage on Google.
      - nybble41 5y ago
        I agree with you there. All the data is right there, in fairly open (if not exactly standard) formats. They even include an index document and basic descriptions of the data formats. One would think their competitors would want to make it easy to port exports from Google Takeout into their systems. I'm a bit surprised that you had trouble importing photos, though. Isn't most of the metadata kept in standard EXIF tags in each file?
aunty_helen 5y ago
If you like markdown note taking apps and want to move completely from being dependent on a 3rd party, I would suggest Joplin. Currently I'm syncing to a s3 bucket with e2e encryption but of course you could sync to a server you setup yourself including a basic windows box.
- twojacobtwo 5y ago
  Seconded on the Joplin recommend. I've been using it for a little over 3 years and it serves all my note-taking/storage needs, especially with the relatively recent addition of extensions/add-ons. I have had no issues syncing through either dropbox or Nextcloud.
reincarnate0x14 5y ago
Protonmail specifically seems to have strange problems with some old and busted email systems, ex: I've seen several government ministries in Taiwan (roc) that for some reason can not send email to protonmail or domains MXed there and no one has been able to explain it to me.
- bragr 5y ago
  Protonmail seems to routinely get flagged by fraud, spam, and security systems. You emails are probably getting eaten by a security appliance before it even reaches the government exchange server or whatever.
  - account42 5y ago
    Protonmail is one of the few remaining email hosts that let you create a free account without a verified mobile phone number. It probably does get used for spam quite a bit - relatively to gmail/outlook/etc., not in absolute terms that is, IME most spam is from compromised hosts and botnets. Then again, the major mail providers, especial Microsoft, are really trigger happy and don't seem to care about the damage they do to smaller providers so it could just as well be lazyness or intentional anti-competitive behavior. I think at some point we will need legislation to keep email an open federated system.
    - Avamander 5y ago
      > It probably does get used for spam quite a bit - relatively to gmail/outlook/etc., not in absolute terms that is Not really, big players have the advantage that nobody is going to block them. Most of them spam regularly by thousands of letters before some automation of theirs triggers (or the spammer stops).
  - reincarnate0x14 5y ago
    That is not the case as this is messages sent TO protonmail. It may be related anti-whatever measures, but is not typical anti-spam.
ss108 5y ago
How is ProtonMail better than Gmail in your opinion? I use ProtonMail but find the UI meh, the spam filter worse, and the calendar bad (not to mention it's costing me $). I like the privacy aspect of course, which is what drew me to it in the first place.
Avamander 5y ago
ProtonMail doesn't do e-mail categorization like gmail, so "much better" is very subjective. Their IMAP gateway is also a paid feature, which is really sucky.

skrtskrt 5y ago

the editor for Google Docs is the one really good thing I can't get elsewhere, but I don't do that much important stuff in it - just like planning vacations, etc. Once I'm done editing something, if I want to back it up I can just export it elsewhere

polski-g 5y ago
DropBox has a hook into Office's editors.
gigel82 5y ago
Microsoft has a very usable online version that's free (with a bit of upsell here and there). Arguably more capable than Google Docs.
- e40 5y ago
  Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Of course, I'm being a little flippant, but the MS ecosystem is not without its problems. A colleague has 3 MS accounts for dealing with 3 different things (a government contract, a 3rd party company contract, our company account). Because of this, he was in hell for days because of some fubar on the MS side. I have (seemingly!) different MS accounts, for Azure development and Office 365 and I am regularly confused by the various MS websites.
  - mbreese 5y ago
    MS Azure accounts always seemed odd and overly convoluted to me. I had an issue with my personal Microsoft account where I couldn’t sign up for an Azure trial (wanted to kick the tires on Codespaces before it moved to GitHub). Turned out, my account got associated to my kids’ schools MS account because that email address was on a school mailing list. That was a pain (and many hours) to get figured out.
  - skrtskrt 5y ago
    my friends that have one MS/Outlook account at their jobs, which have enterprise support reps for their big enterprise accounts sometimes have multi-day lockout for unknown reason, 2FA failure for days, absurd issues with timezones being inconsistent across MS services, etc.
- cutler 5y ago
  Wait until you're locked out of your Outlook.com account. No way back.
Macha 5y ago
I've really pared down my Google usage with the end of grandfathered GAFYD accounts as the last straw, so down to Sheets, YouTube, and Android as my last google usage. YouTube has no alternative, Android has too much sunk cost, Sheets I'm probably going to go back to Syncthing + Libreoffice I guess. Office 365 is the equivalent alternative, but not sure I feel much better about MS's consumer products than I do about Google.
- rexreed 5y ago
  Just use Invidious links instead of going directly to YouTube (for example, yewtu.be for the same remainder of the URL) for viewing. If you're talking about hosting videos, use Vimeo. Even when people post youTube links I use the Invidious alternative to stop feeding Google data. Also invidious has embedded download capability on their various sites.
- iamacyborg 5y ago
  What’s the sunk cost with Android? Apps? It’s very easy to switch to iPhone, I did it a year ago.
  - Macha 5y ago
    Apps and well the alternative to Android for me would be Plasma Mobile or something anyway. Many apps I use (Syncthing, Firefox, file manager, emulators) are forbidden or crippled by Apple policy. While I have a work iPhone 12 so I use both iOS and Android daily, I do actually prefer the Android ecosystem, plus iOS being locked down in terms of installing third party apps is a disqualifier for my personal device. Also bugbears like the headphone jack, though I might be out of luck there in Android in another device rotation.
Calamitous 5y ago
For Google docs I switched to using a Synology server. Very nearly as good (better, in some ways) and I don’t have to worry about what Google is up to. The up-front cost and setup time is a stiff investment, but I’m much easier in mind now. The other side of the coin is my wife’s gmail, which is going to be deleted come May. So... we gotta figure that out.
- rexreed 5y ago
  What sort of collaborative editing does Synology allow? Is there a Nextcloud / Owncloud alternative to Docs / Sheets for collaborative editing?
  - nybble41 5y ago
    > Is there a Nextcloud / Owncloud alternative to Docs / Sheets for collaborative editing? Yes, NextCloud and Owncloud both integrate with OnlyOffice Community Edition[0][1] which supports collaborative editing of text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. [0] https://www.onlyoffice.com/office-for-nextcloud.aspx https://www.onlyoffice.com/office-for-nextcloud.aspx [1] https://www.onlyoffice.com/office-for-owncloud.aspx https://www.onlyoffice.com/office-for-owncloud.aspx
  - Calamitous 5y ago
    Same as Google, afaict. It has a slightly better permissions model, imo (I can create a doc with a password and share the link freely, or I can give specific permissions per user, like Google). Same editing/commenting/viewing interface. My collab needs are pretty light, I only work with a few family and friends, but I haven’t run into anything I wanted to do in Synology that I couldn’t.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago

In my case, I moved to Fastmail... and yeah, the hilarious thing is people remember moving from AOL to Gmail over a decade ago, and think Gmail is still so much better than everything else. Gmail is worst-in-class at this point. It's slow, it's bloated, it's bad at spam filtering compared to the alternatives. They've been riding on people remembering email before Gmail, but not really actually stayed competitive with any modern alternative offering.

tut-urut-utut 5y ago
That's so true. Switched to Mailfence recently. I still can't get used to it that whenever I click on something, the action gets done immediately. Its web/mobile client is a bit limited but crazy fast.
Tozen 5y ago
Many people consider Gmail as consenting to spyware. Unfortunately, lots of people don't know any better or haven't bothered to take a good look at the account settings or Google's policies. Anybody that knows better, will avoid Gmail like the plague or use it for only the minimum.
joemi 5y ago
I tried switching to Fastmail (from Gmail) 7-ish yrs ago, and I ended up switching back to Gmail specifically because the spam filtering was far worse with Fastmail. Is it Fastmail's spam filtering actually better now, or does it just seem that way when you start a new account because you're not getting much spam in general?
- anamexis 5y ago
  I switched to Fastmail (with my own domain) about a year ago, and haven't had any issues with spam so far.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  So, I moved to Fastmail in 2016, and I'd say I've never had to get a legitimate email out of my spam folder, and I've never seen obvious spam hit my inbox. I do occasionally get the "my husband left me five mil overseas" type garbage, it's always spam-binned correctly. (Meanwhile, my Gmail account I retain in case someone tries to reach out to it, regularly has emoji-subject-filled spam and other garbage Gmail fails to classify, and also has a deluge of garbage spam coming in... at this point, Gmail is 98% spam for me?) One important point here, and I don't know how long you used Fastmail when you tried it, is that Fastmail uses a personalized spam filter. It probably took me six to eight months to receive enough spam on Fastmail to actually train it. (In the interim, they use a non-personalized filter, which as I said, still worked!) Gmail doesn't seem to be able to make personal spam decisions: When I was regularly using Gmail, some types of regular messages would spam-bin no matter how many times I marked them not spam or classified them as a particular category of mail.

brightball 5y ago

I’m happy with Proton right now too. Really just need a mobile app for the calendar and I’ll be all set.

triyambakam 5y ago
There is a mobile Proton calendar app.
- Quigglez 5y ago
  There is an Android one, but not an iOS one (at least last time I checked a few weeks ago)
- brightball 5y ago
  Not yet for iOS from what I’ve seen. EDIT: Verified. Not yet for iOS.
- ornel 5y ago
  I use it, but the requirement to be online in order to add or update entries is quite annoying

moralestapia 5y ago

Obsidian?

ti00 5y ago
I'm assuming they are referring to the note taking software: https://obsidian.md/ https://obsidian.md/
- throwuxiytayq 5y ago
  Correct, it's pretty great and by design immune to Google-like rug pulls.
  - moralestapia 5y ago
    Nice, thanks!

koonsolo 5y ago

So how do you know those services don't pull the same stunt? I use various google services, and do a monthly backup of everything. I guess that's a sane thing to do with any service, even self hosted ones.

lolinder 5y ago
> So how do you know those services don't pull the same stunt? It's a questions of eggs per basket. Google wants you to keep everything in their one basket, and the result is that if they arbitrarily terminate your account, you lose everything. If they give you 30 days like OP, you have to remember all the different places you need to download content from. If you split your services up, a sudden termination only affects a few things rather than everything, and a forewarned termination has a much smaller surface area you need to consider.
- nybble41 5y ago
  > If they give you 30 days like OP, you have to remember all the different places you need to download content from. Google Takeout (takeout.google.com) should give you almost everything in one place. It's a good idea to do this periodically in case you don't get the 30-day notice. Be prepared to download a few dozen GB, though. And there is no "incremental" option.
  - Scea91 5y ago
    Takeout is nice, but I am surprised by the lack of features in other products that would easily allow to import the data from Takeout format. I wanted to migrate from Google Photos to iCloud. Turns out there is no easy way how to import the photos to iCloud without loosing metadata. I gave up and just bought more storage on Google.
    - nybble41 5y ago
      I agree with you there. All the data is right there, in fairly open (if not exactly standard) formats. They even include an index document and basic descriptions of the data formats. One would think their competitors would want to make it easy to port exports from Google Takeout into their systems. I'm a bit surprised that you had trouble importing photos, though. Isn't most of the metadata kept in standard EXIF tags in each file?

aunty_helen 5y ago

If you like markdown note taking apps and want to move completely from being dependent on a 3rd party, I would suggest Joplin. Currently I'm syncing to a s3 bucket with e2e encryption but of course you could sync to a server you setup yourself including a basic windows box.

twojacobtwo 5y ago
Seconded on the Joplin recommend. I've been using it for a little over 3 years and it serves all my note-taking/storage needs, especially with the relatively recent addition of extensions/add-ons. I have had no issues syncing through either dropbox or Nextcloud.

reincarnate0x14 5y ago

Protonmail specifically seems to have strange problems with some old and busted email systems, ex: I've seen several government ministries in Taiwan (roc) that for some reason can not send email to protonmail or domains MXed there and no one has been able to explain it to me.

bragr 5y ago
Protonmail seems to routinely get flagged by fraud, spam, and security systems. You emails are probably getting eaten by a security appliance before it even reaches the government exchange server or whatever.
- account42 5y ago
  Protonmail is one of the few remaining email hosts that let you create a free account without a verified mobile phone number. It probably does get used for spam quite a bit - relatively to gmail/outlook/etc., not in absolute terms that is, IME most spam is from compromised hosts and botnets. Then again, the major mail providers, especial Microsoft, are really trigger happy and don't seem to care about the damage they do to smaller providers so it could just as well be lazyness or intentional anti-competitive behavior. I think at some point we will need legislation to keep email an open federated system.
  - Avamander 5y ago
    > It probably does get used for spam quite a bit - relatively to gmail/outlook/etc., not in absolute terms that is Not really, big players have the advantage that nobody is going to block them. Most of them spam regularly by thousands of letters before some automation of theirs triggers (or the spammer stops).
- reincarnate0x14 5y ago
  That is not the case as this is messages sent TO protonmail. It may be related anti-whatever measures, but is not typical anti-spam.

ss108 5y ago

How is ProtonMail better than Gmail in your opinion? I use ProtonMail but find the UI meh, the spam filter worse, and the calendar bad (not to mention it's costing me $). I like the privacy aspect of course, which is what drew me to it in the first place.

Avamander 5y ago

ProtonMail doesn't do e-mail categorization like gmail, so "much better" is very subjective. Their IMAP gateway is also a paid feature, which is really sucky.