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Comment by rez9x | Hacker News Reader

People are surprised when I tell them I don't use most Google products. Unfortunately, I still use YouTube, as that's where I consume most of my media / entertainment. The fallacy that other search engines don't work as well or that Gmail is the best email really inhibits 'normies' from escaping Google. I'll admit, Google Maps is a great service, but you can still get from A to B without it. I just print out all my navigation on MapQuest (/s).

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Apple Maps has significantly improved in recent years. I actually get better navigation most of the time from it. That was not the case 5 years ago.

And in other countries Google Maps can sometimes be useless compared to local competitors.

Unfortunately it's still way worse than Google maps in the few European countries that I've tried it. The routing is worse. Searching for a type of shop (e.g. "supermarket") doesn't work well and it doesn't have accurate opening hours of shops. And in The Netherlands it doesn't support cycling, which makes it pretty much useless for the many people who use that as their mode of transport.

I install Apple Maps every once in a while to see if it has become useful, but always remove the app after a few days because it hasn't.

a lot of youtube can be avoided with odysee and browser plugin that redirects you from youtube to their version if one exists

Invidious can be used to proxy YouTube.

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