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We (wife and I) de-googled ourselves about a year and a half ago, moving half a TB of photos to Ente and canceling our paid Google subscription (while still kee
by vertnerd 2mo ago
We (wife and I) de-googled ourselves about a year and a half ago, moving half a TB of photos to Ente and canceling our paid Google subscription (while still keeping our gmail addresses). We set up our (Android) phones to back up photos to Ente and everything was lovely.
Then I started noticing my wife's Google Photos storage use growing again. Somehow her phone had been switched to backing up on Google again. I turned it off. Then it happened again. And again. She couldn't explain how it happened, but I suspected she was the victim of a scary prompt warning that her photos weren't getting backed up.
This wasn't happening to me because I had switched my phone to LineageOS, but hers was still a stock Pixel with Android.
Lately, I have run across a different example of Google locking in its services. As part of our process of leaving Google, we moved our email, contacts and calendars to mailbox.org. I set up her phone's calendar app to use the new server but to my dismay every new appointment was defaulting to use the Google calendar service! I switched her to the Etar calendar app (which is the default app on LineageOS), disabled the default calendar, and asked her to use Etar instead. Everything was great until I began to notice that her new appointments were showing up on Google again! I look at her phone and see that Etar is completely gone and the only calendar app available is the default Android one.
This calendar fiasco only just revealed itself the other day, so I haven't had enough time to figure out how or when it happened but it feels like it might be the same Google Photos tactic of sucking people back into Google.
- OptionOfT 2mo agoMy work uses Google. Many websites now have a popup 'sign-in with Google' to keep you using their ecosystem.
- throwuxiytayq 2mo agoIt's not the websites. Your browser has that popup.
- accountofthaha 2mo agoNo. It's the websites.
- OptionOfT 2mo agoIf I used Chrome, I could see this happening. But it happens on both Edge & Firefox.
- throwuxiytayq 2mo agoI thought you were referring to this: https://underpassapp.com/news/2025/7/5.html https://underpassapp.com/news/2025/7/5.html It looks like the pop up is part of the browser UI in Chrome, and displayed as part of the website if using non-Chromium browsers. I block ads and don't use Chrome, so I don't see any version of this often.
- svelle 2mo agoThis happens exactly because you're not on Chrome. For some reason the sign in with Google pop up only triggers on non-chrome browsers. Especially on Firefox.
- Plont 2mo agoIs it not happening on Chrome even when you don't have the browser itself logged into a Google account?
- tentacleuno 2mo agoIt takes up quite a sizable amount of the screen, too, so anything in the corner is effectively hidden without interacting with the popup. These pop-ups have been the bane of my life.
- globnomulous 2mo agoThere was brief time when Pinterest automatically logged in Google account users if you made the mistake of clicked an image in Google search results. Popups sound downright civilized and principled by comparison
- WarOnPrivacy 2mo ago>> Many websites now have a popup 'sign-in with Google' > These pop-ups have been the bane of my life. Adding the below in Ublock Origin->My Filters helps with this: ||accounts.google.com/gsi/*$xhr,script,3p (which I run on Ungoogled Chromium, Cromite, etc) winget install -e --id=eloston.ungoogled-chromium winget install -e --id uazo.cromite
- ustad 2mo agoIf you use firefox+ublock its very easy to block these super annoying pop ups.
- eitally 2mo agoHow did you effectively download 500GB of photos? Did you just use Takeout?
- Lunar5227 2mo agoI did, takeout worked pretty great actually.
- pavel_lishin 2mo agoRemember to choose the `tar` version, not the `zip` one, unless you like downloading ten thousand zip files one by one. The tar files can be up to 50GB, the zip ones are much smaller.
- plorg 2mo agoThe zip files can be up to 50GB as well, but they recently changed something on the backend so that if you do use the zip option you may still get however many 50GB files then maybe a 1MB, a 7kB, and a 1GB file, I assume because of the way they parallelize the tasks. I don't know if the tar option behaves in the same way.
- pavel_lishin 2mo agoOh, interesting - I wonder if that's new. The last time I checked (granted, a few years ago), it was limited to something much smaller. I have noticed that the tar files toward the end tend to be smaller, but they still typically weigh in at multiple gigs apiece - 37, 14, etc.
- tehlike 2mo agoDid the same. One issue was the links had some # of retries you can do before they become invalid. Solved it first by exporting them to google drive instead :D
- troyvit 2mo agoI have another, similar example, though not quite as insidious. I switched to GrapheneOS and it's been mostly great. Unfortunately Graphene's stock camera creates drab shots compared to what the hardware supports. OpenCamera is available, but due to OS restrictions it doesn't work with hardware controls. In other words if you want to take a quick shot you have to unlock the phone and select OpenCamera. Bummer if you're into wildlife shots. Graphene recommends installing google's pixel camera and sandboxing it, which, fine, I did and it takes beautiful pictures. However the pixel camera locks in google photos for it's gallery. As a result going from the camera to the gallery requires going back home first and then selecting the gallery. Glad to hear about experiences like this because it was getting tempting to install and sandbox google photos as well.
- nonameiguess 2mo agoGoogle's workspace features are almost hilariously transparent in how they do this. I have to use it for work and have chosen to do so on a single device also for personal use because I don't want two devices. I don't have Chrome installed on this device, but if you click a link from any Google app, it will still popup a selection menu with Chrome as the default and a generic "this device's default browser" last option with no distinguishing name or icon, unlike every other app I am aware of that chooses the default browser by default because that's the entire point of having a default.
- Godsend69 2mo ago[dead]
- ASalazarMX 2mo agoI think you should let your wife use Google, as it doesn't seem she's very invested in your degoogling.
- vertnerd 2mo agoIt's not a matter of "letting" her do anything. She can choose to use whatever service and hardware vendors she wants, as long as she can take care of her own tech support.
- ASalazarMX 2mo agoObviously I didn't mean it as her asking for permission, but as him not questioning her if she wants to go the Google route. People will make sacrifices for their significant others if they think that'll make them happier, out of their own choice. Who would even honestly interpret it that way nowadays? This isn't the 19th century.