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Comment by Daniel_sk | Hacker News Reader

Leave Google, use separate services. I solved it by purchasing my own domain address, moving from Gmail to Fastmail, replaced Android with iOS, replaced Chrome with Firefox, moved my passwords to 1Password, moved from Google Photos to iCloud (it automatically downloads all your pictures to your desktop as backup. There is no such thing for Google Photos).

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The problem is that Google Photos is so good, there is nothing out there for free with the same offering. ICloud is extremely limited compared to it without paying ( remember not every one lives in the US and $5 can be a lot of money )

It's understandable that 5$ is a lot to some people. Yet at the same time I hope you do understand the realities of what it costs to take even 15 minutes of a support person's time - how much service can you expect for free or 5$ a month?

Almost did the same, except I went towards Syncthing for document sync, KeePassXC for passwords, and Sailfish / degoogled android for mobile phone (because the apple ecosystem is imho much worse, especially in terms of software durability. Got two perfectly working ipads just sitting around because apple said fuck the devs and users. At least, with SOS and android, I can still develop for them).

I similarly purchased my own domain (an absolutely crucial step for everyone), moved to Fastmail (which I like much better than Gmail, it's just so much faster!), use BitWarden, replaced Chrome with Firefox, and use Nextcloud for photo backup. You can also use rclone to copy your Google Drive to another storage every night.

Did pretty much the same although replace Fastmail with Protonmail. I use S3Glacier storage for backups, costs virtually nothing. I keep the gmail account around as something to hand out to spammy websites and other services or forms IRL.

I moved to Microsoft, but the story is the same.

Own your domain name, with that you can go anywhere.

Once you become a paying customer the options are so much better and more comprehensive. And owning your domain let’s you do far more flexible things. Rent a VPS, install ftpd. No longer live with San Francisco imposed choices.

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