3 ms·

I have been trying to move away from Google services for a long time, unfortunately it is very tightly integrated in my life (Gmail, Android etc.) and I am both

by RLN 13y ago

I have been trying to move away from Google services for a long time, unfortunately it is very tightly integrated in my life (Gmail, Android etc.) and I am both lazy and loath to spend money. Google is fine for now but I won't hesitate to jump ship if I find myself looking at better options.

unhammer 13y ago
You don't have to spend very _much_ money. I pay Fastmail $40 a year for 10GB ad-free IMAP+webmail (+2GB file storage that I never use, but I guess that's nice too), I find that very reasonable. It works great with K9-mail on Android (and any IMAP mail client I should think). I have OwnCloud on my home server with a free SSL cert from StartSSL (you need a domain though if you want to use StartSSL, but that shouldn't cost you much). This gives me contacts and a calendar, which I sync to my Android phone (I also sync the owncloud calendar to my Emacs orgmode files over caldav, giving me two-way sync between Emacs and Android; it's also possible to sync carddav contacts into Emacs, but I haven't tried that yet). OwnCloud also has a code editor with syntax highlighting, but it's no Google Docs killer yet (but then, I prefer writing TeX with Emacs anyway). Once it's up and running, it's just as featureful as the Gmail+Google Contacts+Google Calendar combo. If you have android, you do need a Google account for downloading from the Play store, but 1) you can use a throwaway account for that 2) there's also f-droid and other alternative stores. I switched to Gnus+Gwene for RSS feeds, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you really like Emacs. In any case, Google Reader is dead and new alternatives are showing up everywhere. I use Firefox sync instead of Chromium. Apparantly owncloud can work as an FF sync server, but I haven't tried that yet. DuckDuckGo fills most of my search needs better than Google ever did, though I do use its !scholar and !i keywords which redirect me back to Google's Scholar, Image searches. It is possible to wean yourself off Google, and even third-party control of your data in general, but it takes a bit of effort. I find it rewarding though :)

by RLN 13y ago

unhammer 13y ago

You don't have to spend very _much_ money. I pay Fastmail $40 a year for 10GB ad-free IMAP+webmail (+2GB file storage that I never use, but I guess that's nice too), I find that very reasonable. It works great with K9-mail on Android (and any IMAP mail client I should think). I have OwnCloud on my home server with a free SSL cert from StartSSL (you need a domain though if you want to use StartSSL, but that shouldn't cost you much). This gives me contacts and a calendar, which I sync to my Android phone (I also sync the owncloud calendar to my Emacs orgmode files over caldav, giving me two-way sync between Emacs and Android; it's also possible to sync carddav contacts into Emacs, but I haven't tried that yet). OwnCloud also has a code editor with syntax highlighting, but it's no Google Docs killer yet (but then, I prefer writing TeX with Emacs anyway). Once it's up and running, it's just as featureful as the Gmail+Google Contacts+Google Calendar combo. If you have android, you do need a Google account for downloading from the Play store, but 1) you can use a throwaway account for that 2) there's also f-droid and other alternative stores. I switched to Gnus+Gwene for RSS feeds, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you really like Emacs. In any case, Google Reader is dead and new alternatives are showing up everywhere. I use Firefox sync instead of Chromium. Apparantly owncloud can work as an FF sync server, but I haven't tried that yet. DuckDuckGo fills most of my search needs better than Google ever did, though I do use its !scholar and !i keywords which redirect me back to Google's Scholar, Image searches. It is possible to wean yourself off Google, and even third-party control of your data in general, but it takes a bit of effort. I find it rewarding though :)