4 ms·

So, what are people using as alternatives these days? I use gmail, google talk and google.com exclusively for email, chat and search. If (for arguments sake) I

by bjdixon 15y ago

So, what are people using as alternatives these days? I use gmail, google talk and google.com exclusively for email, chat and search. If (for arguments sake) I wanted to switch what is there of similar quality that still be around and relevant in 3 or 4 years?

vyrotek 15y ago
I'm not being facetious when I say try Microsoft - Hotmail, Office365, Live Messenger, Bing
- bjdixon 15y ago
  I know. I'm not a hater.. really =) I just can't seem to make myself go back to MS stuff. I guess it's an old prejudice, I'm stubborn to my own detriment?
cracell 15y ago
http://duckduckgo.com http://duckduckgo.com is an excellent search engine that takes user privacy seriously. For me it tends to fail on very specific queries and then I use it's Google Bang to just have it redirect me to Google. But it's as good as Google for my typical queries.
ComputerGuru 15y ago
Google Talk is plain vanilla XMPP (except the audio/video extensions), and any XMPP server can chat to any Google Talk user. The Google Talk client itself is shit and hasn't been updated in years, you won't be missing out on anything there. I use Mail.app w/ GMail over IMAP and have no problems. I could switch to any other provider of course, but see no reason to do so as accessing GMail over IMAP doesn't have any of this social crap associated with it. Unfortunately, on Windows I'm forced to use gmail.com as no desktop client comes even close to Mail.app's fully integrated and optimized IMAP support. Outlook's IMAP support is STILL blocking/synchronous for most operations, hanging the entire software while it syncs headers or sends items to be erased. Thunderbird is as clunky as ever. Google is the only one left, then. I used DDG for a while, but I think they need to step up their game with regards to simplifying the UI (i.e. remove the attempts at finding the info you're looking for for you or at least provide an option to disable this) and speed up both page serves and queries, w/ geodistributed caching, etc. Or you could just use Google SSL, but disable all cookies for that domain.
- bjdixon 15y ago
  I agree with the google talk. The most replaceable item on the list. It's just so easy though with it being there next to my email... I'll give ddg a go. See what's up there.
  - stock_toaster 15y ago
    I think fastmail.fm provides[1] email as well as xmpp. I have been considering a switch from gmail to fastmail (also looking at rackspace email), and planning to use my own domain again. I had previously self hosted (a pain), and then used google apps with my own domain. That was when google apps had no google groups or other integration at all, and it was cumbersome to have two google accounts (no multiple login then either). So I switched to plain gmail. Certainly less work and the bonus of being able to tell people 'blah blah at gmail dot com' and not having to spell it out every time someone asked for it cannot be understated. My needs have changed a bit though, and being able to retain my email/domain should I choose to change providers again has become more important. In addition, I no longer use the gmail web interface, opting instead to use sparrow over imap. An unlikely shift back to client centric computing even while more and more of my other services are shifting away! [1]: http://fastmail.fm/help/overview_features.html http://fastmail.fm/help/overview_features.html
dan85 15y ago
My impression is that Bing is getting better and better. I WILL switch to it IF they provide date filtering for all searches. (For example it's impossible for me to use Bing for searching on HN because I get out of date results, while on Google I just apply the "last 24 hrs" filter).
Lammy 15y ago
I went back to hosting my own email and chat on VPS. Check out iRedMail for a nice easily-configured FOSS mail package and ejabberd for a nice XMPP server. XMPP federates with google talk, so I can still chat with @gmail.com friends.
- Arelius 15y ago
  Roundcube is a pretty poor email client when compared directly to gmail.
  - Lammy 15y ago
    Agreed, but I mostly use K9-Mail and Thunderbird via IMAP. Roundcube is ok for quick access from a random computer.
Arelius 15y ago
Google talk is pretty replaceable with many other jabber based servers, and clients, and enough variance that you can generally find a solution that works best for you. afaict, Jabber messages can cross from and too the standard google talk jabber domains. Search, I still find myself using google from time to time, but my default search is duckduckgo, this is greatly helped due to the fact that it's simple to search from google instead by simply adding !g to the search, additionally, you can do similar things for !gmaps !gimages !bing, this feature alone makes ddg a trivially better google replacement for default search. Now, a decent replacement for the gmail client, I haven't been able to find something satisfactory web-based, or even as a desktop app. I use thunderbird for work emails, but it seems to be a little... lacking.
- bjdixon 15y ago
  yeah, I can deal with the jabber client, I'll try ddg, but gmail is kinda sticky =) Maybe I'll roll my own or something. I guess I know what I like, right?
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
pnathan 15y ago
Email: I use my alumni account which happens to be Microsoft-based. Chat: IRC/AIM/Yahoo/etc - just grab something with a libpurple backend. Search: DuckDuckGo most of the time, Google otherwise.
- bjdixon 15y ago
  DuckDuckGo seems to have come up a couple of times. I'll give it a trial.
CJWelle 15y ago
I see many great suggestions here, but calendar replacement has not been suggested yet.
- bjdixon 15y ago
  oh yeah, awesome point. I'm totally dependent on the calendar. I share with my gf and friends... That's a tough one. Why google, why? ='(
- pca 15y ago
  Windows Live Calendar nowadays is very similar to Google Calendar. It should be possible to sync it e.g. with Android via ActiceSync. Some time ago I managed to do this with Android 2.3. I don't have this setup any more, so if you need details try searching for "windows live activesync" or something similar.

by bjdixon 15y ago

vyrotek 15y ago

I'm not being facetious when I say try Microsoft - Hotmail, Office365, Live Messenger, Bing

bjdixon 15y ago
I know. I'm not a hater.. really =) I just can't seem to make myself go back to MS stuff. I guess it's an old prejudice, I'm stubborn to my own detriment?

cracell 15y ago

http://duckduckgo.com http://duckduckgo.com is an excellent search engine that takes user privacy seriously. For me it tends to fail on very specific queries and then I use it's Google Bang to just have it redirect me to Google. But it's as good as Google for my typical queries.

ComputerGuru 15y ago

Google Talk is plain vanilla XMPP (except the audio/video extensions), and any XMPP server can chat to any Google Talk user. The Google Talk client itself is shit and hasn't been updated in years, you won't be missing out on anything there. I use Mail.app w/ GMail over IMAP and have no problems. I could switch to any other provider of course, but see no reason to do so as accessing GMail over IMAP doesn't have any of this social crap associated with it. Unfortunately, on Windows I'm forced to use gmail.com as no desktop client comes even close to Mail.app's fully integrated and optimized IMAP support. Outlook's IMAP support is STILL blocking/synchronous for most operations, hanging the entire software while it syncs headers or sends items to be erased. Thunderbird is as clunky as ever. Google is the only one left, then. I used DDG for a while, but I think they need to step up their game with regards to simplifying the UI (i.e. remove the attempts at finding the info you're looking for for you or at least provide an option to disable this) and speed up both page serves and queries, w/ geodistributed caching, etc. Or you could just use Google SSL, but disable all cookies for that domain.

bjdixon 15y ago
I agree with the google talk. The most replaceable item on the list. It's just so easy though with it being there next to my email... I'll give ddg a go. See what's up there.
- stock_toaster 15y ago
  I think fastmail.fm provides[1] email as well as xmpp. I have been considering a switch from gmail to fastmail (also looking at rackspace email), and planning to use my own domain again. I had previously self hosted (a pain), and then used google apps with my own domain. That was when google apps had no google groups or other integration at all, and it was cumbersome to have two google accounts (no multiple login then either). So I switched to plain gmail. Certainly less work and the bonus of being able to tell people 'blah blah at gmail dot com' and not having to spell it out every time someone asked for it cannot be understated. My needs have changed a bit though, and being able to retain my email/domain should I choose to change providers again has become more important. In addition, I no longer use the gmail web interface, opting instead to use sparrow over imap. An unlikely shift back to client centric computing even while more and more of my other services are shifting away! [1]: http://fastmail.fm/help/overview_features.html http://fastmail.fm/help/overview_features.html

dan85 15y ago

My impression is that Bing is getting better and better. I WILL switch to it IF they provide date filtering for all searches. (For example it's impossible for me to use Bing for searching on HN because I get out of date results, while on Google I just apply the "last 24 hrs" filter).

Lammy 15y ago

I went back to hosting my own email and chat on VPS. Check out iRedMail for a nice easily-configured FOSS mail package and ejabberd for a nice XMPP server. XMPP federates with google talk, so I can still chat with @gmail.com friends.

Arelius 15y ago
Roundcube is a pretty poor email client when compared directly to gmail.
- Lammy 15y ago
  Agreed, but I mostly use K9-Mail and Thunderbird via IMAP. Roundcube is ok for quick access from a random computer.

Arelius 15y ago

Google talk is pretty replaceable with many other jabber based servers, and clients, and enough variance that you can generally find a solution that works best for you. afaict, Jabber messages can cross from and too the standard google talk jabber domains. Search, I still find myself using google from time to time, but my default search is duckduckgo, this is greatly helped due to the fact that it's simple to search from google instead by simply adding !g to the search, additionally, you can do similar things for !gmaps !gimages !bing, this feature alone makes ddg a trivially better google replacement for default search. Now, a decent replacement for the gmail client, I haven't been able to find something satisfactory web-based, or even as a desktop app. I use thunderbird for work emails, but it seems to be a little... lacking.

bjdixon 15y ago
yeah, I can deal with the jabber client, I'll try ddg, but gmail is kinda sticky =) Maybe I'll roll my own or something. I guess I know what I like, right?

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

pnathan 15y ago

Email: I use my alumni account which happens to be Microsoft-based. Chat: IRC/AIM/Yahoo/etc - just grab something with a libpurple backend. Search: DuckDuckGo most of the time, Google otherwise.

bjdixon 15y ago
DuckDuckGo seems to have come up a couple of times. I'll give it a trial.

CJWelle 15y ago

I see many great suggestions here, but calendar replacement has not been suggested yet.

bjdixon 15y ago
oh yeah, awesome point. I'm totally dependent on the calendar. I share with my gf and friends... That's a tough one. Why google, why? ='(
pca 15y ago
Windows Live Calendar nowadays is very similar to Google Calendar. It should be possible to sync it e.g. with Android via ActiceSync. Some time ago I managed to do this with Android 2.3. I don't have this setup any more, so if you need details try searching for "windows live activesync" or something similar.