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Comment by omosubi | Hacker News Reader

I used to be a Google fan boy but am starting to dislike them more and more. This, they killed off reader and the creepy data collection they do is why I've started to look into alternatives for their products - anyone have any good suggestions?

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After being a keen Google user in the late 2000s to mid 2010s, I’ve been in on a process of extracting them from my life now their true creepy colours are on display.

YouTube => Deleted

Google plus => Deleted

Gmail => Deleted, switched to Soverin [0], works great, less than $4 per month for 25gb email hosting

Drive => Deleted, moved to iCloud

Docs => Deleted, use iWork for docs and Bear [1] for text

Search => Duck Duck Go, getting better all the time

Chrome => Safari, excellent battery life, good tracking protection

Google Photos => Deleted, moved to Apple photos

Next project is to move my website off of Google Analytics.

I’d love to fully switch to Apple Maps as it’s getting better but don’t know if I fully trust it yet. Google Maps is the gold standard.

[0] https://www.soverin.net

[1] https://bear.app

Soverin sounds like a good project. What do you make of the fact that the warrant canary hasn't been updated since May, though?

https://soverin.net/warrant-canary

Does Gmail even have a warrant canary? I don't think so, so comparing apples to apples it seems like a wash.

That's a poorly phrased warrant canary. Aren't warrant canaries intended to be for FISA-type warrants?

Aren't warrant canaries valid until removed? Dates on them don't matter.

It says "Up to date as of: 2018-05-22". That seems to imply that it may have been invalidated at some later point. If it is valid until removed, then it shouldn't have a date at all.

Got to assume that anything online is being gobbled up by a security service somewhere.

My email may not be 100% safe (what is?), but at least it’s not being used to sharpen an ad-targeting algorithm.

I used Apple Maps when I had my iPhone and it worked great for me. Loved the UI. When I saw error on the maps, I gave feedback so Apple could improve the thing. I do the same on Google Maps.

I'm using a Pixel 2 XL now and while Google's services are indeed quite good, Apple's own suite of apps worked quite well, too. I like that the image recognition for photos was done on device instead of some remote servers.

About Soverin — how is the spam filtering?

Ruthless spam filtering without false positives is Gmail’s “killer app”, with insane scale and network effects protecting that lead.

I’ve noticed a bit more spam, but not hugely so. Apple Mail’s spam filtering has caught everything pretty well.

A few years ago, when I was using gmail my address got used as the sender on a spam campaign and I was overwhelmed for weeks. Had nothing like that so far.

Maybe I’ve been lucky.

How is Soverin delivery? It's the first time I've heard of them so they don't seem to have been around for many time. Newer mail companies sometimes have problems delivering to Microsoft or Yahoo servers. Can you comment on that? I'd be very interested to switch.

I’ve not had a problem so far, but then I don’t know many people who still use Yahoo or hotmail email addresses.

My wife’s company use Exchange and I haven’t had any trouble there.

The sad thing is, you just confirmed they‘re doing the right thing. They probably still make money with you as youtube, analytics, adwords „user“ and they never got a dime from you with the products you stopped using (except ads on Search perhaps). Their net income from you probably increased when you stopped usig their free products.

Great list, thanks for posting. I've been anti-Google for a long time and never was a fan. The only product of theirs that I find is indispensable is Youtube. They bought it, but it's by far the most useful and enjoyable product they keep going. Google Maps is close and it is the gold standard for maps, but I could get by without it for sure and just stick to Apple Maps.

I'm a Firefox/DDG/Dropbox+OneDrive/Outlook.com guy. No social media.

I just suffer with whatever battery loss I get on my laptops with Firefox. But I do think it draws less than Chrome. I tell people to just use native browsers that are already installed on their laptops for power/performance reasons, with a note that the only other browser that's customizable and powerful enough to be worth sacrificing battery efficiency for is Firefox. I love the features of Firefox and if it weren't so vastly customizable and superior to Edge/Safari I'd use and recommend native browsers only.

I do tend to prefer Apple and Microsoft over Google but that's a long held bias of mine. I didn't care for Google when they were popular with everyone in the early days of Chrome's release. Hated Google before it was cool, hipster Google hater.

I understand most of the switches, but unfortunately any gmail address you correspond with will eventually tag and index you. Its difficult to fully separate your email history from Google when the whole market has been colonized.

What I'm trying to say is your data will be accessible by Google servers regardless of which email service you use -- so why the paid switch?

I was a fanboy too and feel the same.

The things that rub me the most seem to be problems I think from the way the hire people. The average stay at google is like 2.5 years, so most of the things I loved were created by people who are no longer there ( I am sure there are some staples that stay there, but ... )

They tend to higher young and fresh out of school people who know algorithms but seem to lack a strong foundation in computer history. Not just normal computer history (the why things are the way they are) but they lack even the historical history with the products they are working on. You can see this in the way their products have changed and either lost features, or changed features in a fundamental way that break them.

I think many of the problems created area also created from the altitude that "they are the best and brightest so whatever they think must be right". I know this generalization does not hold true in all cases. This sort of attitude can be seen most recently in the way they are handling "www" and "m" domains, and then even suggesting that they would somehow just make the change and then assume they could push a standard on the rest of the internet. There are other cases but don't have the time or will to detail every one of them.

The google today is not the google many of us fell in love with.

> I think many of the problems created area also created from the altitude that "they are the best and brightest so whatever they think must be right". I know this generalization does not hold true in all cases. This sort of attitude can be seen most recently in the way they are handling "www" and "m" domains, and then even suggesting that they would somehow just make the change and then assume they could push a standard on the rest of the internet. There are other cases but don't have the time or will to detail every one of them.

This. That attitude will also result in an almost total inability to take valid feedback. If you incorrectly and arrogantly think your the best and brightest, why would you listen to the plebs when they tell you you're making a mistake.

Then you get the plebs who buy into the best and brightest myth. They falsely assume whatever decision Google, Apple, or Facebook makes must be backed by air-tight reasoning, understanding, and skill; then praise turds to the heavens out of ignorance.

After reading your comment I just realized something..

> You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain

I use Fastmail (paid) for email with my domain name.

It's alright, the app works well enough on iOS. No complaints so far really.

Then DuckDuckGo for search. You can use !g to switch to google search but I rarely do anymore.

Then Weblock and uBlock origin as ad blockers for phone and desktop respectively to prevent some data harvesting.

And I only browse in incognito, I just log in everytime I need to use something.

Then Apple Maps to replace maps.

I do still have a gmail account so no quite totally off google. And Apple Maps has gotten a lot better over time but is undeniably the worse product of the two.

But it works well enough.

Could you say what does Weblock provide that uBlock doesn't? I looked at their FAQ and it wasn't obvious to me. Thanks.

As others have commented, there is a variety of alternatives to Google for the majority of their products, and the discussion has been had on HN a number of times . [0].

What really annoys me is how woven Google has now become to our working day processes. It's all very well having open-source alternatives for private use, but many (I included) used Inbox for work where we are obligated to use Gmail. This feels like a step backwards in many regards.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280558

I agree, it's mind boggling how Google managed to work their way into such major corporations and organizations. At a company I used to work for Google massively (massively) undercut Microsoft for Gmail and Google Docs vs O365. I guess like with Android, no one stopped to wonder why they're giving it away practically free?

> no one stopped to wonder why they're giving it away practically free?

Practically free!? Google Apps for domains is either $5 or $10+ a month per user, depending on feature set. That’s roughly the same price as most other commercial email providers. I don’t know for sure, but my guess is they make a profit on every account just on those monthly fees.

Office 365 is literally double the price of Gmail, and full-blown Exchange is even more expensive. I wouldn't call double the price "roughly the same".

It’s literally not double the price. Office 365 is $5-15 depending on edition (Business Essentials, Business, and Business Premier) and if you do an annual commitment. That’s the same price range as GSuite which is $5 to $25 depending on version (Basic, Business, Enterprise).

Sources:

https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-busine...

https://gsuite.google.com/pricing.html

That's small business pricing. Their enterprise pricing is higher: https://products.office.com/en-us/business/compare-more-offi...

Ok, since you won’t give up even in the face of obvious facts:

O365 Enterprise E1 is $8/month

O365 Enterprise E3 is $20/month

O365 Enterprise E5 is $35/month

GSuite Enterprise is $25/month

So none of O365’s Enterprise editions are double the price and in fact all but one edition is cheaper than GSuite Enterprise.

It's astonishing what they have done in education too. Kids have no idea what any browser but Chrome is. They don't know that there is any other email besides Gmail. They're equating everything Google with the Internet.

It's actually rather frightening for the open web. Kids can't get away from Youtube. Even on mobile devices, so many searches promote Google products over anything else. Try looking for an address on an iPhone. You can't even copy/paste the address or open it in Apple Maps. it automatically brings up Google Maps and prompts you to install it.

I ended up switching to Bing on my iPhone because I got so sick of Google's invasive tactics. On my device.

I was a fan boy for a while due to the general Unix geekdom impedance match, and I disliked the Apple ecosystem due to being led by big-ego designers, but I still gotta admit, Apple's incentives are better aligned with the little people's (the end users') interest. In the case of Google the users are the advertisers and you get what you get. I see the decisions play out internally at the adtech company I work for, and it's really nothing sinister, but revenue has a huge influence on decisions and the end user often loses.

Looking at the prices for the new iPhones, I don’t know what little people you mean.

People who are not incorporated.

I'm the same! I had the very first Android phone, the G1, and countless Android phones after that. I was a huge promoter when Android first came out. I pay for Gmail, Google drive, Google Fi, and use Google voice.

- I've decided I'm going to switch back to FireFox.

- I switch to an iPhone for the first time ever this year.

- I've looked hard into switching to https://www.fastmail.com. I've gone as far as backing up all my emails. (Funnily enough, I was looking into switching to Inbox.)

- I switched over to Dropbox.

- I literally only talk to one person on hangouts now.

- I primarily use Dialpad now. (from the makers of Uber Conference)

- I've been using duckduckgo.com more and more. I tried it as a daily driver for a bit but eventually went back.

They lost my trust with reader. The data collection stuff only confirmed it. I began to self-host my mail, and it's working out really well. I used SOGo, which does contacts and calendar too. For files I used Nextcloud. I use the Nextcloud News app as my reader. All authenticate to my home's LDAP servers, so same username and password, two-factor etc.

Have a look at this HN thread called Alternatives to Google Products: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280558

ProtonMail has been the best (free) gmail alternative I can find. Has the necessary mobile apps and encrypts all email.

I have used protonmail for a long time but have now switched to tutanora. The recent 100% rebuild of the webapp is really nice and fast. Android app is also 100% open source on fdroid

You can do it bit by bit. Start by switching to Firefox on desktop and mobile (if you're an Android user). Install Firefox Multi-Account Containers to sandbox Google and other surveillance capitalism products. Switch to another provider for your email, contacts and calendars. I chose Fastmail - it's adequate. The best thing I can say about it is that it has a suite comparable to Google mail, calendar and contacts and there's no evidence it's tracking me. I use Thunderbird on the desktop and the Fastmail app on mobile. I've moved all my contacts into Fastmail.

Use hooktube (and Hooktube Redirector) on desktop and mobile and NewPipe on mobile. Favour apps from F-Droid. Install uBlock Origin on desktop and mobile.

My next moves are to get my calendars out of Google (my wife and I have several calendars we've shared for years) and into Fastmail. I need to get a couple of years' worth of photos out of Google Photos and back into Flickr. (They probably have a brighter future now that they've been rescued from oblivion by Smugmug - though Ipernity is probably another decent option for a classic Flickr experience.) `rclone` will probably be a lifesaver there.

I need to find a solution for hosted files and docs; I've not found Nextcloud to be convincing. I use B2 for offsite backups. I've yet to install a pi-hole, though I already have a pi doing DHCP and name resolution for my home network. I often use sshuttle if I want to become opaque to my ISP. I have a PIA VPN account but it's consistently terrible - could be my ISP mucking with the traffic.

It's going to be a multi-month project. I look at what I've done and have yet to do to evade constant casual surveillance and I strike myself as sounding like a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist - but I'm not. I'm just a rational citizen, attempting to recover for myself some of the human rights I took for granted a decade ago.

Thanks for sharing. I think I need to organize myself to be able to walk away from google and it's all-encompassing experience and grasp, and it's not always easy to make the first step.

I feel the same way. I used to like most all of their offerings and I considered them [as a company] pretty benign. But over time I am less impressed by both their product offerings and their ethos.

Fastmail and DuckDuckGo is what I use. I've been meaning to install LineageOS on my phone, too. Anyone have suggestions of alternatives for YouTube? Would be cool to see a list of software and services organized by the Google product they're alternatives of.

>alternative for YouTube

If you mean the site you could use youtube-dl on desktop and NewPipe on Android. If you mean the service, I don't think there's anything. YouTube is pervasive for non-porn videos.

Want to watch a talk from that conference last month? It's only on YouTube.

Want to learn how to rebuild a V8? The best information is on YouTube.

The only thing I know of that isn't on YouTube is gun videos, and only because Google banned their accounts.

Where should I post my video tutorials though? vimeo?

If you don’t care about organic discovery and are just using it for hosting, yes, Vimeo is awesome.

Youtube has the benefit of a huge audience, but organic discovery?! Come on. Unless you’re producing clickbait, appealing to tweens, crapping our memes, or pimping rage fuel, their algos will not put you up next. It’s almost comical how bad their recommendation engine is for discovery. Listen to a pop song? Doesn’t matter if it’s the only one you ever watched, now you’re being recmmmemded Ariana Grande until you die. At least that’s sort of comprehensible, but they also make weird connection too. Watch The Jimquisition, and because “games” you get gamergate and alt right trash. Watch a video on the moon landings, and because “moon” you get conspiracy theories.

The algorithmic purpose seems to be, “hey you like X, maybe you’d like an insane or hateful tangent to X? Would that keep you clicking?”

Organic my ass.

You may find it terrible (I don’t think it’s great, but it’s usually at least mediocre for me), but Vimeo has virtually nothing. Also, Vimeo doesn’t seem to rank well in search engines either. So yes, even if YouTube was universally terrible as you claim for organic discovery (it isn’t), it’s still better than basically nothing.

I think “better than nothing” is the perfect way to describe it. Almost anything else would be better, but there is effectively nothing else. I would point out that when talking about how Youtube does well on search engines though, it can’t hurt that it has that little connection to Google, the premier search engine.

I’m glad that you’ve had better luck with using it for discovery though, any tips on how how to get that to work?

> it can’t hurt that it has that little connection to Google

Except YouTube ranks very well in DDG, Bing, and Yahoo too.

> any tips on how how to get that to work?

1) I don’t sign into YouTube unless I am uploading a video and I sign out when done.

2) I almost always search for something of a technical nature.

3) If I search for something “main stream popular” on YouTube, I usually do it in an incognito window.

There's a variety of “de-googlifying” services provided by https://www.framasoft.org you might be interested in

Thanks for this. They've come up on my radar a few times. I'd love to hear from anyone here who uses these services.

See https://restoreprivacy.com/google-alternatives/ for a good list.

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