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Ask HN: How to move away from Google

254 points by rocode2 5y ago

A big chunk of my personal software suite comes from Google, mostly Gmail, Gdrive and Android. I want to eventually move away, especially gmail and drive. What are the alternatives that can be used with expectation that they will remain active for at least a decade ?

DougMellon 5y ago
I have been using Fastmail for roughly three years now and happy with it. https://www.fastmail.com/gmail-alternative/ https://www.fastmail.com/gmail-alternative/
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  +1 for Fastmail. They also championed the open JMAP standard [1] [2]. [1] https://jmap.io/ https://jmap.io/ [2] https://fastmail.blog/open-technologies/jmap-new-email-open-standard/ https://fastmail.blog/open-technologies/jmap-new-email-open-...
  - xfour 5y ago
    The problem with the JMAP standard is that nothing seems to actually implement it. There is their proxy which was built in like a week and not updated and Cyrus. The latter which I couldn't (not for lack of effort) implement, and went back to dovecot which doesn't have an implementation.
    - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
      Thunderbird
- barbazoo 5y ago
  You can have a support ticket with an actual human at Fastmail, imagine that :)
- uhtred 5y ago
  I really like the new Masked Email feature.
- awiesenhofer 5y ago
  Are you worried about Fastmail being Australian based in any way?
  - DougMellon 5y ago
    Maybe for some, but it's never been a thought that's crossed my mind.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Been using them for, I think, 16 years.
znpy 5y ago
Office365 is probably going to stay around for ten more years.
- sswaner 5y ago
  If you are interested in moving off of the Google ecosystem then you probably won’t be happy with the Microsoft version.
- DoctorOW 5y ago
  Sure, but if you're trying to get away from Google... out of the frying pan and into the fire, right?
  - znpy 5y ago
    OP didn't mention any dislike for other big players. They just don't want google.
mark_l_watson 5y ago
I use gmail as my backup e-mail and Google drive as one of three cloud storage services. I pay for GCP and YouTube ad-free and YouTube Music. Great non-Google services I pay for are ProtonMail, Fastmail, iCloud, and Office-365. I have played around with self-hosting options, but decided to just use Cloud services, but don’t rely on any single vendor.
- yumraj 5y ago
  Curious why both Protonmail and Fastmail? How would you rate the two if one were to use just one of those? Any experience with Zoho, if so would love your thoughts on that too..
  - delgaudm 5y ago
    I'm a Zoho One user and have generally been very happy with them. They have a guide[0] on how to move off the Legacy GSuite if that applies to you. [0] https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/gsuite-to-zoho-mail-migration.html https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/gsuite-to-zoho-mail-migration... Zoho Email has been very reliable, spam protection has been satisfactory. Some minor things have bitten me, thier Zoom competitor only records audio, not video, the spreadsheets are sometimes slow to recalculate I trigger with F9 more than I'd like. But the workdrive has been on parity with GDrive, and the word Processor is more fully featured. Zoho are very responsive for support and you do interact with a human. My "One" suite includes email, calendar, Gdocs competitor, Gdrive competitor, and also pretty much everything I need to run my small business (books, CRM, website, appointments, webinars, courses, etc..)
  - mark_l_watson 5y ago
    I like the idea of ProtonMail but FastMail is more convenient. I also tried Apple e-mail using my custom domain, and it was OK, but FM is a bit better.
- DoctorOW 5y ago
  "Pay for" current tense? Why are you using that many email services?
bovermyer 5y ago
I use Fastmail for email and Dropbox for cloud storage. They're not going anywhere any time soon.
- freshpots 5y ago
  https://www.theverge.com/2014/4/11/5605734/dropbox-ceo-defends-adding-condoleezza-rice-to-board https://www.theverge.com/2014/4/11/5605734/dropbox-ceo-defen...
  - bovermyer 5y ago
    What's your point? You posted a URL as if that was self-evident commentary.
    - RonaldOlzheim 5y ago
      Same
    - freshpots 5y ago
      A war criminal was hired to the board of Dropbox. You couldn't ascertain that in seconds?
metadat 5y ago
This has already been discussed extensively on HN in the past. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Leave%20google&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- ChrisLTD 5y ago
  We get these posts every 60 days like clockwork.
  - metadat 5y ago
    True, and unfortunate because it means it'll be harder to tell once a truly compelling and attractive alternative comes along.
    - uncletammy 5y ago
      The offerings in this space change so quickly and it results in these threads having a pretty short shelf life. Getting a super current solution to arguably one of the greatest privacy problem facing our world right now is probably worth a little redundancy and clutter. Right?
- fsckboy 5y ago
  but the dark pattern methodology for extricating oneself from google also changes so there's nothing wrong with refreshing the topic
4kelly 5y ago
Fastmail for email. I used to use syncthing to maintain backups and syncing, but eventually just gave into iCloud as a compromise. Setting up and maintaining syncthing on wife and kids devices became a pain. DuckDuckGo for search. Dropping down to google when I’m stuck. Honestly I’ve found google worse for technical topics due to all the junk websites that recycle content. You’ll be fighting against the current trying to ditch google with an android phone! I’m sure it’s possible though. A great benefit of de googling (and also dropping most social media) is that I am barely exposed to ads at all! It’s is shocking using other peoples devices now ahah.
- uhtred 5y ago
  You can install /e/os on a lot of android phones. I've been happy with it. https://e.foundation/ https://e.foundation/
- throwaway67743 5y ago
  I really want to like ddg but it's just awful - not only are the results completely irrelevant but now it's started showing me russian language results, I'm in a country that uses the Latin alphabet.
  - jppope 5y ago
    try brave search
  - 4kelly 5y ago
    Fair enough! That’s rough. Apologies I assumed English :)
    - throwaway67743 5y ago
      Well I am a native English speaker but in a Slavic country so I'd expect some results, but they're not they seem to assume russian which means Cyrillic which I cannot read
  - throwaway67743 5y ago
throwra620 5y ago
throwaway67743 5y ago
Self hosted email for 20 years so ignoring that: - nextcloud for photos/drive - bitwarden with vaultwarden backend for passwords - self hosted Firefox Sync for everything else - syncthing for outlying file sharing - jottacloud for high capacity storage dump (rclone is your friend) Probably forgot something
- 4kelly 5y ago
  These are all great tools. But I wanted to gingerly hop on this thread to say that de google doesn’t have to mean self hosted. I found it very rewarding to put my money towards companies that are aligned with my priorities (be it privacy or other) even if there were free alternatives.
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    Agreed. Fastmail is a great example. They are cheap, but their product is excellent and so is their support. I never have to worry about losing my account unless I stop paying. I got burned on that when I went to jail, but they offer a pre-pay option so you can now pay a decade worth of fees in advance :)
  - throwaway67743 5y ago
    Yeah, I do use the odd service, email is just because I've always done that and I still like the flexibility
- jrib 5y ago
  what are you using for self-host firefox sync?
  - throwaway67743 5y ago
    The awful python 2 sync server still works for the most part, with storage bits and auth - it is a chore to setup and it sucks a little but eh, nobody else has bothered to make sync useful enough like the alternatives that do support custom sync need command line args which is not ideal and also rules out mobile devices entirely whereas Firefox on android has the ability to configure custom sync server for example
zorrolovsky 5y ago
Not sure if you do it for privacy, ethical or practical reasons, but here's my journey: I removed my life from Big Tech (FB, TW, Gmail, YT, G Drive, MS, and other anti-user/spyware/malware companies). It was surprisingly easy to do and refreshing spiritually. First, philosophy: this article resonated so much with me that I made the brave step of deleting my big tech accounts and switching to Linux: https://medium.com/hackernoon/leaving-apple-and-google-my-eelo-odyssey-introduction-d22741f990d7 https://medium.com/hackernoon/leaving-apple-and-google-my-ee... Then, execution. This site will help you to find user-friendly alternatives to your spyware apps/OSs/services: https://www.privacytools.io/ https://www.privacytools.io/ I am now with a setup that maximizes privacy and giving money to ethical companies: Phone OS: LineageOS and /e/ Desktop/Laptop: Debian and Linux Mint Browser Mobile: Bromite Browser Desktop: LibreWolf (firefox fork oriented to privacy) Maps and GPS mobile: OsmAnd Mobile app store: F-Droid, Aurora Store Search Engine: DuckduckGo, SearX Email: Posteo (1€/month) VPN: Mullvad (5€/month) Online drive: NextCloud-based service ie /e/ foundation Once I researched the above and checked the companies/projects are trustworthy, I started using them with surprisingly low bumps in the road. For mobile OS I went radical and didn't even install microG (a package to enable G services so some apps work well). I still can use my favorite apps, including banking (although if you root your phone you might have issues)
- ericfrazier 5y ago
  Good for you for voting with your wallet and being conscious of which causes your money supports.
- rattray 5y ago
  I was confused what /e/ was; it's https://e.foundation/ https://e.foundation/
- FireInsight 5y ago
  The active maintainers of privacytools.io 'recently' split up into a new more community-focused site due to inactivity of the founder. https://privacyguides.org/ https://privacyguides.org/ Read more here: - https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacyGuides/comments/pnhn4a/rprivacyguides_privacyguidesorg_what_you_need_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacyGuides/comments/pnhn4a/rpriv... - https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacyGuides/comments/pnh9n8/what_happened_to_privacytools/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacyGuides/comments/pnh9n8/what_...
b3nji 5y ago
Start here. An app that helps you deploy your own server with various tools you need. Platform on user's hosting provider for deploying private services, managed via mobile application. https://selfprivacy.org/en/ https://selfprivacy.org/en/
- uoaei 5y ago
  Is there anything similar for the self-hosted space?
  - b3nji 5y ago
    Technically this is a self-hosted space, the app deploys a NixOS script which builds everything for you. https://nixos.org/ https://nixos.org/ The app runs you through clearly defined steps on how to purchase the server, domain, and register everything together. You control the lot. The NixOS script is available on their repo to view, and fork yourself too. Their support is top notch, I've had many conversations with them, they have always helped me out. https://t.me/selfprivacy https://t.me/selfprivacy From my conversations, and chats, it's run by someone that has poured a lot of personal money and time into the project. They are truly passionate with privacy, self determination, teaching others, and helping the community.
    - uoaei 5y ago
      I thought "self-hosted" meant zero cloud providers, i.e., running on a home server with a firewall.
      - b3nji 5y ago
        That is a good point, I thought self hosted meant you are the person in charge, and nobody else can access, mess with, or bugger it up but you. You have corrected my assumption, thank you. You could take their NixOS script and run it on your own Raspberry Pi 4, I guess?
        5y ago
purplesnowflake 5y ago
https://app.skiff.org/ https://app.skiff.org/ for E2EE Google Docs. Even has a direct integration to make the migration
- sam100 5y ago
  Just saw they raised their Series A. It seems like more and more players are entering the privacy space these days.
- amilich 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing! Happy to answer any questions.
  - awiesenhofer 5y ago
    Looks great, congrats on the funding! What I couldn't make out from the website though is: can you export pages to pdf or other formats? Or share public links to them?
  - dmw_ng 5y ago
    The registration and login forms both appear to break Firefox password manager, even after applying a bookmarklet to remove relevant 'no autocomplete' HTML attributes. I just signed up, but chances are I won't be back after my clipboard gets overwritten
Jason_Protell 5y ago
Can we assume you're also trying to avoid iOS? Alternatives to Android: 1. Librem - https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ 2. Pine - https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ [Disclaimer - I haven't used these devices.]
walrus01 5y ago
> I want to eventually move away, especially gmail register your own domain name, either for personal or professional purposes take some basic security precautions on your domain registrar account, use a long complex password that's not used for any other service anywhere else on the internet, and set up some form of 2FA for logins as well. control your own authoritative DNS zonefile and choose where to set your MX records choose a 3rd party email service such as the other recommendation here, fastmail, and set the MX records, SPF and DKIM appropriately
- hbn 5y ago
  > register your own domain name, either for personal or professional purposes I have a question about domains, for whoever might be able to answer. I've had my own domain for a few years, a .se domain (only because it's .se and my middle name ends in that, so I was able to make the whole thing read like my name but with a dot in it) This is the Swedish TLD, which doesn't require you be a citizen to register. Is there any chance that the requirements for a TLD can change in the future and revoke my ability to own it? i.e. they start requiring you be a Swedish citizen to own a .se domain? Cause as it stands I just use the domain for my portfolio website which I could change whenever I want, but if I start tying my entire internet identity to that by registering it as my email everywhere, then it seems just as risky as using a gmail account that could get banned at any time.
  - walrus01 5y ago
    If you're greatly concerned about that, choose a .net/.com/.org or similar, or a TLD belonging to your actual country of citizenship/residence. Yes it's theoretically possible the Swedish authorities who control .se could do something else policy wise in the future.
    - hbn 5y ago
      Good to know. I suppose my next question is: is there any known instances of this happening in the past? I suppose regardless, if it ever actually happened, it's not like you wake up one day and lose your domain. There would probably be time to buy a new domain and point all your accounts there before your next renewal.
dividedbyzero 5y ago
I'm still looking for an alternative e-mail provider that is more privacy-conscious than Google, still works with ordinary IMAP and is based in the EU so I get to actually benefit from EU data protection. Haven't found one that ticks all boxes yet, but going with a US company doesn't appear to change much as I'm not a US citizen and hence fair game once my data is on US servers and I guess it inevitably will end up there, and encryption schemes that won't work with IMAP are too cumbersome (I tried); ideally they also have contacts and calendar that work with the iOS/macOS apps. Would love to de-google at least email on the domain I own but it's not as easy as I'd expected.
- sswaner 5y ago
  Did you consider ProtonMail?
  - dividedbyzero 5y ago
    I think they don't have IMAP, only some kind of bridge application that won't work on mobile. I'm not willing two have two different email apps in parallel, so I guess they are out.
- uhtred 5y ago
  I know you said based in the EU and Fastmail are based in Australia I think, but they are great. Integrates easily with email, calendar, and contacts clients using imap/caldav/carddav. What makes you consider google to be privacy conscious? Aren't they just scanning your emails 24/7 to profile you for advertising?
  - dankwizard 5y ago
    I'd recommend against Australian based - There are laws that state companies must be able to decrypt encrypted user data if required, and for a backdoor to be in place if they require access. A "Data Disruption Warrant" allows them to add, copy, delete or modify your data. "Account Takeover Warrant" will remove your access to an account but still allow them full access
hvmonk 5y ago
I have been off google (mostly) by: 1. Email: Zohomail 2. maps: apple maps (sometimes vet it with google maps to verify shortest path, etc) 3. drive: iCloud Has been working fine so far.
keraf 5y ago
I moved away from Google a few years ago. I'm using the following alternatives: - Email: ProtonMail - Contacts, Calendar, Online storage: NextCloud hosted by Hetzner (https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share) - Phone: LineageOS (Android) -- App stores: F-Droid for most apps and Aurora store for the occasional non F-Droid apps (like the ProtonMail client) -- Maps: MagicEarth (not open source but privacy friendly and very featureful) -- Messaging: Telegram FOSS -- Contact & Calendar sync: DAVx - Notes: Joplin (syncs with NextCloud and available on F-Droid as well) - Search: DuckDuckGo ProntonMail (with own domain) and the hosted NextCloud instance aren't free, but privacy comes with a price and I'm happy to pay for it. So far I'm very happy with the transition.
- RicoElectrico 5y ago
  An alernative to Magic Earth would be Organic Maps. https://organicmaps.app/ https://organicmaps.app/ Though it's not as focused on driving, it seems. But may be good enough.
  - brewdad 5y ago
    I use both as I find the trails on Organic Maps easier to follow, while Magic Earth works better in cities. This is with the default map types. There might be a setting I could toggle to give me the best of both in one app.
  - rattray 5y ago
    I haven't seen much mention of Maps.Me, but it's another OSM-based android app I've heard good things about from Europeans and enjoyed while traveling in South America. I haven't tried it much in the US.
    - maxerickson 5y ago
      Organic Maps is a fork of maps.me that was started after maps.me got bought. The US should be pretty good for trails, reasonable for streets and highly variable for addresses and POIs.
Mondialisation 5y ago
Have a look at r/degoogle
awiesenhofer 5y ago
Not to hijack the thread but in a similar vain: is anyone using an esolutions/murena degoogled phone as a daily driver? Thinking of getting their Fairphone version with /e/os but am unsure how it will handle common tasks (banking apps, navigation, camera, ...)? ie. https://esolutions.shop/shop/murena-fairphone-4-fr/ https://esolutions.shop/shop/murena-fairphone-4-fr/
- rglullis 5y ago
  I'm using the Fairphone 3 with /e/OS. Camera works fine. Navigation works with MagicEarth without any issues. Banking Apps are a different story. At least my bank in Germany is not supporting non-Google phones yet. I'm keeping my previous phone (Nokia 6.1) around mostly for this reason.
igordebatur 5y ago
I thought I'll be the last to move from Google because I'm alright with them using all my private data. But now I'm line to find an alternative: they've just locked our payment profile for an app with 25k+ positive ratings and their support does literally nothing to help us. I've just started a thread, maybe someone has the same experience and can share their experience https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30861147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30861147
SamWhited 5y ago
I've been a big fan of Fastmail for email and calendars. I've also thought about joining May First Co-op (https://mayfirst.coop/ https://mayfirst.coop/) as they've been around for a bit and offer a suite of services which includes email, chat, nextcloud for documents and files, etc. I've also had good results with DDG for most things search. I know people say the results are worse, and on some occasions they are, but mostly it's perfectly serviceable in my experience. For video conferencing I've been using a mix of Jitsi Meet and meet.coop (a big blue button instance that I have access to through my membership in social.coop, which is good for social media). For chat (including phone calls and SMS through https://jmp.chat https://jmp.chat) I use https://conversations.im https://conversations.im, the client costs money but the service just went free unless you want to use a custom domain. My phone is running Lineage OS using F-Droid for an app store. I don't like F-Droid very much for reasons that don't matter here (that might have been fixed since the last time I looked into it for all I know), but it is a perfectly good alternative so I recommend it in the absence of anything better. For maps I've been using Organic (https://organicmaps.app/ https://organicmaps.app/). It uses Open Street map data so at first a lot of places I wanted to navigate to weren't there, but I added all the places I go regularly to the map and now it works pretty well.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
Searching around here would be a good start then things like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30528205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30528205
gregoriol 5y ago
One question I've been asking myself about this migration, and didn't find all the solutions yet, is how to deal with services/websites/... I've logged into with a Google account. It's not always clear how, if even possible, to migrate from a Google SSO to a login/password. Does anyone has thoughts on this?
- jborichevskiy 5y ago
  I've had some success requesting password resets on services I signed up with Oauth to get a chance to set an actual password. Sometimes this seems to expose the internal account management, but it really depends.
- rattray 5y ago
  At least once I've been able to do this by reaching out to customer support.
1970-01-01 5y ago
I think the fast answer, unfortunately, is going to Microsoft or Apple. They aren't going anywhere.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
29athrowaway 5y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/ https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/
peepop6 5y ago
I switched to Tutanota for email and calendar and it has been surprisingly flawless. To make the transition easier I started by forwarding all Gmail emails to Tutanota and I've been slowly updating my accounts to the new email. The plan is to eventually delete my Google accounts completely.
AussieWog93 5y ago
I got rid of my smartphone altogether 2 years ago and haven't missed it at all (we use my wife's phone in the car for Google Maps). Before that I tried de-Googled Android and the experience wasn't great. Many of the alternatives can ostensibly do what the Big Tech product does, but there are bizarre pitfalls that break the experience. Stuff like OSMAnd having no business names and taking literally 15 minutes to map a route across town.
- basisword 5y ago
  Could you explain issues you have run into by ditching the smartphone and the solutions to those issues? A few things come to mind for me: - 2-factor auth (SMS or app based). - Banking (in the UK now a lot of online purchases must also be verified through the banks app). - Navigating in your city (public transport + just finding places by foot). - Anything else you've come across that assumes everyone has a smartphone. Also, what benefits have you found through ditching the smartphone?
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    >- 2-factor auth (SMS or app based). I still have an old Blackberry for SMS 2FA. >- Banking (in the UK now a lot of online purchases must also be verified through the banks app). We have an Android tablet at home for Chromecast. I just use that. When we're out, I don't tend to make online purchases. When push comes to shove, PayPal is a plan C. >- Navigating in your city (public transport + just finding places by foot). I'm one of those people who always knows where North is, and which directions main roads run in. I guess I'm just doing whatever it is that people did 50 years ago? >- Anything else you've come across that assumes everyone has a smartphone. I usually just ignore the COVID check-ins if they are phone only. Only one person has stopped me and immediately didn't care when I showed them my dumbphone. Apart from that, literally nothing has caused an issue. >Also, what benefits have you found through ditching the smartphone? I am not constantly plugged into an online hate machine. I can look around and realise that, actually, people aren't all that shit after all.
dotcoma 5y ago
Tutanota for email.
denkmoon 5y ago
Fastmail to replace gmail/calendar/contacts and some file storage (drive). I also use Syncthing as a replacement for google drive. Android, well, you know what the only alternative is.
eljimmy 5y ago
I run my own mail server and host all my websites on a cheap Linode instance ($5/mo) - it can be a pain in the ass to setup, but once it's up and running, there isn't much you need to do. Been running for 15 years now.
triyambakam 5y ago
What suggestions does anyone have for phone providers? I've long wanted to move off of Google Fi
rglullis 5y ago
I wrote a bit about it at a blog post [0]. My idea is to substitute the "cloud" (i.e, your data and applications running on someone else's computers) for a "lake" of your own devices where you can replicate and synchronize the data, and use native free applications for each of the devices that you have. So, for hardware - Workstations: Linux - Mobile: /e/OS [1] For software: - GDrive -> Syncthing for the documents, LibreOffice on workstations, simple document viewers on mobile - Email: My own domain, service provided by namecheap, costs ~20€/year. - Contacts, Calendar -> Syncthing to synchonize the files between the devices, and DecSync [2] as a calendar provider on thunderbird (workstation) and k-mail (mobile) - App Store: F-Droid for most software, and the odd exception (Berlin ticket for public transportation) that is not F/OSS I use the /e/OS store (which proxies some of the apps from Google into their own store) - Maps: MagicEarth (works well, uses OSM data, can do navigation decently and allows to choose download maps to keep offline). One of these days I will try again to self-host a tiling server, but I'm not sure what I would do for navigation. - Messaging: Matrix/Element is my main client, I also have XMPP. Both are hosted by communick, the "professional managed service" that I run [3]. I also have Telegram (FOSS client) on mobile, but I've been meaning to implement the bridge on communick so that I can ditch the client. I use hangouts only on the computer if and only if the other party is not available on the preferred methods. - Search: Brave search is working well. I preferred Brave over DDG because Brave is building their own index. If you think your queries are not giving you good results, you can turn on "Google mixing", where they make a (proxied) query to Google and show their results mixed with their own. [0]: https://raphael.lullis.net/thinking-heads-are-not-in-the-clouds/ https://raphael.lullis.net/thinking-heads-are-not-in-the-clo... [1]: https://e.foundation https://e.foundation [2]: https://github.com/39aldo39/DecSync https://github.com/39aldo39/DecSync [3]: https://communick.com https://communick.com
jrib 5y ago
fastmail has been great for e-mail. Using it as a google drive alternative though but I'd like to move to a solution with client-side encryption. Should actually be doable with the webdav that fastmail exposes and rclone: https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277882-Remote-file-access https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277882-Re... And I miss google sheets.
alisonatwork 5y ago
I use Fastmail for my personal email and Outlook for my work email. If you have any need to use Microsoft products for work or home (gaming), then it's worth getting an Office 365 subscription, since it also gives you a terabyte of space on OneDrive, which syncs pretty seamlessly on Windows. You can de-Google a big chunk of your Android if you don't mind using Microsoft instead. Outlook for email, OneDrive for sync, Edge for browsing, OneNote for notes etc.
branon 5y ago
I deleted my Google account three years ago and haven't looked back. Email was really the only thing I made heavy use of: Gandi, who I already pay to keep my domain registered, offers 3 GB mailboxes for free. This works fine for me since I archive and delete old mail annually. You can purchase 50 GB mailboxes for a few dollars per month. For file storage, I host my own NextCloud instance and handle (offline, geographically redundant) backups myself. I also pay for a MEGA account and back up critically important documents there. My primary phone runs Android 6 (terrible, I know) and I haven't had issues using it while not logged into a Google account. The artificially limited capacity of Google Maps' search history is a disappointing dark pattern, but that's about it. I plan on switching to a PinePhone eventually. I do worry about the usability of newer Android versions without a Google account. Not sure what's changed, do you have to sign in to use current Android phones?
mattmaroon 5y ago
Not sure if you like Microsoft any better but after over a decade of Gmail I’ve moved back to outlook and prefer it. It’s a lot better than it used to be. One Drive is much better than GDrive, and MS’s office programs have always been significantly better IMO. I find the whole Microsoft suite to be affordable and enjoyable to use. Obviously iPhone is an (or the) alternative to Android. I still don’t find much better than Google for searching but I guess Bing and DDG are at least a lot better than nothing. I do feel like my user satisfaction with Google search goes down a little bit every year. Depending on why you’re moving away from Google these may not be options you’ll consider. But if your opposition isn’t to big tech in particular but to just Google give MS products a try if you haven’t in awhile.
- BMc2020 5y ago
  Yes, I use the outlook dot com ecosystem and recommend it for non-technical people on a budget. It has a free version of MS Word that's good enough to make resumes on if you have no other way. At the other end of the scale, you get get a free Office365 enterprise license if you sign up to try out MS Graph Explorer. 90 days but they've renewed it a couple times now, you just have to log in and use it every once in a while. Tip: If you have more than 1 MS account your computer starts to get confused. In chrome open a guest window to log in to different MS accounts.
- pid-1 5y ago
  I'm thinking about leaving Google land because I think their incentives are heavily misaligned with mine as a consumer. Although Microsoft and Apple win points for not having ads their a primary profit mechanism, they unfortunately use the same strategy as Google: creating walled ecosystems that are very hard to leave. MS in particular has shown how aggressively anti-consumer they will be in the right conditions.
guillermin 5y ago
I was in this same situation a couple of years ago and easily managed to move to a comoletely Google-free life for 3€/month. I've documented it on my blog [0], but here's the summary: - mail-in-a-box for email - NextCloud (included in mail-in-a-box) for contacts, calendars, and files - LineageOS for MicroG for Android - OpenStreetMap for maps - DuckDuckGo for search - Firefox as internet browser [0] https://blog.ideotec.es/leaving-google-foss-journey/ https://blog.ideotec.es/leaving-google-foss-journey/
danamit 5y ago
I use Namecheap for email. Dropbox for "drive" (I don't use it often). I use YT, Google Search, and Google Meet. You cannot escape the first two, and the later is a display of professionalism for me as a freelancer.
zzxcvb 5y ago
I'll suggest Searx/SearXNG as a search engine. It's self-hosted, but you can find public instances at https://searx.space/ https://searx.space/ If you decide to go the self-hosted route, it's trivial to deploy with searx(ng)-docker. Being a meta-search engine, it can pull results from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, dictionaries, torrent sites, etc; this gives it a degree of customisability that traditional search engines don't have. I'll also mention Whoogle, which serves as a libre front-end to Google, although it doesn't currently support any other search engines.
tormock 5y ago
For email, I forwarded all emails to my new email. The rest was easy, except for Youtube... I need to find a way to subscribe to channels without a Google account (it would be nice if they had RSS and an external link).
- mkbkn 5y ago
  For Youtube, use FreeTube or NewPipe for desktop and mobile respectively.
- commentsgaloer2 5y ago
  newpipe app allows this
meristohm 5y ago
For personal use I'm happy with ProtonMail and F-Droid. For a calendar I use paper because I like being able to look at the wall and see the month, and to physically write things down. Same goes for note-taking, though that's a hybrid of digital and paper, with a goal of the important-er stuff going into the text files for easier searching (though like with paper books I have a sense where in each notebook certain things are). Good luck!
gray_charger 5y ago
This will get buried with the other comments, but I've done a good job getting away from Google: Email: Tutanota Calendar: Tutanota Messaging: Signal Phone: GrapheneOS Maps: OsmAnd~ Apps: F-Droid or Aurora Store Mobile Browser: Vanadium (Chromium-based) Desktop Browser: Brave (Chromium-based) YouTube client: NewPipe The last three are iffy as far as de-Google-img goes. I used Firefox for years but recently I find it unusable. Every year more websites are broken in Firefox and it never gets better despite bug reports. There also isn't really an alternative to YouTube's content unless the creator you follow also posts on Odysee.
- culopatin 5y ago
  Any suggestions around the super slow Tutanota clients? It takes sometimes like 20 seconds for it to load the list of emails. Doesn’t sound like a lot but it adds up.
  - Tutanota 5y ago
    Hi there, Tutanota team here. We noticed your comment and just wanted to ask what client/device you are using to look into this? Usually Tutanota loads much faster, but for some devices we can definitely improve. We are also currently working on offline mode. Once that is done loading time will much reduce!
    - culopatin 5y ago
      Hi. iPhone 12, 13 pro and 14in MacBook Pro (m1 pro). Every time I open the app it shows me a “logging in” with an animated bar while loading. It would be acceptable if it took that time to pull new emails, but not to just look at the old stuff I have already retrieved. I appreciate your quick response though, shows that you guys are on top of things.
      - Tutanota 5y ago
        Thanks for the feedback. Yes, this is exactly what offline mode will solve in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!
t0bia_s 5y ago
For email, calendar, notes and contact I recommend SOGo Groupware, open source solution with activesync. - https://www.sogo.nu/ https://www.sogo.nu/
8fingerlouie 5y ago
I see a lot of recommendations for self hosted alternatives, either at home or a VPS/Rented server. While the HN crowd is probably better suited than most people, running a server connected to the internet is no small taks, and people should seriously consider other alternatives before doing so. For some of the services, your own privacy measures may not matter one bit. Take email for example, you may self host it, or use a privacy oriented provider, but it doesn't help one bit if you recipient is on gmail or outlook, so one could argue that attempting to privacy secure email is in vain. You can of course use GPG, but that requires the receiver to publish keys, which not very many people do. I've self hosted for a couple of decades, but some years ago i decided i no longer wanted to be our resident sysadm, and instead moved everything to the cloud. I went from a proxmox cluster and a couple of NAS boxes spinning at home, to nothing spinning, and no open ports in the firewall. We now use regular cloud services (Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud, etc), and instead use Cryptomator (https://cryptomator.org/ https://cryptomator.org/) to encrypt everything before sending it to the cloud. For specific apps we use - Joplin for notes (or just ios notes) - Signal for messaging (though in reality we use quite a few clients, as it highly depends on what your recipient uses) - MXRoute for mail / contacts - DuckDuckGo for searching. - Cryptomator on top of whatever cloud storage the individual prefers. - Photos, here we chose the easy path, and simply use the integration offered by our phones, which in our case means iPhones, so iCloud.
- martin_a 5y ago
  > running a server connected to the internet is no small taks Shared webhosting is still a thing and comes with the best of two worlds. Not expensive and professionals take care of the system under the hood.
npteljes 5y ago
I moved from Gmail to Posteo, Gdrive to Nextcloud, and Android to /e/ OS. I self-host Nextcloud and installed the mobile OS myself, but if someone is not inclined, both have ready to use offerings as well. Nextcloud partnered with providers and they give 2GB instances for free, allegedly. If you need more, you can check https://github.com/nextcloud/providers#providers https://github.com/nextcloud/providers#providers Buy an /e/ OS phone: https://esolutions.shop/ https://esolutions.shop/ There are also third party sellers, like "Liberate your tech", who sell phones with GrapheneOS preinstalled. Regarding their stability; Posteo is going strong since 2009, Nextcloud as a project 2010. For mobile devices I'd look at 3-5 year periods, and I feel confident that /e/ OS and GrapheneOS will be around for that time. Even if they don't, the situation is not that different from owning an Android that's not updated anymore, and also usually you can sell the phone on the used market and buy a new one that's still supported.
martin_a 5y ago
> I want to eventually move away, especially gmail and drive. Run it yourself! Get yourself a solid hosting company with shared webhosting. For Germany, hetzner or all-inkl would be my choice. A hetzner "Level 1" shared webhosting for 1,90 €/month will come with an included TLD of your choice. Use that to host your own mailboxes. 10 GB webspace should be good for that, too. Then install a NextCloud instance on that webhost. Add a hetzner "Storage Box", 3,45 €/month will give you 1 TB of space which can be mounted into the NextCloud through a free plugin. That way you have mail and your own cloud for 5,50 €/month for as long as you pay the bill...
- kashyapc 5y ago
  > Run it yourself! I get where you're coming from. But, most people just simply don't have the appetite to run their own mail. What we need are: paid services that are reasonably reliable, secure, respect your privacy, and provide human-based customer support. PS: I myself use Hetzner (for non-email stuff), and a hosted NextCloud service - both are great :)
  - martin_a 5y ago
    Running your own mail is creating the mailbox and letting your mail client figure out how to connect to the server. There's not much work to do besides that. I think that's fine for anyone interested in becoming "independent" from services.
msh 5y ago
Maybe a bit contrarian but the best move might not be to move away for google unless the main driver is data privacy. If you just don't want to risk being locked out its more important to keep access to your data these would be the steps: - Get your own domain for email. If google locks you out you can just point it to somewhere else. - Set google takeout to make monthly backups (automatically) of your email, photos and so on to google drive. - Install desktop google drive on your computer. Set it to fully mirror all your files locally/offline. Then if google locks you out you will still have access to your files and photo/email backups. Bonus points for having a desktop mail app that keeps your email locally. The lockout problem is not unique to google, can happen with most providers.
- hbn 5y ago
  The issue with being locked out isn't just losing your data. It's also the fact that it's gonna likely cause a huge mess across all the accounts on other websites associated with that email account, if you're not locked out of them entirely. If you use an email provider that lets you use your own custom domain, and use that as your primary email address on all of those sites and one day the provider decides to purge you off their site, the domain still belongs to you, so you can jump to a new service, point it at the same address, and all your internet accounts are none the wiser.
kashyapc 5y ago
For e-mail, definitely check out https://mailbox.org https://mailbox.org. I've been a happy user of their service for more than a year now. Clean, secure, and effective. I'm not associated with them, but here is a decent review of it[1]. If you're comfortable with email clients, you can even use mailbox.org as a dumb mail-drop location and fetch everything locally via tools such as `mbsync`. Then you can use a mail client your choice (Thunderbird, Mutt, etc) to read/respond. [1] https://proprivacy.com/email/review/mailboxorg https://proprivacy.com/email/review/mailboxorg
BaudouinVH 5y ago
there is a whole subreddit about it : https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/ https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/
kkfx 5y ago
IMVHO you should not look at "alternatives" in the sense of "substitute a WebApp with another" but in workflow terms: - emails? They are normally valuable tool and personal stuff, they must not be outside your control as much as possible so GMail or Proton change nothing if you use them with their webmail. Just buy a domain, choose a hosted mail service, just because host one yourself is not that easy these days, sync or better grab your remote inbox to a homeserver and use your mail locally in your desktop. The local part means sync against your server the entire maildir, use a local MUA, with good search, tagging etc capabilities, my personal choice is notmuch, to sync mail muchsync, to grab mail fetchmail+MailDrop (but you might like OfflineIMAP or MBSync). Webmail served by your homeserver (i.e. MailPie or Modoboa or even the simple RoundCube) as a last resort if you aren't at your desktop; - calendar/agenda? Similarly, personally I use org-mode, far more powerful than modern calendar, but again you might prefer different things, thou local and synced not centrally served. - Drive? To share files there are various options from classic WebDAV to third party services no reason to be tied to one in particular if that's not yours, the rest of Drive is not really a thing IMVHO - search? Just use Google Search is not more evil than any other player, there is no real open choice there, YaCy while have a public distributed network count just too few participants to be an alternative and the web is the web, you can't run your own. - Maps? Again not much real alternatives, a PND is good enough for car navigation, for the rest there are very few other maps services but none as powerful as Maps just due to the scale. OSM is hyper-good in limited areas, very lacking elsewhere so not a real option. - notes? The best I know are again Emacs/org-mode/org-roam etc combo, TiddlyWiki with a daemon to serve it might be another option, Zim another more limited but still light and classic for certain users. Looking for alternatives in terms of substituting a player with another is a game loosed from start and does not solve anything: companies are not "good" or "evil" they just follow their interest, some might be less friendly then others, but interests in the game remain the same.
42droids 5y ago
Maybe someone can give me an idea: I have about 3TB+ images I need access to online (eg. easy, automated upload from iPhone, access and search when I am looking for an image (Google Photos style)) alongside secure backup. What's my best option that's also reasonable priced?
minroot 5y ago
Email: Casual use - ProtonMail Git and friends - Nixnet Use FairEmail on Android and Geary (sometimes Aerc) on Linux.
p0d 5y ago
I still use Gmail/Calendar but I do so through Fastmail. I like the Gmail client but I am happy to know I can ditch it anytime without drama. I have a number of domains and email aliases routing through Fastmail which has a copy of all my messages. So if I need to use another mail client, no biggie. I also went back to Dropbox and love it. No Google drive client for Linux is bizarre.
JSONderulo 5y ago
Google Search —> you.com Google Chrome —> Brave Gmail —> ProtonMail Google Docs —> Notion

254 points by rocode2 5y ago

DougMellon 5y ago

I have been using Fastmail for roughly three years now and happy with it. https://www.fastmail.com/gmail-alternative/ https://www.fastmail.com/gmail-alternative/

toomuchtodo 5y ago
+1 for Fastmail. They also championed the open JMAP standard [1] [2]. [1] https://jmap.io/ https://jmap.io/ [2] https://fastmail.blog/open-technologies/jmap-new-email-open-standard/ https://fastmail.blog/open-technologies/jmap-new-email-open-...
- xfour 5y ago
  The problem with the JMAP standard is that nothing seems to actually implement it. There is their proxy which was built in like a week and not updated and Cyrus. The latter which I couldn't (not for lack of effort) implement, and went back to dovecot which doesn't have an implementation.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    Thunderbird
barbazoo 5y ago
You can have a support ticket with an actual human at Fastmail, imagine that :)
uhtred 5y ago
I really like the new Masked Email feature.
awiesenhofer 5y ago
Are you worried about Fastmail being Australian based in any way?
- DougMellon 5y ago
  Maybe for some, but it's never been a thought that's crossed my mind.
kingcharles 5y ago
Been using them for, I think, 16 years.

znpy 5y ago

Office365 is probably going to stay around for ten more years.

sswaner 5y ago
If you are interested in moving off of the Google ecosystem then you probably won’t be happy with the Microsoft version.
DoctorOW 5y ago
Sure, but if you're trying to get away from Google... out of the frying pan and into the fire, right?
- znpy 5y ago
  OP didn't mention any dislike for other big players. They just don't want google.

mark_l_watson 5y ago

I use gmail as my backup e-mail and Google drive as one of three cloud storage services. I pay for GCP and YouTube ad-free and YouTube Music. Great non-Google services I pay for are ProtonMail, Fastmail, iCloud, and Office-365. I have played around with self-hosting options, but decided to just use Cloud services, but don’t rely on any single vendor.

yumraj 5y ago
Curious why both Protonmail and Fastmail? How would you rate the two if one were to use just one of those? Any experience with Zoho, if so would love your thoughts on that too..
- delgaudm 5y ago
  I'm a Zoho One user and have generally been very happy with them. They have a guide[0] on how to move off the Legacy GSuite if that applies to you. [0] https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/gsuite-to-zoho-mail-migration.html https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/gsuite-to-zoho-mail-migration... Zoho Email has been very reliable, spam protection has been satisfactory. Some minor things have bitten me, thier Zoom competitor only records audio, not video, the spreadsheets are sometimes slow to recalculate I trigger with F9 more than I'd like. But the workdrive has been on parity with GDrive, and the word Processor is more fully featured. Zoho are very responsive for support and you do interact with a human. My "One" suite includes email, calendar, Gdocs competitor, Gdrive competitor, and also pretty much everything I need to run my small business (books, CRM, website, appointments, webinars, courses, etc..)
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  I like the idea of ProtonMail but FastMail is more convenient. I also tried Apple e-mail using my custom domain, and it was OK, but FM is a bit better.
DoctorOW 5y ago
"Pay for" current tense? Why are you using that many email services?

bovermyer 5y ago

I use Fastmail for email and Dropbox for cloud storage. They're not going anywhere any time soon.

freshpots 5y ago
https://www.theverge.com/2014/4/11/5605734/dropbox-ceo-defends-adding-condoleezza-rice-to-board https://www.theverge.com/2014/4/11/5605734/dropbox-ceo-defen...
- bovermyer 5y ago
  What's your point? You posted a URL as if that was self-evident commentary.
  - RonaldOlzheim 5y ago
    Same
  - freshpots 5y ago
    A war criminal was hired to the board of Dropbox. You couldn't ascertain that in seconds?

metadat 5y ago

This has already been discussed extensively on HN in the past. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Leave%20google&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

ChrisLTD 5y ago
We get these posts every 60 days like clockwork.
- metadat 5y ago
  True, and unfortunate because it means it'll be harder to tell once a truly compelling and attractive alternative comes along.
  - uncletammy 5y ago
    The offerings in this space change so quickly and it results in these threads having a pretty short shelf life. Getting a super current solution to arguably one of the greatest privacy problem facing our world right now is probably worth a little redundancy and clutter. Right?
fsckboy 5y ago
but the dark pattern methodology for extricating oneself from google also changes so there's nothing wrong with refreshing the topic

4kelly 5y ago

Fastmail for email. I used to use syncthing to maintain backups and syncing, but eventually just gave into iCloud as a compromise. Setting up and maintaining syncthing on wife and kids devices became a pain. DuckDuckGo for search. Dropping down to google when I’m stuck. Honestly I’ve found google worse for technical topics due to all the junk websites that recycle content. You’ll be fighting against the current trying to ditch google with an android phone! I’m sure it’s possible though. A great benefit of de googling (and also dropping most social media) is that I am barely exposed to ads at all! It’s is shocking using other peoples devices now ahah.

uhtred 5y ago
You can install /e/os on a lot of android phones. I've been happy with it. https://e.foundation/ https://e.foundation/
throwaway67743 5y ago
I really want to like ddg but it's just awful - not only are the results completely irrelevant but now it's started showing me russian language results, I'm in a country that uses the Latin alphabet.
- jppope 5y ago
  try brave search
- 4kelly 5y ago
  Fair enough! That’s rough. Apologies I assumed English :)
  - throwaway67743 5y ago
    Well I am a native English speaker but in a Slavic country so I'd expect some results, but they're not they seem to assume russian which means Cyrillic which I cannot read
- throwaway67743 5y ago

throwra620 5y ago

throwaway67743 5y ago

Self hosted email for 20 years so ignoring that: - nextcloud for photos/drive - bitwarden with vaultwarden backend for passwords - self hosted Firefox Sync for everything else - syncthing for outlying file sharing - jottacloud for high capacity storage dump (rclone is your friend) Probably forgot something

4kelly 5y ago
These are all great tools. But I wanted to gingerly hop on this thread to say that de google doesn’t have to mean self hosted. I found it very rewarding to put my money towards companies that are aligned with my priorities (be it privacy or other) even if there were free alternatives.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Agreed. Fastmail is a great example. They are cheap, but their product is excellent and so is their support. I never have to worry about losing my account unless I stop paying. I got burned on that when I went to jail, but they offer a pre-pay option so you can now pay a decade worth of fees in advance :)
- throwaway67743 5y ago
  Yeah, I do use the odd service, email is just because I've always done that and I still like the flexibility
jrib 5y ago
what are you using for self-host firefox sync?
- throwaway67743 5y ago
  The awful python 2 sync server still works for the most part, with storage bits and auth - it is a chore to setup and it sucks a little but eh, nobody else has bothered to make sync useful enough like the alternatives that do support custom sync need command line args which is not ideal and also rules out mobile devices entirely whereas Firefox on android has the ability to configure custom sync server for example

zorrolovsky 5y ago

Not sure if you do it for privacy, ethical or practical reasons, but here's my journey: I removed my life from Big Tech (FB, TW, Gmail, YT, G Drive, MS, and other anti-user/spyware/malware companies). It was surprisingly easy to do and refreshing spiritually. First, philosophy: this article resonated so much with me that I made the brave step of deleting my big tech accounts and switching to Linux: https://medium.com/hackernoon/leaving-apple-and-google-my-eelo-odyssey-introduction-d22741f990d7 https://medium.com/hackernoon/leaving-apple-and-google-my-ee... Then, execution. This site will help you to find user-friendly alternatives to your spyware apps/OSs/services: https://www.privacytools.io/ https://www.privacytools.io/ I am now with a setup that maximizes privacy and giving money to ethical companies: Phone OS: LineageOS and /e/ Desktop/Laptop: Debian and Linux Mint Browser Mobile: Bromite Browser Desktop: LibreWolf (firefox fork oriented to privacy) Maps and GPS mobile: OsmAnd Mobile app store: F-Droid, Aurora Store Search Engine: DuckduckGo, SearX Email: Posteo (1€/month) VPN: Mullvad (5€/month) Online drive: NextCloud-based service ie /e/ foundation Once I researched the above and checked the companies/projects are trustworthy, I started using them with surprisingly low bumps in the road. For mobile OS I went radical and didn't even install microG (a package to enable G services so some apps work well). I still can use my favorite apps, including banking (although if you root your phone you might have issues)

ericfrazier 5y ago
Good for you for voting with your wallet and being conscious of which causes your money supports.
rattray 5y ago
I was confused what /e/ was; it's https://e.foundation/ https://e.foundation/
FireInsight 5y ago
The active maintainers of privacytools.io 'recently' split up into a new more community-focused site due to inactivity of the founder. https://privacyguides.org/ https://privacyguides.org/ Read more here: - https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacyGuides/comments/pnhn4a/rprivacyguides_privacyguidesorg_what_you_need_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacyGuides/comments/pnhn4a/rpriv... - https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacyGuides/comments/pnh9n8/what_happened_to_privacytools/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacyGuides/comments/pnh9n8/what_...

b3nji 5y ago

Start here. An app that helps you deploy your own server with various tools you need. Platform on user's hosting provider for deploying private services, managed via mobile application. https://selfprivacy.org/en/ https://selfprivacy.org/en/

uoaei 5y ago
Is there anything similar for the self-hosted space?
- b3nji 5y ago
  Technically this is a self-hosted space, the app deploys a NixOS script which builds everything for you. https://nixos.org/ https://nixos.org/ The app runs you through clearly defined steps on how to purchase the server, domain, and register everything together. You control the lot. The NixOS script is available on their repo to view, and fork yourself too. Their support is top notch, I've had many conversations with them, they have always helped me out. https://t.me/selfprivacy https://t.me/selfprivacy From my conversations, and chats, it's run by someone that has poured a lot of personal money and time into the project. They are truly passionate with privacy, self determination, teaching others, and helping the community.
  - uoaei 5y ago
    I thought "self-hosted" meant zero cloud providers, i.e., running on a home server with a firewall.
    - b3nji 5y ago
      That is a good point, I thought self hosted meant you are the person in charge, and nobody else can access, mess with, or bugger it up but you. You have corrected my assumption, thank you. You could take their NixOS script and run it on your own Raspberry Pi 4, I guess?
      - 5y ago

purplesnowflake 5y ago

https://app.skiff.org/ https://app.skiff.org/ for E2EE Google Docs. Even has a direct integration to make the migration

sam100 5y ago
Just saw they raised their Series A. It seems like more and more players are entering the privacy space these days.
amilich 5y ago
Thanks for sharing! Happy to answer any questions.
- awiesenhofer 5y ago
  Looks great, congrats on the funding! What I couldn't make out from the website though is: can you export pages to pdf or other formats? Or share public links to them?
- dmw_ng 5y ago
  The registration and login forms both appear to break Firefox password manager, even after applying a bookmarklet to remove relevant 'no autocomplete' HTML attributes. I just signed up, but chances are I won't be back after my clipboard gets overwritten

Jason_Protell 5y ago

Can we assume you're also trying to avoid iOS? Alternatives to Android: 1. Librem - https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ 2. Pine - https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ [Disclaimer - I haven't used these devices.]

walrus01 5y ago

> I want to eventually move away, especially gmail register your own domain name, either for personal or professional purposes take some basic security precautions on your domain registrar account, use a long complex password that's not used for any other service anywhere else on the internet, and set up some form of 2FA for logins as well. control your own authoritative DNS zonefile and choose where to set your MX records choose a 3rd party email service such as the other recommendation here, fastmail, and set the MX records, SPF and DKIM appropriately

hbn 5y ago
> register your own domain name, either for personal or professional purposes I have a question about domains, for whoever might be able to answer. I've had my own domain for a few years, a .se domain (only because it's .se and my middle name ends in that, so I was able to make the whole thing read like my name but with a dot in it) This is the Swedish TLD, which doesn't require you be a citizen to register. Is there any chance that the requirements for a TLD can change in the future and revoke my ability to own it? i.e. they start requiring you be a Swedish citizen to own a .se domain? Cause as it stands I just use the domain for my portfolio website which I could change whenever I want, but if I start tying my entire internet identity to that by registering it as my email everywhere, then it seems just as risky as using a gmail account that could get banned at any time.
- walrus01 5y ago
  If you're greatly concerned about that, choose a .net/.com/.org or similar, or a TLD belonging to your actual country of citizenship/residence. Yes it's theoretically possible the Swedish authorities who control .se could do something else policy wise in the future.
  - hbn 5y ago
    Good to know. I suppose my next question is: is there any known instances of this happening in the past? I suppose regardless, if it ever actually happened, it's not like you wake up one day and lose your domain. There would probably be time to buy a new domain and point all your accounts there before your next renewal.

dividedbyzero 5y ago

I'm still looking for an alternative e-mail provider that is more privacy-conscious than Google, still works with ordinary IMAP and is based in the EU so I get to actually benefit from EU data protection. Haven't found one that ticks all boxes yet, but going with a US company doesn't appear to change much as I'm not a US citizen and hence fair game once my data is on US servers and I guess it inevitably will end up there, and encryption schemes that won't work with IMAP are too cumbersome (I tried); ideally they also have contacts and calendar that work with the iOS/macOS apps. Would love to de-google at least email on the domain I own but it's not as easy as I'd expected.

sswaner 5y ago
Did you consider ProtonMail?
- dividedbyzero 5y ago
  I think they don't have IMAP, only some kind of bridge application that won't work on mobile. I'm not willing two have two different email apps in parallel, so I guess they are out.
uhtred 5y ago
I know you said based in the EU and Fastmail are based in Australia I think, but they are great. Integrates easily with email, calendar, and contacts clients using imap/caldav/carddav. What makes you consider google to be privacy conscious? Aren't they just scanning your emails 24/7 to profile you for advertising?
- dankwizard 5y ago
  I'd recommend against Australian based - There are laws that state companies must be able to decrypt encrypted user data if required, and for a backdoor to be in place if they require access. A "Data Disruption Warrant" allows them to add, copy, delete or modify your data. "Account Takeover Warrant" will remove your access to an account but still allow them full access

hvmonk 5y ago

I have been off google (mostly) by: 1. Email: Zohomail 2. maps: apple maps (sometimes vet it with google maps to verify shortest path, etc) 3. drive: iCloud Has been working fine so far.

keraf 5y ago

I moved away from Google a few years ago. I'm using the following alternatives: - Email: ProtonMail - Contacts, Calendar, Online storage: NextCloud hosted by Hetzner (https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share) - Phone: LineageOS (Android) -- App stores: F-Droid for most apps and Aurora store for the occasional non F-Droid apps (like the ProtonMail client) -- Maps: MagicEarth (not open source but privacy friendly and very featureful) -- Messaging: Telegram FOSS -- Contact & Calendar sync: DAVx - Notes: Joplin (syncs with NextCloud and available on F-Droid as well) - Search: DuckDuckGo ProntonMail (with own domain) and the hosted NextCloud instance aren't free, but privacy comes with a price and I'm happy to pay for it. So far I'm very happy with the transition.

RicoElectrico 5y ago
An alernative to Magic Earth would be Organic Maps. https://organicmaps.app/ https://organicmaps.app/ Though it's not as focused on driving, it seems. But may be good enough.
- brewdad 5y ago
  I use both as I find the trails on Organic Maps easier to follow, while Magic Earth works better in cities. This is with the default map types. There might be a setting I could toggle to give me the best of both in one app.
- rattray 5y ago
  I haven't seen much mention of Maps.Me, but it's another OSM-based android app I've heard good things about from Europeans and enjoyed while traveling in South America. I haven't tried it much in the US.
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    Organic Maps is a fork of maps.me that was started after maps.me got bought. The US should be pretty good for trails, reasonable for streets and highly variable for addresses and POIs.

Mondialisation 5y ago

Have a look at r/degoogle

awiesenhofer 5y ago

Not to hijack the thread but in a similar vain: is anyone using an esolutions/murena degoogled phone as a daily driver? Thinking of getting their Fairphone version with /e/os but am unsure how it will handle common tasks (banking apps, navigation, camera, ...)? ie. https://esolutions.shop/shop/murena-fairphone-4-fr/ https://esolutions.shop/shop/murena-fairphone-4-fr/

rglullis 5y ago
I'm using the Fairphone 3 with /e/OS. Camera works fine. Navigation works with MagicEarth without any issues. Banking Apps are a different story. At least my bank in Germany is not supporting non-Google phones yet. I'm keeping my previous phone (Nokia 6.1) around mostly for this reason.

igordebatur 5y ago

I thought I'll be the last to move from Google because I'm alright with them using all my private data. But now I'm line to find an alternative: they've just locked our payment profile for an app with 25k+ positive ratings and their support does literally nothing to help us. I've just started a thread, maybe someone has the same experience and can share their experience https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30861147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30861147

SamWhited 5y ago

I've been a big fan of Fastmail for email and calendars. I've also thought about joining May First Co-op (https://mayfirst.coop/ https://mayfirst.coop/) as they've been around for a bit and offer a suite of services which includes email, chat, nextcloud for documents and files, etc. I've also had good results with DDG for most things search. I know people say the results are worse, and on some occasions they are, but mostly it's perfectly serviceable in my experience. For video conferencing I've been using a mix of Jitsi Meet and meet.coop (a big blue button instance that I have access to through my membership in social.coop, which is good for social media). For chat (including phone calls and SMS through https://jmp.chat https://jmp.chat) I use https://conversations.im https://conversations.im, the client costs money but the service just went free unless you want to use a custom domain. My phone is running Lineage OS using F-Droid for an app store. I don't like F-Droid very much for reasons that don't matter here (that might have been fixed since the last time I looked into it for all I know), but it is a perfectly good alternative so I recommend it in the absence of anything better. For maps I've been using Organic (https://organicmaps.app/ https://organicmaps.app/). It uses Open Street map data so at first a lot of places I wanted to navigate to weren't there, but I added all the places I go regularly to the map and now it works pretty well.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

Searching around here would be a good start then things like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30528205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30528205

gregoriol 5y ago

One question I've been asking myself about this migration, and didn't find all the solutions yet, is how to deal with services/websites/... I've logged into with a Google account. It's not always clear how, if even possible, to migrate from a Google SSO to a login/password. Does anyone has thoughts on this?

jborichevskiy 5y ago
I've had some success requesting password resets on services I signed up with Oauth to get a chance to set an actual password. Sometimes this seems to expose the internal account management, but it really depends.
rattray 5y ago
At least once I've been able to do this by reaching out to customer support.

1970-01-01 5y ago

I think the fast answer, unfortunately, is going to Microsoft or Apple. They aren't going anywhere.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

29athrowaway 5y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/ https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/

peepop6 5y ago

I switched to Tutanota for email and calendar and it has been surprisingly flawless. To make the transition easier I started by forwarding all Gmail emails to Tutanota and I've been slowly updating my accounts to the new email. The plan is to eventually delete my Google accounts completely.

AussieWog93 5y ago

I got rid of my smartphone altogether 2 years ago and haven't missed it at all (we use my wife's phone in the car for Google Maps). Before that I tried de-Googled Android and the experience wasn't great. Many of the alternatives can ostensibly do what the Big Tech product does, but there are bizarre pitfalls that break the experience. Stuff like OSMAnd having no business names and taking literally 15 minutes to map a route across town.

basisword 5y ago
Could you explain issues you have run into by ditching the smartphone and the solutions to those issues? A few things come to mind for me: - 2-factor auth (SMS or app based). - Banking (in the UK now a lot of online purchases must also be verified through the banks app). - Navigating in your city (public transport + just finding places by foot). - Anything else you've come across that assumes everyone has a smartphone. Also, what benefits have you found through ditching the smartphone?
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >- 2-factor auth (SMS or app based). I still have an old Blackberry for SMS 2FA. >- Banking (in the UK now a lot of online purchases must also be verified through the banks app). We have an Android tablet at home for Chromecast. I just use that. When we're out, I don't tend to make online purchases. When push comes to shove, PayPal is a plan C. >- Navigating in your city (public transport + just finding places by foot). I'm one of those people who always knows where North is, and which directions main roads run in. I guess I'm just doing whatever it is that people did 50 years ago? >- Anything else you've come across that assumes everyone has a smartphone. I usually just ignore the COVID check-ins if they are phone only. Only one person has stopped me and immediately didn't care when I showed them my dumbphone. Apart from that, literally nothing has caused an issue. >Also, what benefits have you found through ditching the smartphone? I am not constantly plugged into an online hate machine. I can look around and realise that, actually, people aren't all that shit after all.

dotcoma 5y ago

Tutanota for email.

denkmoon 5y ago

Fastmail to replace gmail/calendar/contacts and some file storage (drive). I also use Syncthing as a replacement for google drive. Android, well, you know what the only alternative is.

eljimmy 5y ago

I run my own mail server and host all my websites on a cheap Linode instance ($5/mo) - it can be a pain in the ass to setup, but once it's up and running, there isn't much you need to do. Been running for 15 years now.

triyambakam 5y ago

What suggestions does anyone have for phone providers? I've long wanted to move off of Google Fi

rglullis 5y ago

I wrote a bit about it at a blog post [0]. My idea is to substitute the "cloud" (i.e, your data and applications running on someone else's computers) for a "lake" of your own devices where you can replicate and synchronize the data, and use native free applications for each of the devices that you have. So, for hardware - Workstations: Linux - Mobile: /e/OS [1] For software: - GDrive -> Syncthing for the documents, LibreOffice on workstations, simple document viewers on mobile - Email: My own domain, service provided by namecheap, costs ~20€/year. - Contacts, Calendar -> Syncthing to synchonize the files between the devices, and DecSync [2] as a calendar provider on thunderbird (workstation) and k-mail (mobile) - App Store: F-Droid for most software, and the odd exception (Berlin ticket for public transportation) that is not F/OSS I use the /e/OS store (which proxies some of the apps from Google into their own store) - Maps: MagicEarth (works well, uses OSM data, can do navigation decently and allows to choose download maps to keep offline). One of these days I will try again to self-host a tiling server, but I'm not sure what I would do for navigation. - Messaging: Matrix/Element is my main client, I also have XMPP. Both are hosted by communick, the "professional managed service" that I run [3]. I also have Telegram (FOSS client) on mobile, but I've been meaning to implement the bridge on communick so that I can ditch the client. I use hangouts only on the computer if and only if the other party is not available on the preferred methods. - Search: Brave search is working well. I preferred Brave over DDG because Brave is building their own index. If you think your queries are not giving you good results, you can turn on "Google mixing", where they make a (proxied) query to Google and show their results mixed with their own. [0]: https://raphael.lullis.net/thinking-heads-are-not-in-the-clouds/ https://raphael.lullis.net/thinking-heads-are-not-in-the-clo... [1]: https://e.foundation https://e.foundation [2]: https://github.com/39aldo39/DecSync https://github.com/39aldo39/DecSync [3]: https://communick.com https://communick.com

jrib 5y ago

fastmail has been great for e-mail. Using it as a google drive alternative though but I'd like to move to a solution with client-side encryption. Should actually be doable with the webdav that fastmail exposes and rclone: https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277882-Remote-file-access https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277882-Re... And I miss google sheets.

alisonatwork 5y ago

I use Fastmail for my personal email and Outlook for my work email. If you have any need to use Microsoft products for work or home (gaming), then it's worth getting an Office 365 subscription, since it also gives you a terabyte of space on OneDrive, which syncs pretty seamlessly on Windows. You can de-Google a big chunk of your Android if you don't mind using Microsoft instead. Outlook for email, OneDrive for sync, Edge for browsing, OneNote for notes etc.

branon 5y ago

I deleted my Google account three years ago and haven't looked back. Email was really the only thing I made heavy use of: Gandi, who I already pay to keep my domain registered, offers 3 GB mailboxes for free. This works fine for me since I archive and delete old mail annually. You can purchase 50 GB mailboxes for a few dollars per month. For file storage, I host my own NextCloud instance and handle (offline, geographically redundant) backups myself. I also pay for a MEGA account and back up critically important documents there. My primary phone runs Android 6 (terrible, I know) and I haven't had issues using it while not logged into a Google account. The artificially limited capacity of Google Maps' search history is a disappointing dark pattern, but that's about it. I plan on switching to a PinePhone eventually. I do worry about the usability of newer Android versions without a Google account. Not sure what's changed, do you have to sign in to use current Android phones?

mattmaroon 5y ago

Not sure if you like Microsoft any better but after over a decade of Gmail I’ve moved back to outlook and prefer it. It’s a lot better than it used to be. One Drive is much better than GDrive, and MS’s office programs have always been significantly better IMO. I find the whole Microsoft suite to be affordable and enjoyable to use. Obviously iPhone is an (or the) alternative to Android. I still don’t find much better than Google for searching but I guess Bing and DDG are at least a lot better than nothing. I do feel like my user satisfaction with Google search goes down a little bit every year. Depending on why you’re moving away from Google these may not be options you’ll consider. But if your opposition isn’t to big tech in particular but to just Google give MS products a try if you haven’t in awhile.

BMc2020 5y ago
Yes, I use the outlook dot com ecosystem and recommend it for non-technical people on a budget. It has a free version of MS Word that's good enough to make resumes on if you have no other way. At the other end of the scale, you get get a free Office365 enterprise license if you sign up to try out MS Graph Explorer. 90 days but they've renewed it a couple times now, you just have to log in and use it every once in a while. Tip: If you have more than 1 MS account your computer starts to get confused. In chrome open a guest window to log in to different MS accounts.
pid-1 5y ago
I'm thinking about leaving Google land because I think their incentives are heavily misaligned with mine as a consumer. Although Microsoft and Apple win points for not having ads their a primary profit mechanism, they unfortunately use the same strategy as Google: creating walled ecosystems that are very hard to leave. MS in particular has shown how aggressively anti-consumer they will be in the right conditions.

guillermin 5y ago

I was in this same situation a couple of years ago and easily managed to move to a comoletely Google-free life for 3€/month. I've documented it on my blog [0], but here's the summary: - mail-in-a-box for email - NextCloud (included in mail-in-a-box) for contacts, calendars, and files - LineageOS for MicroG for Android - OpenStreetMap for maps - DuckDuckGo for search - Firefox as internet browser [0] https://blog.ideotec.es/leaving-google-foss-journey/ https://blog.ideotec.es/leaving-google-foss-journey/

danamit 5y ago

I use Namecheap for email. Dropbox for "drive" (I don't use it often). I use YT, Google Search, and Google Meet. You cannot escape the first two, and the later is a display of professionalism for me as a freelancer.

zzxcvb 5y ago

I'll suggest Searx/SearXNG as a search engine. It's self-hosted, but you can find public instances at https://searx.space/ https://searx.space/ If you decide to go the self-hosted route, it's trivial to deploy with searx(ng)-docker. Being a meta-search engine, it can pull results from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, dictionaries, torrent sites, etc; this gives it a degree of customisability that traditional search engines don't have. I'll also mention Whoogle, which serves as a libre front-end to Google, although it doesn't currently support any other search engines.

tormock 5y ago

For email, I forwarded all emails to my new email. The rest was easy, except for Youtube... I need to find a way to subscribe to channels without a Google account (it would be nice if they had RSS and an external link).

mkbkn 5y ago
For Youtube, use FreeTube or NewPipe for desktop and mobile respectively.
commentsgaloer2 5y ago
newpipe app allows this

meristohm 5y ago

For personal use I'm happy with ProtonMail and F-Droid. For a calendar I use paper because I like being able to look at the wall and see the month, and to physically write things down. Same goes for note-taking, though that's a hybrid of digital and paper, with a goal of the important-er stuff going into the text files for easier searching (though like with paper books I have a sense where in each notebook certain things are). Good luck!

gray_charger 5y ago

This will get buried with the other comments, but I've done a good job getting away from Google: Email: Tutanota Calendar: Tutanota Messaging: Signal Phone: GrapheneOS Maps: OsmAnd~ Apps: F-Droid or Aurora Store Mobile Browser: Vanadium (Chromium-based) Desktop Browser: Brave (Chromium-based) YouTube client: NewPipe The last three are iffy as far as de-Google-img goes. I used Firefox for years but recently I find it unusable. Every year more websites are broken in Firefox and it never gets better despite bug reports. There also isn't really an alternative to YouTube's content unless the creator you follow also posts on Odysee.

culopatin 5y ago
Any suggestions around the super slow Tutanota clients? It takes sometimes like 20 seconds for it to load the list of emails. Doesn’t sound like a lot but it adds up.
- Tutanota 5y ago
  Hi there, Tutanota team here. We noticed your comment and just wanted to ask what client/device you are using to look into this? Usually Tutanota loads much faster, but for some devices we can definitely improve. We are also currently working on offline mode. Once that is done loading time will much reduce!
  - culopatin 5y ago
    Hi. iPhone 12, 13 pro and 14in MacBook Pro (m1 pro). Every time I open the app it shows me a “logging in” with an animated bar while loading. It would be acceptable if it took that time to pull new emails, but not to just look at the old stuff I have already retrieved. I appreciate your quick response though, shows that you guys are on top of things.
    - Tutanota 5y ago
      Thanks for the feedback. Yes, this is exactly what offline mode will solve in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

t0bia_s 5y ago

For email, calendar, notes and contact I recommend SOGo Groupware, open source solution with activesync. - https://www.sogo.nu/ https://www.sogo.nu/

8fingerlouie 5y ago

I see a lot of recommendations for self hosted alternatives, either at home or a VPS/Rented server. While the HN crowd is probably better suited than most people, running a server connected to the internet is no small taks, and people should seriously consider other alternatives before doing so. For some of the services, your own privacy measures may not matter one bit. Take email for example, you may self host it, or use a privacy oriented provider, but it doesn't help one bit if you recipient is on gmail or outlook, so one could argue that attempting to privacy secure email is in vain. You can of course use GPG, but that requires the receiver to publish keys, which not very many people do. I've self hosted for a couple of decades, but some years ago i decided i no longer wanted to be our resident sysadm, and instead moved everything to the cloud. I went from a proxmox cluster and a couple of NAS boxes spinning at home, to nothing spinning, and no open ports in the firewall. We now use regular cloud services (Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud, etc), and instead use Cryptomator (https://cryptomator.org/ https://cryptomator.org/) to encrypt everything before sending it to the cloud. For specific apps we use - Joplin for notes (or just ios notes) - Signal for messaging (though in reality we use quite a few clients, as it highly depends on what your recipient uses) - MXRoute for mail / contacts - DuckDuckGo for searching. - Cryptomator on top of whatever cloud storage the individual prefers. - Photos, here we chose the easy path, and simply use the integration offered by our phones, which in our case means iPhones, so iCloud.

martin_a 5y ago
> running a server connected to the internet is no small taks Shared webhosting is still a thing and comes with the best of two worlds. Not expensive and professionals take care of the system under the hood.

npteljes 5y ago

I moved from Gmail to Posteo, Gdrive to Nextcloud, and Android to /e/ OS. I self-host Nextcloud and installed the mobile OS myself, but if someone is not inclined, both have ready to use offerings as well. Nextcloud partnered with providers and they give 2GB instances for free, allegedly. If you need more, you can check https://github.com/nextcloud/providers#providers https://github.com/nextcloud/providers#providers Buy an /e/ OS phone: https://esolutions.shop/ https://esolutions.shop/ There are also third party sellers, like "Liberate your tech", who sell phones with GrapheneOS preinstalled. Regarding their stability; Posteo is going strong since 2009, Nextcloud as a project 2010. For mobile devices I'd look at 3-5 year periods, and I feel confident that /e/ OS and GrapheneOS will be around for that time. Even if they don't, the situation is not that different from owning an Android that's not updated anymore, and also usually you can sell the phone on the used market and buy a new one that's still supported.

martin_a 5y ago

> I want to eventually move away, especially gmail and drive. Run it yourself! Get yourself a solid hosting company with shared webhosting. For Germany, hetzner or all-inkl would be my choice. A hetzner "Level 1" shared webhosting for 1,90 €/month will come with an included TLD of your choice. Use that to host your own mailboxes. 10 GB webspace should be good for that, too. Then install a NextCloud instance on that webhost. Add a hetzner "Storage Box", 3,45 €/month will give you 1 TB of space which can be mounted into the NextCloud through a free plugin. That way you have mail and your own cloud for 5,50 €/month for as long as you pay the bill...

kashyapc 5y ago
> Run it yourself! I get where you're coming from. But, most people just simply don't have the appetite to run their own mail. What we need are: paid services that are reasonably reliable, secure, respect your privacy, and provide human-based customer support. PS: I myself use Hetzner (for non-email stuff), and a hosted NextCloud service - both are great :)
- martin_a 5y ago
  Running your own mail is creating the mailbox and letting your mail client figure out how to connect to the server. There's not much work to do besides that. I think that's fine for anyone interested in becoming "independent" from services.

msh 5y ago

Maybe a bit contrarian but the best move might not be to move away for google unless the main driver is data privacy. If you just don't want to risk being locked out its more important to keep access to your data these would be the steps: - Get your own domain for email. If google locks you out you can just point it to somewhere else. - Set google takeout to make monthly backups (automatically) of your email, photos and so on to google drive. - Install desktop google drive on your computer. Set it to fully mirror all your files locally/offline. Then if google locks you out you will still have access to your files and photo/email backups. Bonus points for having a desktop mail app that keeps your email locally. The lockout problem is not unique to google, can happen with most providers.

hbn 5y ago
The issue with being locked out isn't just losing your data. It's also the fact that it's gonna likely cause a huge mess across all the accounts on other websites associated with that email account, if you're not locked out of them entirely. If you use an email provider that lets you use your own custom domain, and use that as your primary email address on all of those sites and one day the provider decides to purge you off their site, the domain still belongs to you, so you can jump to a new service, point it at the same address, and all your internet accounts are none the wiser.

kashyapc 5y ago

For e-mail, definitely check out https://mailbox.org https://mailbox.org. I've been a happy user of their service for more than a year now. Clean, secure, and effective. I'm not associated with them, but here is a decent review of it[1]. If you're comfortable with email clients, you can even use mailbox.org as a dumb mail-drop location and fetch everything locally via tools such as `mbsync`. Then you can use a mail client your choice (Thunderbird, Mutt, etc) to read/respond. [1] https://proprivacy.com/email/review/mailboxorg https://proprivacy.com/email/review/mailboxorg

BaudouinVH 5y ago

there is a whole subreddit about it : https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/ https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/

kkfx 5y ago

IMVHO you should not look at "alternatives" in the sense of "substitute a WebApp with another" but in workflow terms: - emails? They are normally valuable tool and personal stuff, they must not be outside your control as much as possible so GMail or Proton change nothing if you use them with their webmail. Just buy a domain, choose a hosted mail service, just because host one yourself is not that easy these days, sync or better grab your remote inbox to a homeserver and use your mail locally in your desktop. The local part means sync against your server the entire maildir, use a local MUA, with good search, tagging etc capabilities, my personal choice is notmuch, to sync mail muchsync, to grab mail fetchmail+MailDrop (but you might like OfflineIMAP or MBSync). Webmail served by your homeserver (i.e. MailPie or Modoboa or even the simple RoundCube) as a last resort if you aren't at your desktop; - calendar/agenda? Similarly, personally I use org-mode, far more powerful than modern calendar, but again you might prefer different things, thou local and synced not centrally served. - Drive? To share files there are various options from classic WebDAV to third party services no reason to be tied to one in particular if that's not yours, the rest of Drive is not really a thing IMVHO - search? Just use Google Search is not more evil than any other player, there is no real open choice there, YaCy while have a public distributed network count just too few participants to be an alternative and the web is the web, you can't run your own. - Maps? Again not much real alternatives, a PND is good enough for car navigation, for the rest there are very few other maps services but none as powerful as Maps just due to the scale. OSM is hyper-good in limited areas, very lacking elsewhere so not a real option. - notes? The best I know are again Emacs/org-mode/org-roam etc combo, TiddlyWiki with a daemon to serve it might be another option, Zim another more limited but still light and classic for certain users. Looking for alternatives in terms of substituting a player with another is a game loosed from start and does not solve anything: companies are not "good" or "evil" they just follow their interest, some might be less friendly then others, but interests in the game remain the same.

42droids 5y ago

Maybe someone can give me an idea: I have about 3TB+ images I need access to online (eg. easy, automated upload from iPhone, access and search when I am looking for an image (Google Photos style)) alongside secure backup. What's my best option that's also reasonable priced?

minroot 5y ago

Email: Casual use - ProtonMail Git and friends - Nixnet Use FairEmail on Android and Geary (sometimes Aerc) on Linux.

p0d 5y ago

I still use Gmail/Calendar but I do so through Fastmail. I like the Gmail client but I am happy to know I can ditch it anytime without drama. I have a number of domains and email aliases routing through Fastmail which has a copy of all my messages. So if I need to use another mail client, no biggie. I also went back to Dropbox and love it. No Google drive client for Linux is bizarre.

JSONderulo 5y ago

Google Search —> you.com Google Chrome —> Brave Gmail —> ProtonMail Google Docs —> Notion