>>wean off of Google
That sounds tough.
Too bad google can't just change back to how they were in the beginning. At least just actually hold their old motto above greed and money every now and then.
That sounds tough.
Too bad google can't just change back to how they were in the beginning. At least just actually hold their old motto above greed and money every now and then.
I'm finding Gmail to be most difficult to transition off of. I do have personal domain and use Zoho with it, but I think there is this mental block.. It will happen..
Edit:
I am also using my personal domain instead of @fastmail.com You never know when / if you need to leave a service provider again, and you don‘t want to change your email address again.
I would gladly pay a subscription fee if it means Google isn't reading my emails to sell me ads.
Their service is excellent. You get answers from real human beings within 24 hours (unlike trying to get help for Gmail; won‘t work).
What I would like is a hardened, privacy focused distro of Android that is guaranteed to be independent from Google. Sounds like a tall order but here's hoping Samsung will come up with their own mobile OS although how unlikely this will be.
Samsung have not demonstrated being any more user friendly than google in my opinion. My S6Edge ran out of OS updates about 3 years after if was released. I have iPhones several years older that are still getting updated to the latest iOS. And there’s a whole bunch of crap undeletable Samsung software on their devices that I trust even less that Google’s apps.
Current strategy is to only have a burner google account on the phone and rotate gmail accounts every year (on phone refresh). Keep personal google accounts off the phone (using linux desktop) with a vpn and in firefox with privacy settings.
Use containers on the browser - never mix google, whatsapp facebook and other activities.
Use a phone registered in EU for privacy settings. Use a paid burner gmail account (again I figure it is better for privacy).
Annoyingly I also need an iphone for i-message with family members.
One time my friend was driving and he asked me to navigate. The exit was coming up, meanwhile I'm stuck trying to get OSM+ to understand what rounte we are on. That was an unpleasant few minutes. Despite trying to stick with it, such moments kept coming up again and again. It made me realise that Maps is mission critical to me.
By contrast, Gmail was easy. Fastmail ftw, forward all google mail to it, and the fact that most of my email use is work email, which is on its own domain anyway.
The only thing I can't figure out is how to get off google calendar.
Actually I'm quite ok paying for this app...I like to support developers, especially if an app is open source. But, my annoyance is less about paying for an app, and more about google's calendar - which is forced upon an android user - not playing nice with caldav...And forces a person to sidestep things.
I was a really big fan when android first came out, thinking i would have plenty of freedom (or at least a reasonable amount of freedom) of bending my phone's OS - at least when compared to Apple's ios very restrictive approach...Wow, how things have changed! I feel like android is too locked down. Ok, some might think that ios is still more restrictive...But, to me, both ios and android are tech prisons just different colors of paint on the wall. I say that last statement with my fingers crossed and praying for pinePhone and other linux-y type phones to really make it mainstream!
Mine was the move from Chrome/Firefox back to Opera.
I'm still puzzled what happened to Firefox. I was using the Developer Edition and the last two years the performance is really suspect. I don't have a million tabs open, don't have a ton of add-ons running and it still lags horribly, crashes and new tabs take forever to open
I thought at first it was either my network connection or maybe a system issue. Switched to Opera and was like, "Nah man, it was definitely the browser."
I'm in the same book with my calendar. I have multiple calendars several family members share. I tried using outlook.com calendars and although I prefer their UI, it wouldn't import Google calendars.
If you have any recommendations, I'm all ears. Its the last thing I need to rid myself of Google.