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Fascinating. I get that google doesn't want to feed the patent troll, but the article really makes it look they're cutting off their nose to spite their face h

Fascinating. I get that google doesn't want to feed the patent troll, but the article really makes it look they're cutting off their nose to spite their face here. Glad I don't own any of this hardware. Seems like typical google behavior--making popular stuff and abandoning it; failing to do the most basic customer communications. Just another reminder that we must extricate google from our lives... First and foremost, stop using gmail. I've been happy with FastMail. It includes calendar, notes, and file storage too. I like the android app, can configure mail filters in app (can't do that with gmail). NextCloud is great for replacing google photos, drive, and docs. DuckDuckGo has really grown up, it's my primary search now and I like it better. I love the bangs feature: https://duckduckgo.com/bangs https://duckduckgo.com/bangs I even set up my own Asterisk server and SMS-XMPP bridge to replace Google Voice, I can't recommend that for most people, but I'm sure there are other commercial alternatives. An easy one is to not use Chrome. I prefer Fennec on mobile and LibreWolf on desktop (they're Firefox without Mozilla telemetry). I use Ungoogled Chromium when I need to test against Chrome. Sadly there is really no alternative to Android besides iPhone which isn't my thing. I don't log into google on my devices, I use F-Droid for most things and Aurora Store when I need to download apps from the play store.

AlfredLeta 4y ago
> I even set up my own Asterisk server and SMS-XMPP bridge to replace Google Voice Is there an easy-to-follow guide for lay people to do so? I don't even need the SMS-XMPP bridge, just the ability to run my own phone number, but everytime I look at Twilio or Asterisk it just seems really overwhelming with no newbie-friendly guide.
- jacob019 4y ago
  If you just need call forwarding to a few numbers, plenty of SIP providers offer that out of the box, no need for Asterisk. You can also typically register a SIP phone or softphone directly with the provider. I have used Asterisk for 15+ years for my e-commerce business, so it is familiar. Asterisk can be overwhelming at first, and it can be difficult to find current information (there's a lot of old info out there that no longer applies). You would want to use PJSIP these days, so if you can find a guide for setting that up you should be good. If you have basic experience setting up Linux servers then you should be able to provision a basic asterisk server instance in a couple hours. I forward my main personal number to several cell phones with cheap plans where I can't disable voicemail, so to make that work I configured it so that I press one to accept the call. It also recognizes when I call in from one of those numbers and gives a dialtone, so I use a prefixer app to route outgoing calls through my Asterisk server as well. None of that is necessary if you use a softphone, but I'm often in the mountains where data is spotty. I enjoy the challenge of setting things up and learning new things, but I don't see this as the right route for everyone. I think you should be able to find commercial offerings similar to GV these days, so I would start by looking around for that. If anyone wants to start a business with me to offer a good GV alternative, I might be into that.
solarkraft 4y ago
I like Mailbox.org for E-Mail and Organic Maps for navigation. For calendar/contacts sync I'm mostly happy with Ete Sync. ... but I do still fall back to Google Maps and search every now and then.

AlfredLeta 4y ago

> I even set up my own Asterisk server and SMS-XMPP bridge to replace Google Voice Is there an easy-to-follow guide for lay people to do so? I don't even need the SMS-XMPP bridge, just the ability to run my own phone number, but everytime I look at Twilio or Asterisk it just seems really overwhelming with no newbie-friendly guide.

jacob019 4y ago
If you just need call forwarding to a few numbers, plenty of SIP providers offer that out of the box, no need for Asterisk. You can also typically register a SIP phone or softphone directly with the provider. I have used Asterisk for 15+ years for my e-commerce business, so it is familiar. Asterisk can be overwhelming at first, and it can be difficult to find current information (there's a lot of old info out there that no longer applies). You would want to use PJSIP these days, so if you can find a guide for setting that up you should be good. If you have basic experience setting up Linux servers then you should be able to provision a basic asterisk server instance in a couple hours. I forward my main personal number to several cell phones with cheap plans where I can't disable voicemail, so to make that work I configured it so that I press one to accept the call. It also recognizes when I call in from one of those numbers and gives a dialtone, so I use a prefixer app to route outgoing calls through my Asterisk server as well. None of that is necessary if you use a softphone, but I'm often in the mountains where data is spotty. I enjoy the challenge of setting things up and learning new things, but I don't see this as the right route for everyone. I think you should be able to find commercial offerings similar to GV these days, so I would start by looking around for that. If anyone wants to start a business with me to offer a good GV alternative, I might be into that.

solarkraft 4y ago

I like Mailbox.org for E-Mail and Organic Maps for navigation. For calendar/contacts sync I'm mostly happy with Ete Sync. ... but I do still fall back to Google Maps and search every now and then.