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romanovcode

Not using google is much simpler then it sounds.

- iPhone

- DDG

- Firefox/Safari

- Some other email then google

That's pretty much all you need.

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A coworker uses DDG and each time we are talking about a problem at work (software development) and need to search something, I am disappointed by the lack of good results and make him use Google instead. It is currently 5 - 0 for Google if I recall correctly.

I would switch in a heartbeat if the results were comparable. Every time I’ve given it (or Bing) a shot for a few weeks, Google was simply better.

DDG requires a shift in habits to get good results. Google gives you better results because it knows you and you can be less specific. Search for "django framework" instead of "django", for example.

After using ddg for a while it feels much easier to find what I need using it than google. Maybe because I am not sandboxed correctly by google. Then again, ddg gives good results without sandboxing.

Use "!g" to have DDG send the query to google. You get the results you want without the tracking.

Interesting. Is it just me or shouldn't that be the default functionality? An added benefit is that DDG can then see what result the user picks, compare than to how well (if at all) DDG ranked that link.

!g redirects to google.com, so the results are not displayed or anonymized by DDG. If you want Google results without Google tracking, check out startpage.com. (!sp in DDG)

Yup. The only Google product that I've found hard to replace as someone who frequently needs to semi-coherently communicate in a foreign language is Google Translate. Google Translate still is far from perfect, but it's a decent enough check on my spelling and grammar, but it's lightyears ahead of any competition I've found so far.

https://www.deepl.com/translator is amazing, maybe even better than Google translate.

Excellent, I haven't tried this one. I'll give it a shot, thanks!

Started typing some Japanese in there and it detected French! Then I noticed that it only supports a small handful of languages. I have to admit I use Google Translate too, though it's often pretty bad at translating Japanese.

That reminds me of the TED talk [0] Luis von Ahn did when he announced duolingo.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ht4qiDRZE8

It's a great product, I stopped using google translate when I discovered this one. The translation is much better, more accurate IMO.

I think a lot of people imagine leaving GMail as being very difficult but in my experience, not really. Get Fastmail and set it up with a custom domain. Not free, but suuuper cheap. Then go through all your accounts and update your email address. Forward GMail to your new email for a while. Done.

You're just glancing over the part where someone has years of archived, labeled, tagged emails in a convenient searchable UI. Importing that isn't straightforward for a techie, let alone a non-techie.

Yes I did, sorry. Fastmail does have a GMail import (and tags become folders). The UI is different, yes.

I did exactly this 2 years ago and it was just as painless as you described. Took a few months of slowly migrating various accounts to new email via forwarding. I’m just annoyed at myself for not having done it sooner.

Apple is just a different walled garden, albiet one with better privacy tools.

Apple doesn't make money by selling your data. Good enough for me.

At least not now. When their numbers start looking wrong and they have investors and stockholders barking down their nicks they will make choices that benefit them at your expense.

There's also:

- cloud storage

- shared document editing

- translate

- instant messaging

- calendar

- maps

Not that any of those have no non-Google alternative, but they're all things that Google offers.

"- translate"

learn every language?

I’ve done all of that except for gmail and that account is slowly turning into my ancient Hotmail account.

I don’t miss Google services - apart from Maps—Apple Maps is usable, just.

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