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Leaving Google has actively improved my life

480 points by speckx 9mo ago

robin_reala 9mo ago
I degoogled back when they announced AMP email, and am in broad agreement with the author here. The only things I’ve found it hard to replace are YouTube, Arts & Culture, Google Books, and Books ngrams. Everything else has great alternatives to move to 100%, and Books is just a backup alongside archive.org and Hathi. Even if you just stop using one piece of Google you’ll find yourself in a better place.
- memset 9mo ago
  What have you done for email?
  - frakt0x90 9mo ago
    For me, Fastmail has been incredible.
    - calmbonsai 9mo ago
      I concur on Fastmail. I only keep a "legacy" Gmail account for parental tech support.
  - robin_reala 9mo ago
    I ended up at Soverin. Luckily I was already using Gmail with my own domain, so I could switch without having to change addresses. https://soverin.com/ https://soverin.com/
- magarnicle 9mo ago
  What do you look for in Arts & Culture? I find https://www.getdailyart.com/ https://www.getdailyart.com/ pretty great if you are mostly just interested in painting.
  - robin_reala 9mo ago
    I produce book for Standard Ebooks, and they need cover art.[1] Arts & Culture is a good source, but I also use Wikimedia Commons and some museum sites directly. [1] https://standardebooks.org/artworks https://standardebooks.org/artworks
kyrra 9mo ago
If you don't like the AI feature, Google at least lets you turn it off: https://workspace.google.com/blog/product-announcements/updated-smart-feature-settings-give-users-increased-choice-and-control https://workspace.google.com/blog/product-announcements/upda... Specifically in Gmail Settings: > Smart features: Turn on smart features in Gmail, Chat, and Meet - When you turn this setting on, you agree to let Gmail, Chat, and Meet use your content and activity in these products to provide smart features and personalize your experience. My wife turned this off because she didn't want typing suggestions or even grammar correction. After disabling the feature, she was much happier. (googler, opinions are my own)
- swiftcoder 9mo ago
  Does this work outside of workspaces? I didn't think public gmail accounts had the option
dude250711 9mo ago
I saw someone on Safari having to actually watch YouTube ads. It was so bizarre! I forgot those even exist.
- wao0uuno 9mo ago
  Adblockers for Safari exist. Even on iOS.
  - dude250711 9mo ago
    They even work sometimes I have heard.
    - baggachipz 9mo ago
      Wipr2 is amazing. Never see ads on mobile Safari. On desktop, Orion is great.
pavel_lishin 9mo ago
> I always thought I loved Gmail. Turns out I just had the habit of typing in “gmail.com” in my search bar. I honestly can’t tell you a single feature of Gmail that I miss. > Leaving Gmail also gave me the opportunity to start implementing better digital hygiene. I no longer give my primary email to fly-by-night sites, and I'm deliberate with what things I'm signing up for. I also do this, but with my own custom domain - still in gmail. Gmail is fine, imo. I also don't let them algorithmically sort my email - I use filters & such.
seaucre 9mo ago
Gmail can be made vanilla. It sounds like switching emails and improving their email hygiene was the real improvement.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  It will still always analyse your emails for advertising purposes.
  - jeffbee 9mo ago
    Gmail is one of the only three categories of user data that Google specifically says they won't scan.
    - hn_acc1 9mo ago
      Which probably means they scan it extra hard.
Aurornis 9mo ago
> After giving them a fair shot, I think I can now honestly say that Brave and DuckDuckGo are better than Google for >90% of searches I've had DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for years and I couldn't disagree with this more. DuckDuckGo is fine for quickly getting to well known sites where I can't remember the URL, but it's objectively worse for trying to find everything from Reddit threads to Recipes. Their depth of indexing sites like Reddit feels dramatically worse lately and recipe search will predictably give me the same list of SEO spam blogs regardless of what I type in. DuckDuckGo also seems to be doing the YouTube search thing that everyone hates where after the first several results it just starts throwing semi-related things at you instead. I still add "!g" to my DuckDuckGo queries when I don't have time to mess around or if the first page of results is obvious SEO spam. The other main point in this blog post isn't really about Google at all, it's just what happened when the author set up a a new e-mail address and didn't sign up for a lot of sites with it: > Leaving Gmail also gave me the opportunity to start implementing better digital hygiene. I no longer give my primary email to fly-by-night sites, and I'm deliberate with what things I'm signing up for. I thought there was going to be some substance to this post but it reads like someone congratulating themselves for a choice they made and then trying to backwards justify it.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  What if we had more specialized search engines? There should be a recipe aggregator that searches for recipes and nothing else, and prioritizes high value recipe sites.
  - cortesoft 9mo ago
    Then we would need a search engine for search engines… Also, how would a search engine for recipes work? How does THAT search engine find when a new recipe site is created? It would be to scrape the whole internet just to find all the recipe sites….
    - Aldipower 9mo ago
      This exists and is called a meta search engine. For example like MetaGer, which was extremely famous 20 years ago in Germany. https://metager.org/ https://metager.org/
avazhi 9mo ago
Not a fan of Google but I always find Gmail criticisms so weird. Like, what does this guy even mean about the algorithm sorting his inbox? Legit what the fuck is he talking about? Non junk mail goes to my inbox. Spam goes to spam. What am I missing? And speaking of spam, I have a bunch of proton mail accounts and outlook accounts and iCloud mail accounts and Gmail’s spam filter is easily the best. Like, it’s not even close. Protonmail is nearly as bad as outlook at dealing with spam. It’s impossible to overstate how bad both of them are at filtering spam vs Gmail. I legit feel like I’m either being actively gaslit or I’m genuinely missing something big here. As for search alternatives, I’d love to use Kagi full time but the cost is just unreasonably high for now IMO.
- r_lee 9mo ago
  it's just someone who thinks degoogling himself has somehow elevated his entire existence to the sky I'm personally not so attached to this idea of Google being evil so I don't really get this at all
- Aurornis 9mo ago
  > Like, what does this guy even mean about the algorithm sorting his inbox? Legit what the fuck is he talking about? Gmail has a feature that can break your inbox into a priority section and an everything else section. You have to put in some work to flag and unflag messages based on what you think is important. It's not perfect but with some training it's helpful. Some people turn it on and expect it to read their minds about everything or think they can ignore the everything else section. You can just turn it back off. You don't have to leave Gmail. > And speaking of spam, I have a bunch of proton mail accounts and outlook accounts and iCloud mail accounts and Gmail’s spam filter is easily the best. Agree. This person's reduced spam experience was due to the new e-mail address and being disciplined about not signing up for a million things on it, not because Proton is better.
- chroma_zone 9mo ago
  You may have turned this feature off (like I did) but by default Gmail sorts your emails into categories like Promotions, Social, Updates...
- deleted 9mo ago
righthand 9mo ago
Kagi, Fastmail, Immich, LibreOffice are all excellent alternatives to Google Garbage.
QuantumNoodle 9mo ago
I haven't kept up with Gmail because I've left it many years ago, but last I heard they give themselves the permission to parse your emails and serve you targeted ads based on contents of emails you receive. If the thought of privacy doesn't turn you off, you must love the thought of unsolicited marketing emails getting amplified through ads that Google serves you.
- jeffbee 9mo ago
  [flagged]
- rhcom2 9mo ago
  > last I heard they give themselves the permission to parse your emails and serve you targeted ads based on contents of emails you receive. Stopped doing it in 2017 (according to them). https://fox59.com/news/google-will-no-longer-read-your-emails-to-tailor-ads https://fox59.com/news/google-will-no-longer-read-your-email...
  - QuantumNoodle 9mo ago
    That checks out, I switched to protonmail in 2014 and haven't looked around since. Surprised they reversed on this, but glad that was addressed.
OrvalWintermute 9mo ago
> My conscious is a tiny bit cleaner I think he meant my conscience. Used to think Google was awesome when they were hyper accurate, fast, and not enshittifying products. Now I am convinced they are just a little bit better than Meta.
bitpush 9mo ago
> I don't knowingly use AI > Sometimes I will use Kagi's "assistant" model whilst coding. Particularly to clean up existing code/stylesheets The only moral abortion is my abortion.
- jeffbee 9mo ago
  Kagi's models are also incredibly bad. I can't imagine how this person believes they are getting fair value from them.
  - dpe82 9mo ago
    Kagi assistant includes all Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Grok models as well as all the common open weights models.
  - alexjplant 9mo ago
    Kagi doesn't make any models in-house - they use closed-source frontier models and OSS ones hosted by third-party providers. The former are on par with their own vendors' chat interface implementations (capabilities like file upload and custom tool use excepted).
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - MengerSponge 9mo ago
    The subscription pays for competent search. Anything else is gravy
- raincole 9mo ago
  The trick is to say ignorant. If you know nothing about AI of course you're not knowingly using AI.
xnx 9mo ago
"Leaving Google" = "stopped using Google services" in this case (vs. "quit working at Google")
- hn_acc1 9mo ago
  I assumed it was related to employment as well.
- mat0 9mo ago
  I hate that the Internet thought me now to distrust everything. In this case, I have the feeling that the author chose those words carefully to click bait us somehow without actually lying
shevy-java 9mo ago
It's like a drug - getting off is not so easy for many people. I still use youtube and a chromium-based browser. I want to become google-free eventually.
WarmWash 9mo ago
The problem isn't Google. The problem is that people want a "free internet" without ads, and without any form of data harvesting. But they also don't want to pay any money, because the internet, as we all know, "is free". In 30 years, no one has figured this out. So I feel pretty confident in stating that it's either gonna be ads or payments. And if we switch to a payment model, then the internet becomes another system where the poor are naturally disadvantaged and the rich get unlimited benefit, so I don't think any of the complaining will go away anyway. Just a new set of problems.
- skydhash 9mo ago
  There are so many locked platform that I struggle to understand the not paying part. Imagine a better Github Search (or ACM search for papers), I bet it would find users.
- bubblewand 9mo ago
  Actually-free gets suppressed by free-with-ads. We don’t know how much the truly free hobbyist-volunteer ecosystem would pick up without competition from ad-supported options (often with deep pockets for advertising and promotion, plus monopolist positioning to cross-promote with other products in some cases). Ad-supported options suppress usership of truly free options, which suppresses interest in volunteering time and resources. It also suppresses open protocols. Protocols stagnated as the Internet centralized and commercialized for a reason. Some of these things could just be protocols. Not saying that would cover everything, but I am sure those two factors would “step in” to replace some aspects of the ad-supported Internet, if the ads went away. How much, I don’t know.
  - eudamoniac 9mo ago
    All you are saying here is that the sites with ads are so much better than the actually-free sites that people still use them despite having ads. Which is maybe not a signal that ads need to be banned.
    - bubblewand 9mo ago
mrweasel 9mo ago
To some extend it feels like Google just gave up on search. I don't really share the notion that Google is still better than e.g. DuckDuckGo or Ecosia. In my experience if Ecosia can't find something, neither can Google. However, I've noticed that search seems to become less and less useful, like huge chucks of the net is just missing. A ton of pages also doesn't really make their content searchable, in the sense that videos and images aren't tagged in any meaningful why. Mostly I feel the internet shrinking around me, the number of pages I go to becomes fewer and fewer. Brand new topics/content mostly comes from blogs recommended by friends and colleague.
xnx 9mo ago
> After giving them a fair shot, I think I can now honestly say that Brave and DuckDuckGo are better than Google for >90% of searches I still scratch my head how DuckDuckGo has made people excited for Bing search results in a way Microsoft never has.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
khana 9mo ago
[dead]
nvr219 9mo ago
I use fastmail and kagi and love both. I wonder what OP is using instead of google docs for live co-authoring... Word Online? lol
- latexr 9mo ago
  > I wonder what OP is using instead of google docs for live co-authoring Probably nothing? It’s not like that’s a need that everyone has.
- spacebear 9mo ago
  Not the OP, but I alternate between self-hosted instances of Outline (https://www.getoutline.com/ https://www.getoutline.com/) and Nextcloud (with Collabora) for this. Outline I actually like better than Google Docs for most things. Nextcloud is a little rough, but it has change tracking, which I need sometimes. I’ve also seen a lot of people using Cryptpad recently, which I think wraps OnlyOffice.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- Zizizizz 9mo ago
  I think https://typst.app/#start https://typst.app/#start has multi user support, you'd have to learn typst though
realprimoh 9mo ago
This being on the front page of hacker news is embarassing. Low substance post that is misleading if anything - I was hoping for a career reflection. Not a low-quality "pat on the back" post of no value
- paxys 9mo ago
  This is the daily "Google is bad" post. Best to ignore it and move on.
- wavemode 9mo ago
  Your comment is of even less value than the article. The fact that you find this subject matter uninteresting, is also uninteresting. Clearly other people feel differently.
  - afafawegawg 9mo ago
    not uninteresting, poor quality. you're
- raincole 9mo ago
  HK likes bashing big corps, but Google is the special soft spot for us. By 'soft' I mean easy to punch.
JohnMakin 9mo ago
"conscience," not "conscious."
thallavajhula 9mo ago
I used to have a custom domain setup via Google apps. Google decided to update it to something else (they changed their name several times and I lost track of the name now). I switched to iCloud+ Mail when iCloud introduced their custom domain support a few years ago. I do have notification summaries on my iOS turned on, but that's just a guilty pleasure of mine. The summarization is so bad that it's funny. I literally have the summarization feature turned on to laugh at how bad it is every time I see a new summary. Anyway, I used to be a everything-Google guy. Now, I just spread my app usage across multiple services, which I think is a win for me in the long run instead of being locked in to an ecosystem. I also got myself out of the most of the Apple products from the Apple ecosystem too. I'm a 1Password user because I didn't want to be part of Google or Apple ecosystems.
johnbarron 9mo ago
"How to replace Amazon, Google, X, Meta, Apple – and more" - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/26/how-to-replace-amazon-google-x-meta-apple-alternatives https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/26/how-to-re...
paxys 9mo ago
AI is an area where having decades of private data hosted and indexed by a third party is actually paying off with a direct return (vs just using it to surface ads). All moral qualms about FOSS and whatever else aside, asking a question in plain english and having an "AI assistant" digging through years' worth of photos, emails, events, chats, restaurant reservations and more and returning an incredibly detailed answer that no person ever could feels like the magic of tech being realized in front of our eyes. Would I prefer this was all open technology instead? Yeah, of course. But it is abundantly clear that economic incentives don't allow open source to compete with the big players, and that's just how it is.
ajross 9mo ago
Some of this is... pretty tortured: > Leaving Gmail also gave me the opportunity to start implementing better digital hygiene. Which is to say, everyone else's spam filtering is awful, so you need to restrict access to your email so they don't fill your inbox. This is literally the same logic that says we shouldn't vaccinate women against HPV because then they won't learn to practice abstinence.
prideout 9mo ago
This is not written by a former Google employee, it's written by a former Google user. Confusing title to see on hackernews.
- jcgrillo 9mo ago
  It took me until the 3rd paragraph to figure this out
pier25 9mo ago
Some of Google's products have really dropped in quality. In the past 5 or so years all the changes I've seen in Search, Youtube, and Gmail have been for the worse.
arcade79 9mo ago
Leaving Google was the best thing I did, some 10 years ago. It reduced my stress level dramatically. I had no idea about how stressed I was at G. The release, when leaving, was immense. Never ever, will I return to big tech. However, having said that, never ever, will I regret having joined. It was an amazing journey.
trilogic 9mo ago
Leaving googles is for GROWN UPS and independent Individs. The ones that need to see more, to get out of the egg. I self host (feels damn great) but still check my old, antique, gmail once every 3-4 months. Makes me smile and say, I was one of them.
dtj1123 9mo ago
Startpage is good
asim 9mo ago
This is very interesting and timely. I've been working on something to replace a lot of addictive or exploitive services we use today but there's some caveats. Will people pay? They pay for Kagi but will they generally pay for other things like news, maps, video, chat, weather, etc. The second question is what's stopping people from really quitting? I get the feeling it's sort of habits that we get stuck with. Even I still use Google. But the mention of brave and knowing brave has a generous free search tier for their api makes me think it's possible to replace Google search. But habits die hard. New habit formation may require an alternative approach hence so many buying into ChatGPT. One issue I also find with this sort of thing. It's hard to have a longer discussion that leads to building good alternatives. A thread appears, we comment and then it disappears. There needs to be more public discourse that leads to tangible results... To real issues that get solved.
stephantul 9mo ago
Ecosia is not just Bing, we offer a bunch of indexes, including bing and Google. We’re moving to our own index, which we are building in collaboration with Qwant, under the name European Search Perspective. I do see the point of the article however.
- reddalo 9mo ago
  I love Qwant and I think it works better than DuckDuckGo. I can't wait for the European index.
- NittLion78 9mo ago
  I can testify that Qwant, if nothing else, is a superior image search engine (basically does what GIS used to do 10-15 years ago) and it's better for just getting to a quick answer without your first 4 results being ad-driven. Unfortunately, when needing to do deeper dives on things, Google is still more or less the best for results past the first page in my experience, though it's rare I need to dig that deep these days.
  - stephantul 9mo ago
    Qwant is somewhat focused on France, so coverage really depends on whether that is the market you’re looking for.
- zeusly 9mo ago
  Will I ever be able to pay for ecosia?
  - stephantul 9mo ago
    Genuinely curious: what would you like to pay for? Not seeing ads? Unlocking new features? Or just supporting us?
    - ilsubyeega 9mo ago
      API
charonn0 9mo ago
> I can't think of any other differentiating features in Gmail. Ads in my mail? Nostalgia? Originally, the differentiating features were multi-gigabyte storage limits and the public's goodwill towards Google, Inc. Gigabyte storage is now the norm, public goodwill for Alphabet, Inc. is minimal, and so there's nothing that really sets Gmail apart anymore.
aalukabi 9mo ago
I tried DDG for a while but got frustrated because it wasn't giving me what I was actually looking for. Now I’m using Google with the Searchonymous add-on, which has helped me get much wider results, uninfluenced by my previous search history.
dlev_pika 9mo ago
Brave and DuckDuck have been my defaults for a long time. There are two reasons I can think I use Google and Chrome for: - Search: If I want to be sold something - say I’m in the market for an electric heater, I’ll search for it on Google to be tracked and advertised. - Chrome: because there are some flows and UX that simply don’t work well in other browsers
jajuuka 9mo ago
These types of articles always remind of conspiracy theorists. Being so excited to view something in a new way, to degradate something popular, to view themselves as unique individuals and in control again. That they are outside the mainstream and that is superior because they have the secret knowledge. Also the "if something is free you are the product" is so obviously false if you think about it for a minute. A lot of people pay for Amazon Prime, yet they are still the product. Just because you had a company money does not mean they will won't maximize profit by monetizing your information. Not to mention Blender is free. Are they the product as well? It's just a saying with good mouth feel and nothing else. Definitely not something anyone should change their life around for.
alex1138 9mo ago
Is there a legitimate reason why only Google can trawl Reddit or is it just more monopolistic bullshit?
karmelapple 9mo ago
I used to use DuckDuckGo, until I realized I was using "!g" far too often. Then I tried Kagi, and I find that works the majority of the time, including their AI. Someone else in the comments here said Kagi's AI models are bad, but I don't think they are for answering the fairly basic questions that I typically search. I'm not going to have Kagi's AI model refactor code or something though.
elxr 9mo ago
> actively improved my life Doesn't clarify beyond some trite remarks with no actual proof.
- pkilgore 9mo ago
  > actual proof You don't think their own opinion of their own life isn't self-evident proof?
  - elxr 9mo ago
    When it's poorly explained, no. Outside of a small handful that do go in-depth, these "switching off of Google" people just repeat the same thing over and over again, and expect everyone to instinctively agree with their views. This has the classics like: - "Google’s services are actively worse than the alternatives" (not actually listing which services they're talking about. Not showing specific features or design decisions which are worse than the alternative. Youtube is certainly not worse than the alternatives.) - "I do my best to boycott bad things" - "but big tech is bad" - "The old adage of “if you’re not paying, you’re the product” is certainly true here." (do we need to hear this banality for the thousandth time?, also there's plenty of actually free services, like this site we're discussing this on.)
TeeWEE 9mo ago
I hardly use Google anymore. I almost always use Claude. It can do the "higher level task" I often want to accomplish when I go to google. Claude checks multiples websites, reads them all, and answers my question.
dismalaf 9mo ago
Pro tip: Gemini Flash is the new Google. Bypasses all the SEO and ad garbage. Also I still haven't found anything that replaces Google for finding local, physical businesses. And Gmail? I have it mainly to give to random businesses. I like Hey.com more but I don't want the utility company or some online service I barely care about cluttering it up. Also there is no YouTube equivalent. They pay creators the most so creators are all on YouTube.
alabhyajindal 9mo ago
I can highly recommend Brave Search to anyone who is looking for an alternative. I found it to be much better than DuckDuckGo. Feels like Kagi almost, but free.
hosteur 9mo ago
Just use Kagi. I have been for several years now. I have not regretted it one minute. I have not missed Google at all. Kagi is just so much better. And I like the business model.
- s_dev 9mo ago
  It is better, I was a paying subscriber. Then I realised they pay money to Yandex and I feel and obligation to support Ukraine right now. When the war is over or Kagi drop Yandex support I will be a paying subscriber again.
  - sedatk 9mo ago
    Kagi's response: https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integration-due-to-the-geopolitical-status-quo/19 https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...
    - s_dev 9mo ago
      I've read that before, it doesn't change anything. They're free to work with Yandex and I'm free to not pay for Kagi.
andrewk17 9mo ago
I spent the effort to de-google a several years back and switched to Proton. After years of being on Proton, I recently switched back to GMail. It didn't really make my life any better. And at this point, I think I see more value in having AI be able to piece together information to serve me up useful information than trying to protect my privacy within email (I couldn't get off Google Photos, it's just too useful).
Sparkyte 9mo ago
I've been piholing everything. Duckduckgo can feel clunky at times and having more than one search engine is a blessing. Duckduckgo is for obscure direct searches where as Google for me is the popular enriched searches.
bilekas 9mo ago
Just because Kagi is always mentioned in these type of posts, I can see already there's a lot of posts. https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integration-due-to-the-geopolitical-status-quo https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...
- bilekas 9mo ago
  This will be downvoted heavy, so just to remind Russia
Willish42 9mo ago
I've been meaning to get off Gmail, and Proton Mail does seem like my favorite of the alternatives from a quick glance, but I'm also concerned about privacy focused services like Proton getting blocked or compromised in the US... This was a pretty good read Also, > I do my best to boycott bad things. And I fail pretty often. I still use Amazon on occasion and I can’t get off Spotify. I use Uber and DoorDash a lot more than I’d like. And I have too many Apple products/services. OK, I can intuit why most of those are bad, but can somebody give me a good-faith interpretation on what's bad about Apple? I'd assume it's the working conditions and material extraction processes in China, parts of Africa, and elsewhere, but isn't that true of every piece of consumer technology? The only better companies for consumer hardware that come to mind are Framework and Google for recycling parts and raw materials, but the whole point of the article is about de-googling and Framework's products are relatively niche and at a much lower price and performance / market category.
- herrherrmann 9mo ago
  Apple is very anti-consumer, locking devices down, using planned obsolescence, fighting hard against movements for more open and fairer market practices and standards (e.g. switching to the standard USB-C port, allowing third-party app stores, exploiting developers releasing software on their platforms).
  - ethbr1 9mo ago
    Or as I tell my Apple-philic tech friends: your devices are a single year of flat revenue away from user-hostile decisions. At the end of the day, Apple exists to make money and keep shareholders happy. If the business stops growing organically, do you really think they're going to benevolently use the massive control they have over their own platform? "Apple" isn't privacy-focused. Their marketing strategy is currently privacy-focused and their economics currently permit them to be.
- tetrisgm 9mo ago
  I switched from Fastmail to iCloud Mail and I’m happy.
bawolff 9mo ago
I used to hate the google AI summaries, but recently its like a switch flipped and im finding them actually useful. Especially when my search query is looking up something basic from the docs (like say library function name or argument order), it really just answers what i want. Of course a big part of the problem is that google is inundated with seo spam when it comes to programming topics .
numbers 9mo ago
Wait till you move over to something like Kagi. It's really like an elevated experience when it comes to search. At first it's just less ads and none of that Google BS, but then eventually you start to use their other features. You realize, search could have moved in this direction a long time ago if Google wasn't motivated by ads.
highwaylights 9mo ago
You had me until Proton. I bang this drum every so often when it comes up but I’ve had terrible experiences with Proton locking me out of email permanently without warning or explanation in a way that made not just the email address but the accounts linked to it completely unrecoverable. Don’t play around with email. It’s not communication, it’s critical digital infrastructure - quite possibly your primary key on the internet. The consequences of getting locked out by a faceless provider for reasons you’ll never hear about are probably a lot bigger than you think.
arthurjj 9mo ago
I was thrown by > I do my best to boycott bad things. And I fail pretty often. I still use Amazon on occasion and I can’t get off Spotify. I use Uber and DoorDash a lot more than I’d like. And I have too many Apple products/services. > Individual actions probably will not save the world, but big tech is bad It's weird to see this without any context or justification or comparison to other industries. As if it's so self evidently true that the author never considered the reader might dismiss his wider point when coming across it with no explanation
- elxr 9mo ago
  Yup. It's a poorly written article, and the writer comes across as unpleasant to talk to. Saying "big tech is bad" with no extra context has to be one of the dumbest things I've seen on a post with this many upvotes.
nashashmi 9mo ago
He lost me at paying for services. Sure, me in my 40s can afford to pay for a good 200$ worth of services, but when I was starting out in high school and college, I could not even fathom paying for anything. And that was the time I was doing real work in my life, not like now. I don't know what this allergy to features are. You can disable the features. It is not hard. I remember when they used to force conversation feature down everyone's throats. Some oldies hated it, but when they got used to it they appreciated it. Now they have an off feature.
nunez 9mo ago
Couldn't agree more. Kagi for search, Fastmail for e-mail, Apple Maps for navigation (though I rely on Google Maps for reviews). Once a realistic not-Office 365 alternative for docs and spreadsheets appears, I'm going to bail on Drive too. I've used Fastmail for a year now and haven't missed Gmail for a second. It even natively supports iOS push notifications for Mail, something Google refuses to implement. Same with Kagi. I love having control over my search results, and custom bangs is life.
barnacs 9mo ago
I highly recommend self-hosting a meta-search engine to get away from any single provider without losing the benefits of either. I have been using searx[0] happily for years. [0]: https://github.com/searxng/searxng https://github.com/searxng/searxng
Telemakhos 9mo ago
I don't even use Google's regular search that often... but I'm addicted to Google Books, and nobody is offering to replace that. Google Scholar is also amazing. In those niche spaces, Google is a defacto monopoly.
dandano 9mo ago
> My inbox is so much cleaner now, and I patiently await the newsletters I’ve signed up for like a gleeful child waiting for the postman. The author didn’t go into detail here - but has anyone got a good system to achieve this? Or Is it a specific feature within Proton? I’ve just got mainly the one email and I’ve wanted to change to a better way for ages.
- elxr 9mo ago
  I use gmail, and I've managed to get about halfway there. Almost every newsletter I get, I'm happy to see, even if I won't have the time to read 95% of them. I get close to no spam (I'd maybe get 1 spam mail every 2-3 weeks). Just unsubscribe from everything you don't want, use a separate account for services that generate a lot of receipts/notifications, and block as soon as you stop caring about a particular sender. It's doable, just be diligent and be willing to spend some time curating what's allowed to go in.
QuiEgo 9mo ago
FWIW Google Gemini is currently like the Google of old - the search pretty much always finds what I want with no b.s.. I’m sure someday it will be aggressively monetized and enshitified but enjoying it while it lasts.
jmspring 9mo ago
I'm in the process of de-googling. It will take time (changing third party contact emails - banks, etc is annoying) - I honestly wish there was the equivalent of "moving" where emails could be updated the same way. DDG - I love the premise, but their search relies too heavily on Bing which - worked for msft, etc... - no idea why it sucks so much. Claude/etc for search - artificial guardrails. "Hey give me an example of Charlie Kirk being a homophobe" - "I can't do that". Contrived example, but realistic result. Google started out as a non-opinionated (outside of link weight) search engine that is now gemini and bs. But even search is not useful. DDG tries, but responses are sub-par.
pkilgore 9mo ago
Fastmail and Kagi are not noticeable expenses (to me) but are a noticeable increase in quality of life. Might not have been true at one point but if you can spare the cost I highly recommend either.
- vvpan 9mo ago
  Fastmail user for a decade. Does the job.
rappatic 9mo ago
This is the way. Vote with your wallet!
drnick1 9mo ago
It is very easy to get rid of Google, at least for the kind of person on HN. Search -> DuckDuckGo Drive -> Own networked file server Phone -> Flash Graphene on your Pixel Browser -> Firefox Email -> Host your own (this is the hardest) Youtube -> uBlock Origin (for Firefox), logged out The last one isn't really a replacement, but Google certainly isn't making any money. Now do the same with Apple and Microsoft by running Linux on your machines and you are close to 100% free of big tech.
ZebusJesus 9mo ago
I have had proton as a paid customer for 8 years and it's been nothing but good. They keep adding features, it works, it's secure and I can have 15 emails that go to the sam inbox! Proton VPN and drive was a nice addition, then they added a production suite and password manager honestly its 100% a great deal and they keep working hard to make more secured services. I run a searXNG server so it searches multiple engines for me anonymously!
aetherspawn 9mo ago
I’ll admit when it first came out I hated the Gemini summary. It hallucinated a lot. Back then it was useless. But now I don’t mind it: it’s lightning fast (for an LLM capable of mid level reasoning), but more importantly unlimited and free. And it puts search results alongside the summary so I can ignore it if I like. These days I probably use it on around 90% of searches.
cantalopes 9mo ago
I stopped using google for search too, but saying that ducksuckgo or brave is better at search is not true in my ipinion. Sure, the ai summary sucks and you will gwt spobsored results at top, but google is pretty damn good at searching. No other search engine (besides paid kagi) gave me as good results
1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
"So no one is really choosing to use Google Search. It's being chosen for them." Google tries to argue that based on so many people using it that it must be the best But only a small percentage of people actively _choose_ to use it Very few people know about "settings", "default settings" or how to change them If they knew how, then would they change them If the default was something other than Google, then would people chaange the settings to Google Google pays billions becuse it knows most people will never become aware of settings or try to change them
Humico 9mo ago
[dead]
selfhosting_sh 9mo ago
[flagged]
ekjhgkejhgk 9mo ago
I bought my domain and I've been using Tuta for my important things (still have gmail for the newsletters etc but rarely lookat it). Couldn't be happier.
rurban 9mo ago
I switched from duckduckgo to seek ninja about a year ago, and it's much better. Kagi was much better, but I certainly won't pay for search nor AI
veunes 9mo ago
The hardest part of leaving big platforms usually isn't technical, it's psychological
ahmedbaracat 9mo ago
When I moved off Google, I used DuckDuckGo (search) and Proton/Fastmail (email). But now I am using Kagi (search & assistant) and Hey (email) and couldn’t be happier :). Highly recommended.
foobarbaz569 9mo ago
What a low quality piece of pure nonsense.
gdmka 9mo ago
Lots of valid points in the article. What I like about Brave Search is the quality of its AI answers compared to rivals. For quick fact-checks, it's pretty decent when I only need to extract 1-2 sentences. Best thing of Brave search was to adopt the bang[0] syntax. It really helps to quickly redirect to YouTube, DDG, IMDB and Google when needed. Regarding Gmail, I've read so many Google account suspension horror stories out here, that I'm legitimately scared to loose access if I do anything out of the ordinary. So I shifted from Gmail as my primary email service. I paid for Proton mail for about a year, but the most basic paid account is very limited for my needs. Ended up purchasing Migadu Micro and a domain. The ability to own a domain and an email service is very underrated. Catch-all is an absolutely must have for any decent mail service, yet, impossible with dedicated mail services such as Gmail or Proton. And there’s no better way to combat spam and unsolicited emails than server-side bouncing. [0]: https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/4410152384781-What-bangs-can-I-use-in-Brave-Search https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/4410152384781-Wh...

480 points by speckx 9mo ago

I degoogled back when they announced AMP email, and am in broad agreement with the author here. The only things I’ve found it hard to replace are YouTube, Arts & Culture, Google Books, and Books ngrams. Everything else has great alternatives to move to 100%, and Books is just a backup alongside archive.org and Hathi. Even if you just stop using one piece of Google you’ll find yourself in a better place.

memset 9mo ago
What have you done for email?
- frakt0x90 9mo ago
  For me, Fastmail has been incredible.
  - calmbonsai 9mo ago
    I concur on Fastmail. I only keep a "legacy" Gmail account for parental tech support.
- robin_reala 9mo ago
  I ended up at Soverin. Luckily I was already using Gmail with my own domain, so I could switch without having to change addresses. https://soverin.com/ https://soverin.com/
magarnicle 9mo ago
What do you look for in Arts & Culture? I find https://www.getdailyart.com/ https://www.getdailyart.com/ pretty great if you are mostly just interested in painting.
- robin_reala 9mo ago
  I produce book for Standard Ebooks, and they need cover art.[1] Arts & Culture is a good source, but I also use Wikimedia Commons and some museum sites directly. [1] https://standardebooks.org/artworks https://standardebooks.org/artworks

kyrra 9mo ago

If you don't like the AI feature, Google at least lets you turn it off: https://workspace.google.com/blog/product-announcements/updated-smart-feature-settings-give-users-increased-choice-and-control https://workspace.google.com/blog/product-announcements/upda... Specifically in Gmail Settings: > Smart features: Turn on smart features in Gmail, Chat, and Meet - When you turn this setting on, you agree to let Gmail, Chat, and Meet use your content and activity in these products to provide smart features and personalize your experience. My wife turned this off because she didn't want typing suggestions or even grammar correction. After disabling the feature, she was much happier. (googler, opinions are my own)

swiftcoder 9mo ago
Does this work outside of workspaces? I didn't think public gmail accounts had the option

dude250711 9mo ago

I saw someone on Safari having to actually watch YouTube ads. It was so bizarre! I forgot those even exist.

wao0uuno 9mo ago
Adblockers for Safari exist. Even on iOS.
- dude250711 9mo ago
  They even work sometimes I have heard.
  - baggachipz 9mo ago
    Wipr2 is amazing. Never see ads on mobile Safari. On desktop, Orion is great.

pavel_lishin 9mo ago

> I always thought I loved Gmail. Turns out I just had the habit of typing in “gmail.com” in my search bar. I honestly can’t tell you a single feature of Gmail that I miss. > Leaving Gmail also gave me the opportunity to start implementing better digital hygiene. I no longer give my primary email to fly-by-night sites, and I'm deliberate with what things I'm signing up for. I also do this, but with my own custom domain - still in gmail. Gmail is fine, imo. I also don't let them algorithmically sort my email - I use filters & such.

seaucre 9mo ago

Gmail can be made vanilla. It sounds like switching emails and improving their email hygiene was the real improvement.

direwolf20 9mo ago
It will still always analyse your emails for advertising purposes.
- jeffbee 9mo ago
  Gmail is one of the only three categories of user data that Google specifically says they won't scan.
  - hn_acc1 9mo ago
    Which probably means they scan it extra hard.

Aurornis 9mo ago

> After giving them a fair shot, I think I can now honestly say that Brave and DuckDuckGo are better than Google for >90% of searches I've had DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for years and I couldn't disagree with this more. DuckDuckGo is fine for quickly getting to well known sites where I can't remember the URL, but it's objectively worse for trying to find everything from Reddit threads to Recipes. Their depth of indexing sites like Reddit feels dramatically worse lately and recipe search will predictably give me the same list of SEO spam blogs regardless of what I type in. DuckDuckGo also seems to be doing the YouTube search thing that everyone hates where after the first several results it just starts throwing semi-related things at you instead. I still add "!g" to my DuckDuckGo queries when I don't have time to mess around or if the first page of results is obvious SEO spam. The other main point in this blog post isn't really about Google at all, it's just what happened when the author set up a a new e-mail address and didn't sign up for a lot of sites with it: > Leaving Gmail also gave me the opportunity to start implementing better digital hygiene. I no longer give my primary email to fly-by-night sites, and I'm deliberate with what things I'm signing up for. I thought there was going to be some substance to this post but it reads like someone congratulating themselves for a choice they made and then trying to backwards justify it.

direwolf20 9mo ago
What if we had more specialized search engines? There should be a recipe aggregator that searches for recipes and nothing else, and prioritizes high value recipe sites.
- cortesoft 9mo ago
  Then we would need a search engine for search engines… Also, how would a search engine for recipes work? How does THAT search engine find when a new recipe site is created? It would be to scrape the whole internet just to find all the recipe sites….
  - Aldipower 9mo ago
    This exists and is called a meta search engine. For example like MetaGer, which was extremely famous 20 years ago in Germany. https://metager.org/ https://metager.org/

avazhi 9mo ago

Not a fan of Google but I always find Gmail criticisms so weird. Like, what does this guy even mean about the algorithm sorting his inbox? Legit what the fuck is he talking about? Non junk mail goes to my inbox. Spam goes to spam. What am I missing? And speaking of spam, I have a bunch of proton mail accounts and outlook accounts and iCloud mail accounts and Gmail’s spam filter is easily the best. Like, it’s not even close. Protonmail is nearly as bad as outlook at dealing with spam. It’s impossible to overstate how bad both of them are at filtering spam vs Gmail. I legit feel like I’m either being actively gaslit or I’m genuinely missing something big here. As for search alternatives, I’d love to use Kagi full time but the cost is just unreasonably high for now IMO.

r_lee 9mo ago
it's just someone who thinks degoogling himself has somehow elevated his entire existence to the sky I'm personally not so attached to this idea of Google being evil so I don't really get this at all
Aurornis 9mo ago
> Like, what does this guy even mean about the algorithm sorting his inbox? Legit what the fuck is he talking about? Gmail has a feature that can break your inbox into a priority section and an everything else section. You have to put in some work to flag and unflag messages based on what you think is important. It's not perfect but with some training it's helpful. Some people turn it on and expect it to read their minds about everything or think they can ignore the everything else section. You can just turn it back off. You don't have to leave Gmail. > And speaking of spam, I have a bunch of proton mail accounts and outlook accounts and iCloud mail accounts and Gmail’s spam filter is easily the best. Agree. This person's reduced spam experience was due to the new e-mail address and being disciplined about not signing up for a million things on it, not because Proton is better.
chroma_zone 9mo ago
You may have turned this feature off (like I did) but by default Gmail sorts your emails into categories like Promotions, Social, Updates...
deleted 9mo ago

righthand 9mo ago

Kagi, Fastmail, Immich, LibreOffice are all excellent alternatives to Google Garbage.

QuantumNoodle 9mo ago

I haven't kept up with Gmail because I've left it many years ago, but last I heard they give themselves the permission to parse your emails and serve you targeted ads based on contents of emails you receive. If the thought of privacy doesn't turn you off, you must love the thought of unsolicited marketing emails getting amplified through ads that Google serves you.

jeffbee 9mo ago
[flagged]
rhcom2 9mo ago
> last I heard they give themselves the permission to parse your emails and serve you targeted ads based on contents of emails you receive. Stopped doing it in 2017 (according to them). https://fox59.com/news/google-will-no-longer-read-your-emails-to-tailor-ads https://fox59.com/news/google-will-no-longer-read-your-email...
- QuantumNoodle 9mo ago
  That checks out, I switched to protonmail in 2014 and haven't looked around since. Surprised they reversed on this, but glad that was addressed.

OrvalWintermute 9mo ago

> My conscious is a tiny bit cleaner I think he meant my conscience. Used to think Google was awesome when they were hyper accurate, fast, and not enshittifying products. Now I am convinced they are just a little bit better than Meta.

bitpush 9mo ago

> I don't knowingly use AI > Sometimes I will use Kagi's "assistant" model whilst coding. Particularly to clean up existing code/stylesheets The only moral abortion is my abortion.

jeffbee 9mo ago
Kagi's models are also incredibly bad. I can't imagine how this person believes they are getting fair value from them.
- dpe82 9mo ago
  Kagi assistant includes all Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Grok models as well as all the common open weights models.
- alexjplant 9mo ago
  Kagi doesn't make any models in-house - they use closed-source frontier models and OSS ones hosted by third-party providers. The former are on par with their own vendors' chat interface implementations (capabilities like file upload and custom tool use excepted).
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- MengerSponge 9mo ago
  The subscription pays for competent search. Anything else is gravy
raincole 9mo ago
The trick is to say ignorant. If you know nothing about AI of course you're not knowingly using AI.

xnx 9mo ago

"Leaving Google" = "stopped using Google services" in this case (vs. "quit working at Google")

hn_acc1 9mo ago
I assumed it was related to employment as well.
mat0 9mo ago
I hate that the Internet thought me now to distrust everything. In this case, I have the feeling that the author chose those words carefully to click bait us somehow without actually lying

shevy-java 9mo ago

It's like a drug - getting off is not so easy for many people. I still use youtube and a chromium-based browser. I want to become google-free eventually.

WarmWash 9mo ago

The problem isn't Google. The problem is that people want a "free internet" without ads, and without any form of data harvesting. But they also don't want to pay any money, because the internet, as we all know, "is free". In 30 years, no one has figured this out. So I feel pretty confident in stating that it's either gonna be ads or payments. And if we switch to a payment model, then the internet becomes another system where the poor are naturally disadvantaged and the rich get unlimited benefit, so I don't think any of the complaining will go away anyway. Just a new set of problems.

skydhash 9mo ago
There are so many locked platform that I struggle to understand the not paying part. Imagine a better Github Search (or ACM search for papers), I bet it would find users.
bubblewand 9mo ago
Actually-free gets suppressed by free-with-ads. We don’t know how much the truly free hobbyist-volunteer ecosystem would pick up without competition from ad-supported options (often with deep pockets for advertising and promotion, plus monopolist positioning to cross-promote with other products in some cases). Ad-supported options suppress usership of truly free options, which suppresses interest in volunteering time and resources. It also suppresses open protocols. Protocols stagnated as the Internet centralized and commercialized for a reason. Some of these things could just be protocols. Not saying that would cover everything, but I am sure those two factors would “step in” to replace some aspects of the ad-supported Internet, if the ads went away. How much, I don’t know.
- eudamoniac 9mo ago
  All you are saying here is that the sites with ads are so much better than the actually-free sites that people still use them despite having ads. Which is maybe not a signal that ads need to be banned.
  - bubblewand 9mo ago

mrweasel 9mo ago

To some extend it feels like Google just gave up on search. I don't really share the notion that Google is still better than e.g. DuckDuckGo or Ecosia. In my experience if Ecosia can't find something, neither can Google. However, I've noticed that search seems to become less and less useful, like huge chucks of the net is just missing. A ton of pages also doesn't really make their content searchable, in the sense that videos and images aren't tagged in any meaningful why. Mostly I feel the internet shrinking around me, the number of pages I go to becomes fewer and fewer. Brand new topics/content mostly comes from blogs recommended by friends and colleague.

xnx 9mo ago

> After giving them a fair shot, I think I can now honestly say that Brave and DuckDuckGo are better than Google for >90% of searches I still scratch my head how DuckDuckGo has made people excited for Bing search results in a way Microsoft never has.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

khana 9mo ago

[dead]

nvr219 9mo ago

I use fastmail and kagi and love both. I wonder what OP is using instead of google docs for live co-authoring... Word Online? lol

latexr 9mo ago
> I wonder what OP is using instead of google docs for live co-authoring Probably nothing? It’s not like that’s a need that everyone has.
spacebear 9mo ago
Not the OP, but I alternate between self-hosted instances of Outline (https://www.getoutline.com/ https://www.getoutline.com/) and Nextcloud (with Collabora) for this. Outline I actually like better than Google Docs for most things. Nextcloud is a little rough, but it has change tracking, which I need sometimes. I’ve also seen a lot of people using Cryptpad recently, which I think wraps OnlyOffice.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
Zizizizz 9mo ago
I think https://typst.app/#start https://typst.app/#start has multi user support, you'd have to learn typst though

realprimoh 9mo ago

This being on the front page of hacker news is embarassing. Low substance post that is misleading if anything - I was hoping for a career reflection. Not a low-quality "pat on the back" post of no value

paxys 9mo ago
This is the daily "Google is bad" post. Best to ignore it and move on.
wavemode 9mo ago
Your comment is of even less value than the article. The fact that you find this subject matter uninteresting, is also uninteresting. Clearly other people feel differently.
- afafawegawg 9mo ago
  not uninteresting, poor quality. you're
raincole 9mo ago
HK likes bashing big corps, but Google is the special soft spot for us. By 'soft' I mean easy to punch.

JohnMakin 9mo ago

"conscience," not "conscious."

thallavajhula 9mo ago

I used to have a custom domain setup via Google apps. Google decided to update it to something else (they changed their name several times and I lost track of the name now). I switched to iCloud+ Mail when iCloud introduced their custom domain support a few years ago. I do have notification summaries on my iOS turned on, but that's just a guilty pleasure of mine. The summarization is so bad that it's funny. I literally have the summarization feature turned on to laugh at how bad it is every time I see a new summary. Anyway, I used to be a everything-Google guy. Now, I just spread my app usage across multiple services, which I think is a win for me in the long run instead of being locked in to an ecosystem. I also got myself out of the most of the Apple products from the Apple ecosystem too. I'm a 1Password user because I didn't want to be part of Google or Apple ecosystems.

johnbarron 9mo ago

"How to replace Amazon, Google, X, Meta, Apple – and more" - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/26/how-to-replace-amazon-google-x-meta-apple-alternatives https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/26/how-to-re...

paxys 9mo ago

AI is an area where having decades of private data hosted and indexed by a third party is actually paying off with a direct return (vs just using it to surface ads). All moral qualms about FOSS and whatever else aside, asking a question in plain english and having an "AI assistant" digging through years' worth of photos, emails, events, chats, restaurant reservations and more and returning an incredibly detailed answer that no person ever could feels like the magic of tech being realized in front of our eyes. Would I prefer this was all open technology instead? Yeah, of course. But it is abundantly clear that economic incentives don't allow open source to compete with the big players, and that's just how it is.

ajross 9mo ago

Some of this is... pretty tortured: > Leaving Gmail also gave me the opportunity to start implementing better digital hygiene. Which is to say, everyone else's spam filtering is awful, so you need to restrict access to your email so they don't fill your inbox. This is literally the same logic that says we shouldn't vaccinate women against HPV because then they won't learn to practice abstinence.

prideout 9mo ago

This is not written by a former Google employee, it's written by a former Google user. Confusing title to see on hackernews.

jcgrillo 9mo ago
It took me until the 3rd paragraph to figure this out

pier25 9mo ago

Some of Google's products have really dropped in quality. In the past 5 or so years all the changes I've seen in Search, Youtube, and Gmail have been for the worse.

arcade79 9mo ago

Leaving Google was the best thing I did, some 10 years ago. It reduced my stress level dramatically. I had no idea about how stressed I was at G. The release, when leaving, was immense. Never ever, will I return to big tech. However, having said that, never ever, will I regret having joined. It was an amazing journey.

trilogic 9mo ago

Leaving googles is for GROWN UPS and independent Individs. The ones that need to see more, to get out of the egg. I self host (feels damn great) but still check my old, antique, gmail once every 3-4 months. Makes me smile and say, I was one of them.

dtj1123 9mo ago

Startpage is good

asim 9mo ago

This is very interesting and timely. I've been working on something to replace a lot of addictive or exploitive services we use today but there's some caveats. Will people pay? They pay for Kagi but will they generally pay for other things like news, maps, video, chat, weather, etc. The second question is what's stopping people from really quitting? I get the feeling it's sort of habits that we get stuck with. Even I still use Google. But the mention of brave and knowing brave has a generous free search tier for their api makes me think it's possible to replace Google search. But habits die hard. New habit formation may require an alternative approach hence so many buying into ChatGPT. One issue I also find with this sort of thing. It's hard to have a longer discussion that leads to building good alternatives. A thread appears, we comment and then it disappears. There needs to be more public discourse that leads to tangible results... To real issues that get solved.

stephantul 9mo ago

Ecosia is not just Bing, we offer a bunch of indexes, including bing and Google. We’re moving to our own index, which we are building in collaboration with Qwant, under the name European Search Perspective. I do see the point of the article however.

reddalo 9mo ago
I love Qwant and I think it works better than DuckDuckGo. I can't wait for the European index.
NittLion78 9mo ago
I can testify that Qwant, if nothing else, is a superior image search engine (basically does what GIS used to do 10-15 years ago) and it's better for just getting to a quick answer without your first 4 results being ad-driven. Unfortunately, when needing to do deeper dives on things, Google is still more or less the best for results past the first page in my experience, though it's rare I need to dig that deep these days.
- stephantul 9mo ago
  Qwant is somewhat focused on France, so coverage really depends on whether that is the market you’re looking for.
zeusly 9mo ago
Will I ever be able to pay for ecosia?
- stephantul 9mo ago
  Genuinely curious: what would you like to pay for? Not seeing ads? Unlocking new features? Or just supporting us?
  - ilsubyeega 9mo ago
    API

charonn0 9mo ago

> I can't think of any other differentiating features in Gmail. Ads in my mail? Nostalgia? Originally, the differentiating features were multi-gigabyte storage limits and the public's goodwill towards Google, Inc. Gigabyte storage is now the norm, public goodwill for Alphabet, Inc. is minimal, and so there's nothing that really sets Gmail apart anymore.

aalukabi 9mo ago

I tried DDG for a while but got frustrated because it wasn't giving me what I was actually looking for. Now I’m using Google with the Searchonymous add-on, which has helped me get much wider results, uninfluenced by my previous search history.

dlev_pika 9mo ago

Brave and DuckDuck have been my defaults for a long time. There are two reasons I can think I use Google and Chrome for: - Search: If I want to be sold something - say I’m in the market for an electric heater, I’ll search for it on Google to be tracked and advertised. - Chrome: because there are some flows and UX that simply don’t work well in other browsers

jajuuka 9mo ago

These types of articles always remind of conspiracy theorists. Being so excited to view something in a new way, to degradate something popular, to view themselves as unique individuals and in control again. That they are outside the mainstream and that is superior because they have the secret knowledge. Also the "if something is free you are the product" is so obviously false if you think about it for a minute. A lot of people pay for Amazon Prime, yet they are still the product. Just because you had a company money does not mean they will won't maximize profit by monetizing your information. Not to mention Blender is free. Are they the product as well? It's just a saying with good mouth feel and nothing else. Definitely not something anyone should change their life around for.

alex1138 9mo ago

Is there a legitimate reason why only Google can trawl Reddit or is it just more monopolistic bullshit?

karmelapple 9mo ago

I used to use DuckDuckGo, until I realized I was using "!g" far too often. Then I tried Kagi, and I find that works the majority of the time, including their AI. Someone else in the comments here said Kagi's AI models are bad, but I don't think they are for answering the fairly basic questions that I typically search. I'm not going to have Kagi's AI model refactor code or something though.

elxr 9mo ago

> actively improved my life Doesn't clarify beyond some trite remarks with no actual proof.

pkilgore 9mo ago
> actual proof You don't think their own opinion of their own life isn't self-evident proof?
- elxr 9mo ago
  When it's poorly explained, no. Outside of a small handful that do go in-depth, these "switching off of Google" people just repeat the same thing over and over again, and expect everyone to instinctively agree with their views. This has the classics like: - "Google’s services are actively worse than the alternatives" (not actually listing which services they're talking about. Not showing specific features or design decisions which are worse than the alternative. Youtube is certainly not worse than the alternatives.) - "I do my best to boycott bad things" - "but big tech is bad" - "The old adage of “if you’re not paying, you’re the product” is certainly true here." (do we need to hear this banality for the thousandth time?, also there's plenty of actually free services, like this site we're discussing this on.)

TeeWEE 9mo ago

I hardly use Google anymore. I almost always use Claude. It can do the "higher level task" I often want to accomplish when I go to google. Claude checks multiples websites, reads them all, and answers my question.

dismalaf 9mo ago

Pro tip: Gemini Flash is the new Google. Bypasses all the SEO and ad garbage. Also I still haven't found anything that replaces Google for finding local, physical businesses. And Gmail? I have it mainly to give to random businesses. I like Hey.com more but I don't want the utility company or some online service I barely care about cluttering it up. Also there is no YouTube equivalent. They pay creators the most so creators are all on YouTube.

alabhyajindal 9mo ago

I can highly recommend Brave Search to anyone who is looking for an alternative. I found it to be much better than DuckDuckGo. Feels like Kagi almost, but free.

hosteur 9mo ago

Just use Kagi. I have been for several years now. I have not regretted it one minute. I have not missed Google at all. Kagi is just so much better. And I like the business model.

s_dev 9mo ago
It is better, I was a paying subscriber. Then I realised they pay money to Yandex and I feel and obligation to support Ukraine right now. When the war is over or Kagi drop Yandex support I will be a paying subscriber again.
- sedatk 9mo ago
  Kagi's response: https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integration-due-to-the-geopolitical-status-quo/19 https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...
  - s_dev 9mo ago
    I've read that before, it doesn't change anything. They're free to work with Yandex and I'm free to not pay for Kagi.

andrewk17 9mo ago

I spent the effort to de-google a several years back and switched to Proton. After years of being on Proton, I recently switched back to GMail. It didn't really make my life any better. And at this point, I think I see more value in having AI be able to piece together information to serve me up useful information than trying to protect my privacy within email (I couldn't get off Google Photos, it's just too useful).

Sparkyte 9mo ago

I've been piholing everything. Duckduckgo can feel clunky at times and having more than one search engine is a blessing. Duckduckgo is for obscure direct searches where as Google for me is the popular enriched searches.

bilekas 9mo ago

Just because Kagi is always mentioned in these type of posts, I can see already there's a lot of posts. https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integration-due-to-the-geopolitical-status-quo https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...

bilekas 9mo ago
This will be downvoted heavy, so just to remind Russia

Willish42 9mo ago

I've been meaning to get off Gmail, and Proton Mail does seem like my favorite of the alternatives from a quick glance, but I'm also concerned about privacy focused services like Proton getting blocked or compromised in the US... This was a pretty good read Also, > I do my best to boycott bad things. And I fail pretty often. I still use Amazon on occasion and I can’t get off Spotify. I use Uber and DoorDash a lot more than I’d like. And I have too many Apple products/services. OK, I can intuit why most of those are bad, but can somebody give me a good-faith interpretation on what's bad about Apple? I'd assume it's the working conditions and material extraction processes in China, parts of Africa, and elsewhere, but isn't that true of every piece of consumer technology? The only better companies for consumer hardware that come to mind are Framework and Google for recycling parts and raw materials, but the whole point of the article is about de-googling and Framework's products are relatively niche and at a much lower price and performance / market category.

herrherrmann 9mo ago
Apple is very anti-consumer, locking devices down, using planned obsolescence, fighting hard against movements for more open and fairer market practices and standards (e.g. switching to the standard USB-C port, allowing third-party app stores, exploiting developers releasing software on their platforms).
- ethbr1 9mo ago
  Or as I tell my Apple-philic tech friends: your devices are a single year of flat revenue away from user-hostile decisions. At the end of the day, Apple exists to make money and keep shareholders happy. If the business stops growing organically, do you really think they're going to benevolently use the massive control they have over their own platform? "Apple" isn't privacy-focused. Their marketing strategy is currently privacy-focused and their economics currently permit them to be.
tetrisgm 9mo ago
I switched from Fastmail to iCloud Mail and I’m happy.

bawolff 9mo ago

I used to hate the google AI summaries, but recently its like a switch flipped and im finding them actually useful. Especially when my search query is looking up something basic from the docs (like say library function name or argument order), it really just answers what i want. Of course a big part of the problem is that google is inundated with seo spam when it comes to programming topics .

numbers 9mo ago

Wait till you move over to something like Kagi. It's really like an elevated experience when it comes to search. At first it's just less ads and none of that Google BS, but then eventually you start to use their other features. You realize, search could have moved in this direction a long time ago if Google wasn't motivated by ads.

highwaylights 9mo ago

You had me until Proton. I bang this drum every so often when it comes up but I’ve had terrible experiences with Proton locking me out of email permanently without warning or explanation in a way that made not just the email address but the accounts linked to it completely unrecoverable. Don’t play around with email. It’s not communication, it’s critical digital infrastructure - quite possibly your primary key on the internet. The consequences of getting locked out by a faceless provider for reasons you’ll never hear about are probably a lot bigger than you think.

arthurjj 9mo ago

I was thrown by > I do my best to boycott bad things. And I fail pretty often. I still use Amazon on occasion and I can’t get off Spotify. I use Uber and DoorDash a lot more than I’d like. And I have too many Apple products/services. > Individual actions probably will not save the world, but big tech is bad It's weird to see this without any context or justification or comparison to other industries. As if it's so self evidently true that the author never considered the reader might dismiss his wider point when coming across it with no explanation

elxr 9mo ago
Yup. It's a poorly written article, and the writer comes across as unpleasant to talk to. Saying "big tech is bad" with no extra context has to be one of the dumbest things I've seen on a post with this many upvotes.

nashashmi 9mo ago

He lost me at paying for services. Sure, me in my 40s can afford to pay for a good 200$ worth of services, but when I was starting out in high school and college, I could not even fathom paying for anything. And that was the time I was doing real work in my life, not like now. I don't know what this allergy to features are. You can disable the features. It is not hard. I remember when they used to force conversation feature down everyone's throats. Some oldies hated it, but when they got used to it they appreciated it. Now they have an off feature.

nunez 9mo ago

Couldn't agree more. Kagi for search, Fastmail for e-mail, Apple Maps for navigation (though I rely on Google Maps for reviews). Once a realistic not-Office 365 alternative for docs and spreadsheets appears, I'm going to bail on Drive too. I've used Fastmail for a year now and haven't missed Gmail for a second. It even natively supports iOS push notifications for Mail, something Google refuses to implement. Same with Kagi. I love having control over my search results, and custom bangs is life.

barnacs 9mo ago

I highly recommend self-hosting a meta-search engine to get away from any single provider without losing the benefits of either. I have been using searx[0] happily for years. [0]: https://github.com/searxng/searxng https://github.com/searxng/searxng

Telemakhos 9mo ago

I don't even use Google's regular search that often... but I'm addicted to Google Books, and nobody is offering to replace that. Google Scholar is also amazing. In those niche spaces, Google is a defacto monopoly.

dandano 9mo ago

> My inbox is so much cleaner now, and I patiently await the newsletters I’ve signed up for like a gleeful child waiting for the postman. The author didn’t go into detail here - but has anyone got a good system to achieve this? Or Is it a specific feature within Proton? I’ve just got mainly the one email and I’ve wanted to change to a better way for ages.

elxr 9mo ago
I use gmail, and I've managed to get about halfway there. Almost every newsletter I get, I'm happy to see, even if I won't have the time to read 95% of them. I get close to no spam (I'd maybe get 1 spam mail every 2-3 weeks). Just unsubscribe from everything you don't want, use a separate account for services that generate a lot of receipts/notifications, and block as soon as you stop caring about a particular sender. It's doable, just be diligent and be willing to spend some time curating what's allowed to go in.

QuiEgo 9mo ago

FWIW Google Gemini is currently like the Google of old - the search pretty much always finds what I want with no b.s.. I’m sure someday it will be aggressively monetized and enshitified but enjoying it while it lasts.

jmspring 9mo ago

I'm in the process of de-googling. It will take time (changing third party contact emails - banks, etc is annoying) - I honestly wish there was the equivalent of "moving" where emails could be updated the same way. DDG - I love the premise, but their search relies too heavily on Bing which - worked for msft, etc... - no idea why it sucks so much. Claude/etc for search - artificial guardrails. "Hey give me an example of Charlie Kirk being a homophobe" - "I can't do that". Contrived example, but realistic result. Google started out as a non-opinionated (outside of link weight) search engine that is now gemini and bs. But even search is not useful. DDG tries, but responses are sub-par.

pkilgore 9mo ago

Fastmail and Kagi are not noticeable expenses (to me) but are a noticeable increase in quality of life. Might not have been true at one point but if you can spare the cost I highly recommend either.

vvpan 9mo ago
Fastmail user for a decade. Does the job.

rappatic 9mo ago

This is the way. Vote with your wallet!

drnick1 9mo ago

It is very easy to get rid of Google, at least for the kind of person on HN. Search -> DuckDuckGo Drive -> Own networked file server Phone -> Flash Graphene on your Pixel Browser -> Firefox Email -> Host your own (this is the hardest) Youtube -> uBlock Origin (for Firefox), logged out The last one isn't really a replacement, but Google certainly isn't making any money. Now do the same with Apple and Microsoft by running Linux on your machines and you are close to 100% free of big tech.

ZebusJesus 9mo ago

I have had proton as a paid customer for 8 years and it's been nothing but good. They keep adding features, it works, it's secure and I can have 15 emails that go to the sam inbox! Proton VPN and drive was a nice addition, then they added a production suite and password manager honestly its 100% a great deal and they keep working hard to make more secured services. I run a searXNG server so it searches multiple engines for me anonymously!

aetherspawn 9mo ago

I’ll admit when it first came out I hated the Gemini summary. It hallucinated a lot. Back then it was useless. But now I don’t mind it: it’s lightning fast (for an LLM capable of mid level reasoning), but more importantly unlimited and free. And it puts search results alongside the summary so I can ignore it if I like. These days I probably use it on around 90% of searches.

cantalopes 9mo ago

I stopped using google for search too, but saying that ducksuckgo or brave is better at search is not true in my ipinion. Sure, the ai summary sucks and you will gwt spobsored results at top, but google is pretty damn good at searching. No other search engine (besides paid kagi) gave me as good results

1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago

"So no one is really choosing to use Google Search. It's being chosen for them." Google tries to argue that based on so many people using it that it must be the best But only a small percentage of people actively _choose_ to use it Very few people know about "settings", "default settings" or how to change them If they knew how, then would they change them If the default was something other than Google, then would people chaange the settings to Google Google pays billions becuse it knows most people will never become aware of settings or try to change them

Humico 9mo ago

[dead]

selfhosting_sh 9mo ago

[flagged]

ekjhgkejhgk 9mo ago

I bought my domain and I've been using Tuta for my important things (still have gmail for the newsletters etc but rarely lookat it). Couldn't be happier.

rurban 9mo ago

I switched from duckduckgo to seek ninja about a year ago, and it's much better. Kagi was much better, but I certainly won't pay for search nor AI

veunes 9mo ago

The hardest part of leaving big platforms usually isn't technical, it's psychological

ahmedbaracat 9mo ago

When I moved off Google, I used DuckDuckGo (search) and Proton/Fastmail (email). But now I am using Kagi (search & assistant) and Hey (email) and couldn’t be happier :). Highly recommended.

foobarbaz569 9mo ago

What a low quality piece of pure nonsense.

gdmka 9mo ago

Lots of valid points in the article. What I like about Brave Search is the quality of its AI answers compared to rivals. For quick fact-checks, it's pretty decent when I only need to extract 1-2 sentences. Best thing of Brave search was to adopt the bang[0] syntax. It really helps to quickly redirect to YouTube, DDG, IMDB and Google when needed. Regarding Gmail, I've read so many Google account suspension horror stories out here, that I'm legitimately scared to loose access if I do anything out of the ordinary. So I shifted from Gmail as my primary email service. I paid for Proton mail for about a year, but the most basic paid account is very limited for my needs. Ended up purchasing Migadu Micro and a domain. The ability to own a domain and an email service is very underrated. Catch-all is an absolutely must have for any decent mail service, yet, impossible with dedicated mail services such as Gmail or Proton. And there’s no better way to combat spam and unsolicited emails than server-side bouncing. [0]: https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/4410152384781-What-bangs-can-I-use-in-Brave-Search https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/4410152384781-Wh...