A megathread on breaking away from Google | Hacker News Reader

A megathread on breaking away from Google

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62 pointsrinze37 comments

I've recently moved from Gmail to Fastmail (which also has a calendar), and to MicroG + Yalp instead of Google Apps on my phone. Both have worked very well for me as privacy-conscious alternatives, with minimal hassle after the initial setup. I'm still using Google search, YouTube, and Chrome on the desktop, for lack of alternatives I've gotten along with, but that's about it. I'm very happy how much less of my data that exposes to Google, but at the same time, it does still feel like a bit of a pyrrhic victory.

I've been mostly Google free for a while now, other than for some work stuff where I have to access some Google Apps docs. I also still use YouTube because that's where lot of the content still is sadly. What I'm using instead:

- Search: DuckDuckGo, occasionally Bing

- Phone: Windows Phone, pre ordered a Purism Librem 5

- Browser: mostly Firefox and Brave, Edge on mobile and occasionally on desktop

- Maps: Bing Maps (occasionally resort to Google Maps tho)

- Email: ProtonMail

- Calendar: Outlook.com, but I still use Google Calendar for some things

- Cloud storage and backup: Dropbox and OneDrive

Same here, but instead of getting in bed with microsoft I've moved to using FLOSS components.

That's what I was thinking. Are people just leaving google to use all the microsoft products? That makes 0 sense to me.

Some of it is for support reasons.

What concerns about Google have you addressed by using alternative services from Microsoft?

To me Microsoft seems the least bad option these days when there aren't great FOSS options available. I've had a strict no Apple policy for many years so while I wait for the Librem 5 Windows Phone seems like my least bad option. I looked into some of the open Android based alternatives a bit (Lineage etc) but there don't seem to be really great options currently.

For maps I should probably look at Open Street Maps more but I mostly use maps on my phone where being on a Windows Phone with limited app selection the built in Microsoft solution is the simplest / laziest option.

I'm a VR developer so I'm primarily working on Windows for the foreseeable future. Microsoft options end up being the fallback there too (why I sometimes use Edge or Bing over my usual choices).

MS actually puts ads in the OS and also nags constantly to use Edge.

But then on top MS solutions less quality, imo, than Google.

We need to stop pretending Microsoft's the only company that puts ads on their OS.

The only consumer products I think Google does better are YouTube, Maps and search. Office+Outlook > Gsuite. Windows Phone > Android if weren't for the lack of apps. Windows > Chrome OS.

Outlook > Gmail probably comes down more to preference but I'd like to hear why you think Google's offerings are better.

No I mean literally in the OS. Never had an ad from Apple or Google inside the OS.

MS has gone someplace not aware of anyone else ever doing?

Ubuntu had Amazon ads. Google allows manufacturers to install apps that you can't delete. Apple and Google basically strongarm shove their new apps/services to you through apps you can't delete. Aren't those ads too? Maybe not in the most literal sense but it's not too far from it.

No. Those are things you do by choice. Just do not chose to add the apps.

When you put an ad directly in the OS you have gone somewhere new. So Microsoft putting ads directly in Windows to me is crossing a line that should not be cross.

Personally I never been a fan of Windows and was a big Mac user and several in my family but we have mostly moved to ChromeOS.

I have a Pixel Book and just love it. Wife replaced her iPad with a CB+. Fantastic machine. She is addicted to playing Animal Crossing on the machine with the stylus.

The problem is I have boys that need Windows for gaming. I just wish we would get some alternative.

With the new GNU/Linux support on ChromeOS and the new higher end machines coming with decent GPUs maybe we will get there finally and can remove the remaining Windows machines.

Curious on how would using Microsoft be better?

This is essentially just swapping out one perceived bad egg for other bad eggs. Microsoft is no better when it comes to privacy concerns.

YouTube is the most difficult service to break away from, simply because it has all the content - and more and more of my entertainment time is spent watching YouTube. I'm thinking YouTube was Google's most ingenious purchase.

YouTube subscriptions work fine with RSS, just to add to this. I have them added to my ttrss, don't even have to log in to watch videos (which is not exactly 'breaking away from YouTube', but I think it's a healthier approach.)

Or use hooktube.com, which strips out all Google-related tracking stuff from video links on YouTube. There are even greasemonkey scripts to rewrite YouTube.com URLs to hooktube.com automatically.

I just use youtube-dl, it's simple and can be automated easily. Toss a URL at it and get a nice quality version. I really wish people would start publishing videos elsewhere for download, with high bitrate versions. I can (and do, as we all) live with the artifacts, but I don't mind some bandwidth. Even if it were patreon exclusive (to offset the costs for hosting) I would become a patron for that alone.

How would you deal with video hosting? It's a high bandwidth application, and would be very expensive to self host.

Just an hour of streaming takes about 1 GB or $.25 if you're using AWS. Multiply that out across a couple hundred users and many hours of streaming that's very expensive.

Dedicated servers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17113244

Even with dedicated servers, the new hosting site would have to find a source of revenue. The creators typically don't want to shell out. The sites with premium hosting are still kind of terrible too. They offer very little in the way of discovery of new content or moderation.

https://vimeo.com/upgrade

What's with all the tinfoil hats? Google != Facebook.

Unpopular opinion perhaps, but I believe they use the information I share to enrich my user experience. It seems less about monetization and more about providing customized services.

What am I missing?

> I believe they use the information I share to enrich my user experience.

Manifestly false. They use your information to target ads. The pages that you've browsed will affect the ads you see on youtube and the paid search results you get. That's right, the paid search results you get are modified not to enrich your experience, but because some advertisers pay more for people with your browsing profile. Does that improve your experience, or does that improve google's advertiser's experience?

YMMV but it improves my experience because I get to use all these great products and features Google has, without lifting a finger, and in most cases without paying a penny. All I have to do is ignore the ads on my screen (which my brain seems to already do).

> all these great products and features Google has

My post wasn't meant to dissuade anyone who's happy with being tracked from using google.

I was merely pointing out that the post I was responding to tone of "google is tracking me for my sake" is in most instances based on nothing but faith, and in other cases known counter-examples exist.

It does both. I'm going to see ads no matter what, if I'm not paying. Seeing ads that might be occasionally relevant to me is better an the prior status quo of seeing seizure-inducing punch the monkey ads. These days I mostly see ads for programmer tools: I'm a happier web user as a result.

This idea that ad targeting is some kind of shady evil is a very recent one and, as far as I can tell, artificially created by the press as part of a proxy fight against Google and Facebook as disintermediators. It doesn't seem based on anything real.

> This idea that ad targeting is some kind of shady evil is a very recent one and, as far as I can tell, artificially created by the press as part of a proxy fight against Google and Facebook as disintermediators. It doesn't seem based on anything real.

Just to be clear, are you saying that the claim that google and facebook have vast amounts of information about you doesn't seem based on anything real?

You're not arguing with what I said. I argued that ad targeting is not evil or shady.

But to answer the argument you put in my mouth, I have accounts on both services and use them plenty, so yes, these firms have plenty of data created by me and about me.

But if I didn't, they'd just have a few anonymous ad profiles linked to random cookie IDs. I've seen such profiles. That's not very much.

Ok I understand.

Well, I would argue that it might not be "evil" but it definitely is "shady". But I suspect that from here this conversation would go into the definitions of words, so there's really no point.

There are pretty complete alternatives to all Google services in mainland China, well, because the Great Firewall blocks Google. I doubt if anyone really want to move from Google to those Chinese alternatives though because privacy is even worse.

Does it sound odd that I've always been Google-free anyway? By virtue of being a Mac user. Search? Switched to DDG or Bing. I gave up Google Maps ages ago, using Bing/MS's map offering, and when Apple Maps came out I went to that. Email, has always been IMAP on servers I host myself.

I never even went down the Google rabbit hole like many of my friends did. It's curious how they claim Apple is so proprietary when they're using Android, Google Photos, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Chat (or whatever it's called this week,) Google Music, Google Play, and maybe youTube, I mean Google TV.

The Apple ecosystem has been pretty good for me.

Apple is just using Google.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/26/apple-confirms-it-uses-googl... Apple confirms it uses Google cloud for iCloud - CNBC.com

And to the end users, that's absolutely meaningless.

You understand that Apple uses Googles infrastructure to provide services, right?

Are we really going to stretch it out that far? That just because Apple is using a small section of some Google infrastructure it means all of the end users aren't "Google free?"

That's ridiculous. I, as an end user, am not signed into any Google account at any time. Just because some encrypted bits are on a server Google owns doesn't make one a user.

But you are materially supporting their bottom line.

Don't think Apple maps is as good outside of US

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