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Comment by warp_factor | Hacker News Reader

The fact that this is even a remote possibility should worry everyone of the ugly monopoly that Google became.

I found myself in a similar situation a couple months ago. An android App falsely charged me on the Play store. After trying to contact Google for multiple weeks I gave up and disputed the charge on my credit card. This resulted in Google coming after me for 8.99$ and threatening me to close all my Google accounts including gmail, calendar, photos, drive and everything I rely daily in Google.

That was a wake-up call for me. I decided to move everything OUT of Google. That company got too much power, it should worry way more people.

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Yeesh. I had the same happen - Except I never followed through on reversing the charge on my credit card. I spent multiple hours trying to dispute $2.99 or something. Clearly not for the monetary value - just from pure frustration!

However, I was scared for my Google account so just ended up dropping it. Ridiculous.

"An android App falsely charged me on the Play store."

I'm curious to know how this happened. Would you mind sharing more info?

As I understand it, the only way for an app to 'charge you on the play store' is to:

1) Be a paid app (in which case you pay before the app starts installing), or

2) via in-app purchases, which are handled by the app initiating the IAP, and then Play services taking over to ask for confirmation.

In either case, the transaction is only confirmed by a user action (tapping a button) with the app having no control.

Sure, it's possible for an Android app to trick you, by covering everything apart from the button with something fake, but I'd be surprised if such an app found its way into the Play Store.

Sure, I might have hit a corner case but I made an in-app purchase for a one year subscription for a service.

After using the app for a couple of days and restarting the phone, the app seemed to hit a bug and behave like if I didn't buy the subscription, prompting me to buy another subscription which I did thinking that this would unblock the backend and somehow merge with the fact that I already had a subscription.

Unfortunately, Google Play charged me again for a subscription I already had. Both the app creator AND Google Play were difficult to join. The App creators never replied to any of my emails. Google Play got an automated support website that decided that "I was not eligible for a refund" and there was nothing I could do about it. It also seems to be impossible to contact a real human being to explain the situation.

> I decided to move everything OUT of Google

Have you been successful in it? Any guidelines / tips? How hard is it?

The sooner you start, the better. I've moved most of my email/contacts/calendar away [0], and the longer you give yourself to catch the things you've signed up for but forgotten, the better. Youtube was also a pain, but I transitioned my subscriptions manually to a different account. Maps seems like it'd be the trickiest if you're invested. I wasn't a heavy user, and maps still works pretty good when you're logged out.

[0] I use fastmail + custom domain, which works great, but you have to guard the domain very closely.

> [0] I use fastmail + custom domain, which works great, but you have to guard the domain very closely.

What do you mean by guarding the domain? To prevent large volumes of spam?

I think OP means that you have to make sure you don't forget to/neglect to renew it and make sure you don't accidentally lose the domain for any reason.

spot on, basically you now have to worry about the domain being lost or hijacked also. for me, the flexibility to change email providers behind a domain is worth it though

Thank you for the clarification. I use a dedicated card for domain hosting (with autorenewal enabled) to prevent this specific issue but I recognize most people likely don't do the same.

> you have to guard the domain very closely

I'm intrigued by this, would you kindly share more on this!?!

It means if you slip up and lose your domain, nobody can send you email (including 2FA, reset password, add a new email to your account, etc). You can imagine how inconvenient that would be. I use fastmail with a custom domain and that scenario gives me nightmares.

Mostly off-topic, but related: this is one of the major reasons email needs to finally go away. It was never intended to be the backbone of peoples lives in the way it has become.

Access to my email account probably gives you more access to my life and identity than my SSN [0].

I long for the day that we [1] all get assigned a public/private keypair instead of SSNs. That won't fix everything, but it's a huge step above a shared secret that is limited to 9 digits [2].

[0]: Even without signing up for a bunch of services, it's basically impossible at this point (at least in the US) to not have an email address associated with your bank account, car loan, mortgage, credit card, or even just watching TV.

[1]: "We" meaning "US citizens" or anyone else with a similar system.

[2]: I realize you also need info about the person and not just their number, but also apply that to keypairs.

> I long for the day that we [1] all get assigned a public/private keypair instead of SSNs.

What is the remedy for when someone loses or leaks their keypair?

Report in person to an issuing authority for biometric authentication. Have them issue a new one and blacklist the old public key.

Any number of things that are better than what currently happens when a SSN is leaked.

Have the organization responsible of managing the PKI to generate a new subkey from your primary key (kept in cold storage) and publish a certificate revocation for the previous subkey lost/leaked.

Most of our ID cards (health, driving license) already have an expiration date and the subkeys should have one anyway.

No reason you can't have more than one, either. You could even issue keys for people to act on your behalf (e.g. they get access to it on your death as part of your will).

- Custom mail with your domain or use Outlook online.

- Use Yandex Maps instead of Google Maps. It's very accurate and navigation is smooth. Way better than Gmaps imo.

- Use Office 365 instead of Google Docs.

- You can use One Drive for cloud storage or buy a cheap VPS.

I have been doing it for a long time, the hardest for me is all the registered users I have around the web linked to the email. After a few years of changing each one that mattered I finally get close to zero mail on gmail. Search I moved to ddg, that was the easy one. Android can work fine with just f-droid since I noticed I rarely even use the store any more and I need just a few essential apps. For storage, I tend to store only documents and I like to use mega.nz.

The only thing I haven't managed to find a even close to decent alternative it's photos. Google Photos is just simply too good. I would be even willing to pay but really, all the other apps struggle to get sync right or have some other crappy stuff that makes them barely usable.

I used shoebox as a great alternative to Google photos. The problem is they just shut down.

As I wrote that comment I went on another small search as I do every so often and I found Canon Irista and I have to say, I am impressed. The sync seems to work fine, it's pretty fast and the UI both of the website and the app is pretty solid. I suggest giving it a try if you are on the lookout for a new photo hosting service.

Yandex disk is an alternative to Google photos.

Nextcloud, preferably on a machine you own (but there are companies selling Nextcloud hosting as well). It replaces Google Drive, Contacts, Calendar, Photos (face recognition can be done with a third-party app), has an RSS reader, bookmarking service etc. Just look at its app store, you can install any of this with two clicks: https://apps.nextcloud.com/

It really is a suite that can combat Google's suite — and you can truly own it. Other than that, DDG for search, and your own domain for email (so that you could transfer it between different hostings if necessary).

I do have a Google account, but I use it for precisely two purposes: Google Play (my phone wouldn't work without one) and YouTube subscriptions (I can use an RSS reader for this, but it's a bit inconvenient). You can create a Google account without creating a Gmail account.

May I suggest using NewPipe[1] for a Google-account-free experience to follow channels? You can import them from your current subscription list, and easily export them when you switch phone or for backup purposes.

[1]: https://newpipe.schabi.org/

Late reply but here is what I did:

- Bought a new domain name and moved my mails in fastmail. I have been super happy with it so far.

- My Gmail address is now only for spam or very low importance emails.

- All my Pixel pictures are still uploaded to Google Photos, but I backup everything once a month or so.

- I don't use Google Drive for anything anymore. I have an Evernote account and a Dropbox account.

- Completely switchecd to DDG and Firefox.

- I'm still using my Pixel2 as of now but my next upgrade will be an IPhone, or a rooted Google-Independent Android phone.

Surely, Google has way too much power, but as the old adage goes: don't put all your eggs into one basket :)

It's unfortunate that they are the only basket in town!

Are they? Email, calendar, online office, cloud storage etc. are all available from various other companies(even beside the big few corporations). The only two areas where you'd really have to sacrifice features would be Android apps, and YouTube if you're running a channel.

tell me which provider has an integrated single signon service for all of those above? Which provider has apps for their service for all major OS'es (including mobile), and is mostly free (or low cost)?

The cost of free is worrying about arbitrary closure, in this instance. Fastmail is much better than Gmail, for what it's worth.

Microsoft does. OneDrive for storage, Outlook webapps does email and calendar. Office online has Word, Excel, etc. All accessed with one Microsoft account. All free.

You might not want to be tied to Microsoft but Google is not the only option.

Edit: Overlooked the comment about Apps. Microsoft offers apps for mobile, but not Linux. Although even on Windows I use the browser to access the services which will work on Linux.

Microsoft's office offerings comes very close (cept for the free part - which i guess is just a bonus and not a requirement). Although i have to say, despite microsoft's attitude for keeping compatibility and old stuff working, they too could chuck a google reader one day, and deprecate/remove a needed service (along with all your data).

What's needed is a syndication of data, and inter-operable apps. Like how xmpp worked. But of course, all vendors don't like this, because it turns themselves into a commodity.

apple

last i checked, icloud apps can only run on macs.

The point is to not put all your eggs in one basket. Doesn't matter who owns that basket.

Yeah. The grandparent post is such a cliche in an age when the competition authorities stopped doing their job.

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