I'm back. This time without Google | Hacker News Reader

I'm back. This time without Google

ahmedatia.com

57 pointsahmedatia44 comments

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"I dropped Google Analytics, Google CDN..."

Currently offline "Service Unavailable HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable."

Here's the google cache:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...

Oh, the irony.

This is not irony. He drops a few Google services and yet other Google services are still in use. The Google cache would still work whether its web site was reporting a 503 or not.

The irony would be that by trying to reduce its reliance on Google he would actually make it more important. That's not the case, even if the 503 was really caused by him not using Google Analytics (I wonder how) or Google CDN.

The 503 is there because currently my blog is hosted on shared hosting plan ... of course CDN is one approach to ensure availability of websites (I've not moved assets to any other CDN yet) but the point is to reduce reliance on Google Services to consider many other alternatives here and there.

But Google isn't the only one to provide that service either, so no one should be reliant on it. http://www.ahmedatia.com.nyud.net/Blog/IamBackWithoutGoogle.... and http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=url%3ahttp%3a%2f%2fwww.ahme... work too.

The site include http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js

Oh...

The site is hosted on secureserver.net and secureserver.net is own by GoDaddy[0]

[0]: http://whois.domaintools.com/secureserver.net

OP: thanks a lot paukiatwee for sorting out that html5.js hosted on Google Code still there ... but the main point here is to reduce dependency on Google Service and consider other options there e.g. Google Analytics can be replaced with Piwik[0] which has a lot of positive reviews.

[0] http://piwik.org

So you drop Google services in favor of open web and freedom... Now you pick up GoDaddy who is against the open web, Why not something useful like DigitalOcean or Linode?

I'm coming to this soon ... I just dropped some stuff and already planning for too many replacements. I just want to share how I see this with you guys.

The fact that you got to his content via google cache is not his choice, but yours. It doesn't speak to his dependence, but yours. Ironic that your mistake if anything bolsters his argument.

Other comments point out the real irony:

stevewilhelm: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7793466

paukiatwee: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7793328

What is so ironic? In fact, it pretty much illustrates the fact that it is difficult to move off Google services entirely for someone who creates and hosts content on the internet. If someone is trying to do this, and isn't completely successful at it on the first try, I don't see any value in ridiculing him.

irony: "an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected."

The expected outcome for me would be that the article would be delivered to me without the use of Google services.

The fact that you got to his content via google cache is not his choice, but yours. It doesn't speak to his dependence, but yours.

Thought the same thing when all his assets were broken.

Oh, the irony.

> Please think for a minute in your web activities, you will get to realize that you are not roaming the internet but instead you are roaming Google Services and many others served by Google Services. Please think for a minute in Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Blogger, Google+, Analytics, AdSense, AdWords, Docs, Drive, Chrome, Maps, Hangouts, and Talk etc...

This is an argument I see a lot - just think and you will realize how right I am. It is often used in place of an evidence-based argument and is an appeal TO your logical brain FROM someone's emotional brain.

It always makes me uncomfortable, because it's not far from "search your heart/feelings" - the basis of any logic- or evidence-free argument. It also seems to have the negative undertone of "if you DON'T agree with me, you obviously can't "think" on my level."

It's not that there isn't evidence of Google being less-than savory - I would argue there is - but I'd research that argument first, not just appeal for emotional sympathies.

> This is an argument I see a lot - just think and you will realize how right I am. It is often used in place of an evidence-based argument and is an appeal TO your logical brain FROM someone's emotional brain.

I think there's a lot of evidence that people don't respond to logic-based appeals as logically as one would hope. Often, confronted with strong evidence that contradicts people's deeply-held beliefes or feelings, they'll just double-down on those beliefs. Climate change is the most obvious example. While as a scientist I'm sympathetic to your argument, I think the jury is still out regarding the most effective way to go about convincing people to change their beliefs or behavior.

EDIT: typos, reword for clarity

I read those studies - that in the face of evidence, people cling to their disproven beliefs even more [0]. It has been coined "The Backfire Effect" [1] They were the scariest and most fascinating I've read in a long while.

[0] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antivaccination-pa...

[1] (PDF) http://web.archive.org/web/20110511211719/http://www-persona...

Somehow I'm missing your point. If sites make requests to Google Analytics, Google APIs, etc., then anyone who looks at those sites and allows the requests is being tracked and data-mined, and is contributing to Google's power as an internet participant, and contributing to widespread dependence on one company. That's fact, not emotion.

There is an emotional element in either caring about this or not, so maybe that is what you mean. Also, listing the Google properties like he does probably overstates things for a rhetorical effect - certainly not everyone is such a heavy user of Google services. I would guess that most people online use only a few of them (and that you would demand numbers rather than guesses). Nevertheless the point is sound, though expressed in a hyperbolic way.

Two things wrong with what you're saying:

He might have used the phrase "Please think for a minute" (...) "you will get to realize that", but right next to that he gave concrete examples of tons of Google services we use everyday. That's evidence of their multitude, variety and importance. Plus, it's not like his text ended there -- he argued his position in other parts of his post too.

Second, it's not like "just think and you will realize how right I am" is any kind of brain jiu-jitsu. It's just a manner of speaking -- I've never seen anyone win an argument on an forum discussion using that.

>It's not that there isn't evidence of Google being less-than savory - I would argue there is - but I'd research that argument first, not just appeal for emotional sympathies.

Probably reading too much (including intent) in an innocent and not very interesting turn of phrase.

It isn't an appeal to emotional sympathy. He is saying that an inordinate amount of our internet activities involve Google services and that isn't healthy for an open internet. He is "appealing" for you to simply analyze your own daily activities to see what percentage involves the open internet versus Google services.

The research is Frontline's "United States of Secrets, Part 2" which aired in the last week or so.

OP: actually I didn't mean that literally, but I tried to express how I feel about that and what I see around me ... so what I really meant to look into your daily activities, and see if anything can be replaced by some other alternatives and if so, give it a try but eventually your view/analysis is great.

Fair enough. I think some research in to the actual market penetration of some of Google's non-search products would make a stronger argument - like Analytics is used in about 49% of all web properties[0] but your point is taken. And it's true, of all the web properties I own, Google is all over them.

[0] http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/ta-googleanalytics/a...

Great analysis! I'll remember this the next time someone argues without any evidence other than clever rhetorics.

I agree somewhat with the sentiment. Either Google or Facebook becomes a self contained environment that many people just stay in. Still, these are useful services.

I advise non-tech family and friends that they use a separate browser for Google and Facebook, and just use that browser when on those web properties.

For normal web use, use a different browser, with whatever privacy plugins that meet your needs.

> I dropped Google Analytics, Google CDN, and Google Web Fonts. This is for ATIA Web Space. But moreover, I dropped Google Search as the-go-to search engine.

Need alternatives to each of those?

https://prism-break.org/en/

"I believe in Open Web, Open Web standards and Open Competition." - Ahmed, developer of ASP.NET/Sharepoint solutions.

Oh, the irony.

Hey, I believe in exercise.

I don't mean to be rude but from what I've seen our SharePoint guy get drug through at past jobs, I'd rather get an exorcism than let anyone know I have any knowledge of SharePoint. (Nothing against the tool, everything against users and/or management.) It is like dealing with customers except the customers are your bosses who keep changing their minds. SharePoint can't read what's in your mind. Don't change requirements every week. :(

If anything, I feel sorry for SharePoint developers. It is almost like they're at the bottom of the barrel of developers (or should we say dev-ops since most ops won't touch SharePoint either).

I, too, have been trying to reduce my dependency on Google products. I won't focus on the why's; that's political and ultimately a personal choice. Instead, I would like to offer my experience in the process of switching.

Switching away from Google products has turned out to be far more difficult than anticipated. For me, personally, Firefox is a much worse experience than Chrome. It requires significant tweaks to be usable for me, which costs times and frustration, and is still not good enough. DuckDuckGo ended up greatly impeding my ability to work, because its results were so bad (for me, and my specific search topics). I haven't attempted to drop Gmail; can't imagine how much time that would cost me, not to mention the swarm of spam Google handles without batting an eye, but other services are likely to falter on. YouTube, well, all the shows I love to watch are on YouTube with no alternatives.

These things won't stop me from trying and, eventually, succeeding. However, it is frightening to see just how entrenched I have become in Google's products. And how sad the state of the competition is. The price of freedom.

> DuckDuckGo ended up greatly impeding my ability to work, because its results were so bad (for me, and my specific search topics).

You might want to try DuckDuckGoog that lets you use DuckDuckGo for bang queries and Google for everything else, so you get the best of both worlds.

http://www.duckduckgoog.com/browser

I think privacy needs to be looked at in a different way. We are almost always being tracked and I find that I rather enjoy using Google products. However if there is a private matter of mine that requires the Internet at all I I fire up to browser and find the information I need to find. If is it less sensitive maybe I use a private Firefox session. Then finally if I am on the Internet and know that everything I am doing is clear of privacy concerns I being up Chrome and have a great experience (less so in a recent update). Snowden didn't talk to the Guardian on a Windows machine using Google Hangouts video chat. All I am saying is at least use some sense when your privacy is concerned and that doesn't mean you have to live in an Internet corner where no one can see you. Most people are kind, I promise.

I think privacy needs to be looked at in a different way.

There are other averse effects than sacrificing privacy, which is a trade-off one could indeed make for the comfort of Google's services.

Another effect is that we are currently slowly moving towards an oligopoly when it comes to internet services. Some are intentional, such as shutting down XMPP federation, leaving us with closed ecosystems (Hangouts, Whatsapp, Skype) if you want to chat with most other friend. Others are more of a side-effect, for instance, it becomes harder and harder to run a small e-mail service, as it becomes more and more of a reputation system[1].

If we want the internet to be open for new competitors and services in the future, it's important that it doesn't become a small set of closed systems.

(I am a relatively happy user of Google's services, but I also see the dangers.)

[1] If some spammer uses GMail, it's unlikely that Outlook.com will block other e-mails coming from Google's SMTP servers. If that spammer uses Fastmail, the big players don't mind to block SMTP servers for some time. As far as I understand, this is the reason why Fastmail partitions new users together (server-wise). It's less likely five year paying customer suddenly turns into a spammer and you don't want long-term customers to become victims of a spammer, by having their SMTP server blocked.

There are plenty of reasons to beware putting too much faith in Google, but the primary reason given by this article appears to be "because they have a lot of services you find useful". Not sure how much I buy into that.

OP: Actually this is one reason but too many reasons are there, it might be not that much clear in my post. All the time I hear people from Google promote for open internet and open standards but on the other hand they violate too many rights when it comes to online identity and privacy. And in the same time I hear that a lot, "I can't drop Google as my primary search engine or Analytics etc..." I believe that we can.

You'd likely be better served by including a list of alternatives, if the goal is to show people they can in fact switch. Not everybody knows about DuckDuckGo or similar alternatives.

I already pointed in post to DuckDuckGo and StartPage ... totally agree with you to include as many alternatives, thanks a lot akerl.

It's funny how people are scared about Google this and Google that, yet are okay with credit bureaus and credit card companies selling one's information to third parties. Very funny, I say.

I am not OK with credit card bureaus in any sense of the word. I hate their guts and I think their shitty technology has royally screwed me. And selling my information is certainly not OK. I use Google a lot, I just know that depending on one organization to fulfill one or more services often leads to shitty service or a very serious power imbalance. For example if your search results change their is nothing you can do because Google owns search so they don't even have to bother explaining it to you. Generally it feels like The Google is the most wonderful magical benevolent dictator ever. Still a dictator.

Deleted comment

OP: thanks a lot paukiatwee for sorting out that html5.js hosted on Google Code still there ... of course will consider this :)

> How avoid Google will lead to openness? my main point of view that there are a lot of alternatives there but we just keep going on using what we used to use on daily basis, for example, DuckduckGo and StartPage are there but we just avoid them while we can use them. The same for too many things there over the internet.

Had to reload multiple times to get page loading, maybe try Cloudflare? But then we're back in the corporate fold..

Or just use a static site generator with nginx, does the job fine, even on modest hardware.

Jetty or Tomcat server static content fast too. I noticed his site appears to be written in ASP.NET, out of the frying pan into the fire.

Google isn't the problem anyway. Policy makers in the US and things like the US Patriot Act are the problem.

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