Use alternatives? For example, https://duckduckgo.com for search.
https://www.startpage.com/ or ixquick is a better option in terms of results.
Really, I just like using products of companies that try to do "the right thing". Anything from the Mozilla Foundation and DuckDuckGo are two examples.
I'd say I do a Google search once or twice a month.
1. Results close to as good if not better than Google.
2. No tracking.
3. Bang searches. With the "too clever by half" search dialogs many sites are implementing (Wikipedia, Internet Archive, Google Ngram Viewer) it's often superior to the native on-site search as I don't have to set focus 2-4 times to actually type in the bloody search dialog.
4. No tracking.
5. Did I mention no tracking?
6. Proxy bang searches, e.g., StartPage.
7. Search customisations -- light page (good for console and commandline search), night mode, and others.
8. Unmangled URLs. I can copy/paste URLs straight from DDG. No-can-do with Google.
Or even Google.
I've seen comments online about DDG providing only an illusion of privacy. I haven't dug into this deeply. From what I've read this comes down to DDG (including bang searches like !g and !sp) stripping identifying information, which provides protection from tracking by entities like advertisers and social networks, but not law enforcement or agencies like the NSA that may have legal options or extralegal access. Is my understanding generally correct? Any corrections/additions/clarifications appreciated.
But if you're using Google through DDG you're probably missing the point.
It's faster to do that, in further irony, on Firefox rather than Chrome (on Android), because Chrome/Android doesn't allow specifying DDG as a default search engine.
(I prefer Firefox for multiple features including extensions (adblock, hul-fucking-lo), and Reader Mode, but motherlovin' heck is Firefox every laggy and slow on Android...)
I'll run a DDG search, for all the reasons stated above, then re-run it to Google if I must. It's still faster than finding Google's search page and entering a search (and clicking past multiple nags and seeing multiple distracting animations).
Two more reasons for Google:
1. Specific date-bounds on search.
2. Counts of results by domain (Desktop only)
I think people react that way to it because it is more literal, a la Google several years ago. I prefer that; I'm used to it and find that Google frustrates the hell out of me when I'm looking for something specific because of all the 'help' and the heavy bias towards recently changed pages. There have been times when I simply couldn't find things with Google that were much easier to locate in DDG.
Still wish there were an engine with a clone of Lexis-style searching. Yes, you have to learn how to use it. But it is incredibly useful.
And that's all before getting to Google's increasingly invasive behavior, and the reason why I refuse to use Chrome, block a lot of their utility-domains, etc.
If Google is part of your life, it's too late for you.
Sometimes it's hard to explain Sandstorm because they have a wide variety of good use cases for it, and there's really not a lot of comparable software packages to it. (It's like ownCloud but it's not like ownCloud, it's like Docker but it's not at all like Docker, etc.)
The managed hosting for Sandstorm is a good step in the direction, because it's very easy to me to move between Sandstorm servers, but I'm not super confident on running my own right now, and it's still in early development as a platform. But Sandstorm on their servers runs the same as Sandstorm on mine, and unlike leaving Google, where I have to figure out how to transplant my data from their proprietary apps to other apps, I can move my apps and data perfectly between Sandstorm servers.
I do place a high degree of trust in Kenton Varda (founder of Sandstorm.io) specifically to keep Sandstorm doing what they should. If I ever feel that trust is misplaced (and I keep a close eye), I'll move.
The cheapest solutions I like currently are posteo.de and mailbox.org. I have not started using either of them, but plan to move soon. Posteo does not support custom domains (it is heavily privacy focused and refrains from collecting or storing customer data as much as possible). So your only choice is to use one of many posteo.x domains for the email address. On the other hand, mailbox.org supports custom domains. Both support IMAP, web mail, migrating email from other providers, etc. Both these services and their websites are worth a look, IMO.
Back in the day, Gmail's driving appeal was it's pro features, and I'd argue that FastMail makes Gmail look basic. Also, I've opened two support tickets this week to ask questions and got responses within an hour or two.
Rob, Bron, and the FastMail guys are the best in the world at what they do. I have zero affiliation with FastMail except for as a happy customer. And with these guys, you are the customer, not the product. The do email, calendaring, etc. better than any other company out there. I've been in IT for 3 decades and I can tell you that the level of quality and care the guys at FastMail deliver is so very, very rare. Money more than well spent.
It's great apart from that, but this is a fairly big negative if you want to use a bunch of email accounts. There are some other negatives as well, but apart from this, it seems ahead of the pack.
I checked perhaps a week or two ago and found that this has been in the "it's coming" stage for a couple of years, and Protonmail didn't seem to be willing to disclose when this may finally come (they may have good reasons for that).
Google's path to the dark side hit a major milestone with Gmail, and the fact that you now had a reason to personally and identifiably log in to your search engine provider.
No, no, no, nope, fucking bloody hell no!
I'm thinking it's hard time to give https://Sandstorm.io a really good looking at.