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Comment by sbt | Hacker News Reader

Moving off Google is not as hard as I thought it would be. I expect to only be using maps and Zagat in the near future, but this will be anonymous, the rest has been replaced.

1. Finally got my Google+ deleted. The reason I even had one to begin with was that Google forced it on me.

2. Started using DuckDuckGo, took about a month to get used to, but I am starting to like it more and more, not sure if I would go back to Google even if they weren't info vamps.

3. I could migrate to another email provider, but I am waiting it out for a bit longer to see what interesting alternatives pop up in the wake of this. But at that point, forwarding and phasing in a new email should be relatively easy.

4. Waiting it out with messaging, but will definitely move of GTalk/Hangouts for non-work.

I don't have anything to hide from Google, but their pushy approach is making me sick. It is just not worth doing business with people like this.

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A few points:

2) I've also switched to DDG, but I still find that google gives me somewhat better results for things related to programming are academics. Apart from that, I like DDG a lot.

3) That's the big, big problem for me. I could stop using virtually any other product labelled google without problem (ok, youtube excluded), but gmail keeps me there. Not so much that gmail itself is so great (it is good, for sure), but the act of switching emails, updating contacts left and right, is just a pain.

4) it seems to me that most providers for hangout/video type of things are equally obnoxious with the way they handle your data..

Going back to the email stuff, I guess I'm also waiting for a decent alternative to pop up, as I'm not inclined to switch 10 times in the next 6 months..

One note here, if you're using Google Apps, moving should be a breeze as you can just change your MX records. However, hosting your own email could be painful.

For me it is especially great since my primary email is an alias domain on Google Apps, which means i can move my primary email off of google apps while keeping my google account working (also grandfathered into their free plan).

So switching email is just the matter of picking my own host. That could take a while, however.

>hosting your own email could be painful //

In case anyone missed them and is interested a thread on HN recently gave some recipes and outlines for setting up email servers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6748670

There are a few in the thread besides the OP.

For 3: email forwarding + vacation autoresponse help a lot. You get the messages anyway and whoever emails you gets an automatic reply with your new contact information.

I posted below that FastMail is a good Gmail alternative, and switching isn't that painful. See http://www.maxmasnick.com/2013/07/19/fastmail/

(Posting again here so you (might) be notified.)

For basic video chat, I recommend Talky which uses WebRTC to implement group chat, including private rooms and screensharing:

https://talky.io/

I find DuckDuckGo to be a nice alternative to Google, although I have to switch to google.com for certain searches.

As for email - if I can not connect with IMAP, I am still using the plain old HTML web interface for GMail. The new one has too much clutter. But I am also searching for an alternative with good uptime.

As such, Gmail is the only thing that keeps me connected with google. Any alternatives?

Yes, FastMail. I wrote a blog post a while ago about switching from Gmail: http://www.maxmasnick.com/2013/07/19/fastmail/

Very helpful, thanks. Been looking for an email alternative.

Out of curiosity, what mobile do you use?

I am not a fan of the iphone and being in the tech field it feels difficult to go back to a nokia 5110. Guess ubuntu or firefox OS is the way?

An Android device running Cyanongenmod (or another AOSP ROM) without any Google services is still an excellent phone. You can get pretty much any app you need from F-Droid or the Amazon app store.

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