ask HN:Are we locking ourselves in the Google ecosystem? | Hacker News Reader

ask HN:Are we locking ourselves in the Google ecosystem?

6 pointsKinetiNode9 comments

Only if you choose to. There are alternatives for everything Google offers.

Europe specific: https://european-alternatives.eu/

Canada specific: https://engageq.notion.site/unplug-full

HN Search: degoogle - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

The problem is. There is always something that breaks no matter what we do.. banking apps straight up refuse to work sometimes. And many services don't work even with MicroG

I don't use any Google products, although I am invested in the Mac and iOS ecosystem until something better comes along. Firefox, FastMail, Apple Photos combined with https://immich.app/ , etc. Youtube videos are ripped into my own storage system for viewing and storage using yt-dlp.

What Google service do you feel like you cannot replace with a private or open alternative?

Damn bro I just noticed your karma , not trying to start a casual chat here but man you are really contributing here!

Everyone has a vice, this is mine.

I'm talking about literally "Google play services" , it cannot be replaced for now , apple is different that's an entirely different ecosystem. The apps aren't the problem the problem is Google play services itself isn't effectively replaceable with anything else (as I mentioned in the previous message)

And because of that Google apps don't work , banking apps too any anything that needs security as well.

Replacing 90% is better than 0%

We already did ,but i think with time it is getting diluted,with eu ruling,other ai becoming better, where it main products like chrome slowly getting ( ads) less revenue.but some area still strong if you use playstore that is google ecosystem,its cloud is also strong but there are alternative for almost all ,it is just habit we are not trying different.

i think SSO logins aur google workspace is feeding the "lock in" part. shifting from that feels like a hassle

Reply on news.ycombinator.com