De-Googling My Life

https://nrempel.com/de-googling-my-life/

by nbrempel • 7 years ago

143 124 7 years ago

Aromasin3• 7 years ago

For the most part, I'm now Google free. I don't despise Google as a company but I believe that their core business model is incompatible with privacy.

I like that closing line. It's something I can relate with. I appreciate Google's products, use a Pixel 3 which is a sin I probably shouldn't admit on HN, and I'd love to use their whole ecosystem - Google suite, the Chromebook, Google Home etc - for all my tech needs. The issue is, Google in my eyes is a data analytics company first and foremost. No matter how much I like the design and functionality of their products, if I want to maintain even a small semblance of privacy I can't in good faith support them.

Only problem I have now is that their phone is too damn good to ditch...

kiran-rao• 7 years ago

Have you found any inconveniences in day to day life? Google provides so much information in everyday life (weather, restaurant reviews, calendar, who was the president in 1936, etc) that I would be significantly slower living my life.

everdrive2• 7 years ago

The weather problem has been a surprising one. It seems that most weather websites are really terrible. All I ever want to know is the hourly temperature, and hourly precipitation. Google does this easily with a query against "weather [zipcode]". Other services do technically provide this information, but it always seems to be obfuscated, or otherwise hard to obtain.

[edit]

Here is a very amateurish graphic depicting the difference.

https://imgur.com/SofeKKN

Aromasin3• 7 years ago

Not anything significant to be honest. There are alternative applications and hardware for almost everything nowadays. Convincing people that we need devices all running in the same ecosystem was one of the lasting legacy's of Steve Jobs that I realised wasn't really true in reality.

For searches I occasionally might have to check Google for a niche search term, but Duck.com returns the right thing for 95% of my queries. In terms of hardware, a Pixel phone, Fire tablet, Surface Book laptop, and Windows desktop fulfil all my needs, with only important docs synched with Dropbox and the rest stored on a couple of flash drives I have on me 24/7. For home automation I made my own using a Raspberry Pi and a bunch of ESP8266's, which does basically everything that big brand alternatives do and more (I can water my plants from my bed!) For software I use Outlook for emails and calendar, OpenOffice for word processing, Prezi for presentations, and admittedly mainly Google Sheets for that kind of data handling, as it's good for collaborating which is the only thing I ever use it for. Trip Advisor is great for reviews. BBC weather is all I use for checking that.

Nothing is slower I've found. I just had to experiment with what worked for me, and get the right 'flow' of using them, which I suppose took a few weeks to iron out. The great thing is that doing it this way means I can adapt to my needs, not be forced into using a suite that might not cater to them. It also means most importantly that, for the most part, I don't get snooped on!

addicted• 7 years ago

Honestly, I wonder if that slight delay in finding out who was President in 1963 would have a material negative impact on my life. I suspect not. At the same time, I have a feeling that slowness may have an actual measurable positive impact on my life. A lot of what I do now is frankly pointless and jt may help me focus on more useful things.

godshatter• 7 years ago

If Google shut down operations tomorrow, do you really think you would be unable to find information on the weather, restaurant reviews, use a calendar, or find out who the president was in 1936? Other than the calendar, it's not like they actually keep this information anywhere. Just links to it. I'm guessing that three years or so later you'd be hard-pressed to remember why you thought Google was the only choice for this.

jjulius2• 7 years ago

... I would be significantly slower living my life.

Is that a bad thing?

harry83• 7 years ago

phone is basically a choice between google (any android phone unless you jailbreak and de-goog it, which is a PITA) and apple. Who is less offensive surveilling you? Can you really predict that will still be true in 5 years?

jacquesm6• 7 years ago

Dumb phone is a valid choice. And it works just fine, there is absolutely nothing that a smart phone offers that I can not do without, and not having a continuous distraction makes me a lot more productive than I would be otherwise. It's bad enough with the web and 'always on' internet, to have that in my pocket would completely kill my productivity.

propertymagnate• 7 years ago

That is hopefully going to change soon - Linux phones are coming:

Pinephone (should be early next year, somewhere around $150) https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

Librem 5 (should be Q3 2019, $650) https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

tobr• 7 years ago

Is this question a trap? Isn't it rather obvious that Apple, a company that has never really had a business model built on surveillence, is less offensive than Google in this regard?

ggg2• 7 years ago

BlackBerry is selling android phones for a while

t0astbread7• 7 years ago

unless you jailbreak and de-goog it, which is a PITA

I've wiped my phone and put LineageOS on it a few weeks ago and I've had no problems whatsoever. (To be fair I should say that my device was officially supported and I don't use any apps that depend on the GSF.)

aclsid2• 7 years ago

Buy Chinese brands like Oppo, Meizu or Xiaomi (mix 3 is awesome). If you get the one with the Chinese rom Google has been removed to an extent that is not possible by end users or are least without switching ROMs which is generally a PIA. The issue then becomes installing something like ApkPure as a replacement for Google play unless you enjoy your Firefox in Chinese. TouchPal is a terrific keyboard as well if you manage to get rid of their ads.

jsgo• 7 years ago

I'm pretty much in the Apple/Microsoft camp, but I've went with Amazon on the Echo side of things because their offering is more reliable (and more devices support it).

What I am getting at is that a lot of us probably make a concession here or there but as long as you're happy/comfortable with it, go for it.

The last vestige of Google I voluntarily find myself with is Gmail, but I have a strong feeling once Apple comes with these burner email forwarder things, I'm probably going to switch to Proton or something similar.

m463• 7 years ago

google is an identification service.

harry83• 7 years ago

If you use email, google basically have it. A big enough proportion of your mail counter-parties use google that running your own mail-server doesn't buy you much. The gesture is a good one and everyone should do it until google are just another tech company, I guess. But doing it now doesn't really de-google your email, sadly.

wlesieutre• 7 years ago

Though there are some other benefits to changing your own email provider even if Google still has copies of all your email. The big one is that Google has no support, and if you ever have a problem your only recourse is knowing someone who works there and can get your issue in front of an actual person.

Other email providers (especially ones where you pay them money for the service) have actual support employees.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15989146

treerock• 7 years ago

I was wondering about this.

The majority of my emails are between myself and a business, currently letting google track my purchases, holidays, event booking etc by reading the responses I get.

If I stopped using gmail, how would they track that kind of stuff?

Few businesses are going to be using consumer level gmail.

NikkiA2• 7 years ago

There have actually been times recently where I've had what I consider 'iffy' results from DDG for very domain-specific queries, but when I've double checked with !g, the DDG results were far more on-topic, and google was giving much much worse results.

That said, google's image results are still significantly better than DDG or Bing, but that's such a small part of my queries that it's pretty much a non-issue.

ibdf• 7 years ago

Why are people so paranoid about privacy? We want better services, well those services need to know what you like. It's just a bunch of computers trying to figure out what's trending and what you need. There's no human driven analytics team out there reading and sifting through your e-mails trying to figure out who you are.

I much rather be concerned about security than privacy.

ilikehurdles• 7 years ago

Every violation of privacy is an additional security risk. Also, there is a partly human-driven surveillance state.

jm4• 7 years ago

I think, with regards to Google, it's all about their business model. Allowing a company to collect data for the sole purpose of personalizing the products you bought from them and recommending content is not an unreasonable choice. Google offers personalized services as a vehicle for data collection to fuel a business model where they sell targeted access to you to their other group of customers.

frenchman99• 7 years ago

Not everyone considers a "better service" to be a service that is more efficient. For a lot of people, privacy is more valuable than being handed a personalized ad for a product I didn't know I wanted.

It's not "just a bunch of computers". It's potentially putting a lot of leverage in the same hands. Here are 3 examples.

As a woman, it's nearly impossible to get a job when you're pregnant, so it's better not to let anyone know during the job search. If you have HIV and people find out, they freak out thinking you'll infect them right away. If you're chronically sick, do you want insurance companies to know that ? No you don't, because the price of the insurance policy will "magically" be higher for you. Privacy has it good sides.

jacquesm6• 7 years ago

If a company violates your privacy and they are hacked then you have a double problem. So your focus on security is correct but security only really matters when companies have your data in the first place. And given the general state of security the very best way to ensure that your data does not end up in the wrong hands is by not giving it out in the first place, hence privacy ends up - for practical reasons - trumping security.

Not a week goes by without a major hack of some sort hitting the media, a much larger amount goes unreported. And even if the data isn't hacked it could easily be lifted using some legal instrument.

apocalyptic0n3• 7 years ago

It isn't about privacy for me personally.

- Gmail: I'm still undecided if I will switch from this. I don't actually use email for communicating with anyone; it's really just for notifications and receipts and stuff. Beyond knowing what I'm buying, there's not much I care about in here anyway - Search: Also iffy on this one. It's just leaps and bounds better than any other service provided. I think I might give DDG a chance just to see, but I don't worry about it too much. - Chrome: I already dumped this thanks to their decisions with ad blockers. Even if I was not using ad blockers, they are forcing Chromium (not just Chrome!) users to conform to a standard that is in the best interest of their business and absolutely no one else. I can't support that. - Hangouts: this is shutting down in a few months with no clear replacement plan. My friends and I are still trying to figure out where we will go, but you cannot trust Google to run a messaging service without shutting it down these days so it will not be one they provide - Google Play Music: Already switched to a self-hosted Plex server. Other than the horrible bluetooth support in their Android phone, it's a superior experience in my opinion - Nest: I may switch my thermostat away with them deprecating their APIs. A few IFTTT integrations I use are going to stop working and that is extremely frustrating. - Home/Assistant: This is the one where privacy may make me toss them in the trash. I was satisfied initially with the security and the third parties supporting that it's only recording the keyword and anything said after, but this one is admittedly bugging me. - Calendar: I only use this to remember birthdays and for keeping track of when TV shows are airing. There's no reason to get rid of this unless I am truly removing Google entirely - Android: This is another privacy sore spot and one where I want to switch but I would greatly miss the customization options (Nova for example) and Relay for Reddit specifically (I've yet to find an iOS Reddit app worth using). For now, I've just locked it down the best I can and turned off things like GPS and bluetooth to limit what tracking can be done.

A lot of my sore points with Google are coming from how many of their services they are killing off and preparing for them to ultimately kill off the others that I am using, honestly. So while privacy is certainly on my mind, that is the ultimate factor for me.

iamnothere• 7 years ago

Once companies gather enough data about you, they begin to fluidly cross the line from providing "better services" into "psychological manipulation".

Informative advertising, better UX, and more desirable features are positives and can be implemented with only a modest amount of data gathering. Intrusive manipulative ads, dark patterns, and addictive "stickiness" are negatives enabled by excessive collection of data.

patrick5415• 7 years ago

Personally, I prefer generic services that don’t know what I like. Confirmation bias is a hard enough foe as it is.

nerdjon4• 7 years ago

I have mostly removed Google from my life. I still have a few stragglers (like Single Sign on stuff that for many sites are a pain in the ass to change) but it has been nice.

However my biggest annoyance is still the amount of data that Google can find out about me where I have no control over it.

- Emails to anyone using a Google service (I use iCloud)

- Texting anyone using Android (I have a similar frustration with Facebook and anyone that shares their contacts with them) (This is one of the key reasons I love iMessage and I always have caution when I see a green bubble.)

And similar data sharing I have absolutely no way to give consent for yet they still have, because someone else gave consent for me.

My hope is that Google cannot manage to link that data back to me somehow, but I am sure they can. But it doesn't change that they have that data.

gloflo2• 7 years ago

You are similarly sharing data on your contacts with Apple.

ballenf• 7 years ago

Comments like yours imply that no one cannot exist on the internet without sharing stuff with some company, so it doesn’t really matter which one you choose.

Of course it matters. And of course one should remain vigilant to monitor the company of choice for changes in strategy or the like that might affect privacy claims.

I don’t inherently trust Apple more than Google, but I do trust (begrudgingly) that Apple’s current business model aligns their interests on privacy better with mine.

nerdjon4• 7 years ago

To a certain degree yes, Apple theoretically has access to all of that data thanks to my iCloud Drive, Mac, iPhone, etc etc.

Nearly all of my digital life happens on an Apple device. However they have shown that most of this happens on device instead of in the cloud, and they are not in the market of mining that data in order to build a profile that is used so a third party can sell me ads.

hasthishappened• 7 years ago

And? Have they ever sent an email to someone not on the service lying and saying, "so and so is trying to connect with you on <Apple Service>"? Have they ever harvested your contacts and then spammed them with ads for your service? Because Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. have. Backing your Contacts up to iCloud so they're on all your devices isn't remotely the same as apps like Facebook and LinkedIn slurping up your contacts for their own use and it's extremely disingenuous of you to imply it's the same thing.

t0astbread7• 7 years ago

Are they legally allowed to make use of that kind of data?

nerdjon4• 7 years ago

Honestly I wonder about that myself, but I don't know if it has ever been challenged.

But I have no doubts that they do considering how often I see someone I recently gave my number to suddenly show as as a recommended friend on Facebook (who I do not allow that access)

DavideNL• 7 years ago

- Emails to anyone using a Google service (I use iCloud)

I found that the best thing you can do is try to convert the people you e-mail to most often (spouse, family, close friend) away from Google to some e-mail provider that values privacy. That way at least (maybe 50% of) your most private e-mails are safe from being analyzed/tracked/monetized :)

neverminder4• 7 years ago

I have this hypothesis that technically minded people (like us) are completely unprofitable to Google when it comes to ads. I've never clicked on any ad or anything even remotely close to an ad ever unless it was accidental, I've ran adblockers on all my devices since I can remember. So I guess it's a bit ironic that people who are least profitable for Google are the most concerned about being tracked by it. I should mention however that I do buy their hardware products (phones, laptops) and pay for Gmail accounts for my own domain names, but that's just because they make good quality stuff which to me personally has nothing to do with ads.

diehunde2• 7 years ago

Might be true but I wouldn't take the risk. It's not only about ads when they have access to your emails, location history and track what do you do on the internet.

neverminder4• 7 years ago

I'm completely aware of the risks, so I try to keep my stuff they can keep track off as mundane as possible. Unfortunately when it comes to emails someone will always have access to them. My plan is eventually to get something like that Purism phone for more personal stuff. There are no perfect solutions.

Mc_Big_G• 7 years ago

You don't have to click on an ad to be tracked. Also, you don't find it even a little concerning that Google reads all your email?

neverminder4• 7 years ago

If not Google then who? Fastmail? Protonmail? Someone will always read our emails, I just don't see a way around it. We kinda live in a world based on trust, maybe someday that will change, but probably not any time soon.

mda• 7 years ago

Email is not something private by design. At least Google is a competent company when it comes to provide such services.

beat2• 7 years ago

They don't read your email, they scan it. These things are semantically and practically different. Reading, to me, means human comprehension. It's not like some Google employee is going through my messages. Scanning is just robots putting keywords in a database to target ads. Which is annoying, but it's not really the same, privacy-wise.

andyjpb3• 7 years ago

You don't have to be a GMail user for Google to end up with a copy of a large percentage of your eMail.

Because lots of users do have GMail a lot of your messages will end up on their servers.

However, that's not to say it's not a good idea to practice good hygiene yourself and find a provider that suits your goals.

diehunde2• 7 years ago

Replacing the maps app and YouTube are the hardest for me. I haven't found anything that compares to those services. And I think Waze is also owned by Google?

rockinghigh• 7 years ago

Yes, Google bought Waze in 2013.

rchaud• 7 years ago

Try NewPipe on the F-Droid repository. Has options to dl both audio or video, and supports playback with the screen off.

zuron72• 7 years ago

OpenStreetMaps is getting there. Heavily depends on the quality of maps in your area. For Youtube, you could use something like invidio.us or newpipe, which shows you only the channels that you have subscribed to.

spurgu2• 7 years ago

OpenStreetMap actually seems quite excellent from a quick check. I've only glanced at it every now and then during the last few years (I used to contribute a bit back in around 2012) but now it actually seems awfully attractive compared to Google's/Apple's offerings - with all the annotations/coloring it actually looks like a real map!

pro_zac• 7 years ago

Are there any good YouTube alternative front ends for Apple TV? I found a Plex plugin that might do the trick. Haven't tried it yet. https://github.com/kolsys/YouTubeTV.bundle

vonnik• 7 years ago

With email, the deeper problem is that you can't force everyone you correspond with to leave Gmail. So your private correspondence will continue to be scanned to feed the ad-surveillance machine regardless. This is a problem common to leaving any standard protocol, especially a messaging protocol.

timbit422• 7 years ago

With Tutanota, encrypted emails sent outside of Tutanota are sent as links which the user clicks to read and reply to your email, keeping your messages off Gmail or any other insecure email server.

raphinou• 7 years ago

I am curious to know what is the monetary total cost of the switch. Anyone having done the switch able to share numbers?

nerdjon4• 7 years ago

I have been using iOS for about 9 years now so I won't take that into it. At certain points I had some expenses that I had to pay for (like MobileMe instead of Gmail). But now I don't pay for anything that I could not stop paying and would loose much.

I pay for 2TB of iCloud storage for $9.99 a month (USD), but I could drop that and continue to use iCloud for Calendar, email and etc. (However you would pay google for this space anyways, but for only a TB)

I pay $10 a month for Apple News, but it is also a decent free service instead of google news.

I don't pay for Apple maps.

I don't see there being much, if any, monetary cost of transitioning unless you include the cost of moving from Android to iOS (which assuming you were going to upgrade your phone anyways may not need to be counted).

It isn't like Apple devices are that much more expensive than similar premium tier smartphones.

MentallyRetired• 7 years ago

I wrote a very similar article back in 2007. Nice to see how the process has aged. This was the number 1 article on CenterNetworks until it's founder passed away a few years ago. (RIP Allen Stern)

https://web.archive.org/web/20070508104636/http://www.center...

bbatha3• 7 years ago

I've been doing the same but I haven't quiet been able to find good replacements for gmail and hangouts. Anyone have any recommendations?

For gmail I'd like real imap and custom domain support. FastMail is the obvious choice, but I can't in good conscious trust an Australian company with my secrets.[0]

Hangouts: I'd like cross platform with a web client if possible. I would like optional chat history sync. And I'd like on by default encryption. Signal is great, but its treatment of chat history is too paranoid to be useful for everyday conversations. Whatsapp is also a strong contender, but I'd also prefer to stay off facebook services.

edit: for a hangouts replacement, I'm not looking for video/audio chats I'm looking for a direct messaging focused service that can serve as an SMS replacement along the lines of iMesseges, whatsapp or signal. And yes I know about XMPP I was a heavy user a decade ago, but I'd prefer not to replace a dying service with a dying protocol.

0: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/12/australia-passes...

ocdtrekkie6• 7 years ago

The hubbub about the article there is FUD, particularly when it comes to FastMail. Since FastMail isn't an end-to-end encrypted service (Gmail isn't either), laws about thwarting encryption are entirely irrelevant: Both must respond to a legal government order for your information. Google responds to many tens of thousands of these requests yearly: https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview?t=t...

If you are not Australian, the likelihood of getting your data subpoena'd from an Australian company is pretty low. If you're in the US, it's far more likely for your Gmail data to be successfully subpoena'd.

Unless you belong to a fairly narrow set of people, the risk of government access to your data is relatively low. Meanwhile, the threat of advertiser access to your data is high for everyone: Don't trust an ad company with your data, even if they currently say they won't use it for ads.

bbatha3• 7 years ago

I'm not trying to compare gmail and fastmail. I'm trying get off gmail, and that is the top priority. However, changing email providers is relatively disruptive and I'd prefer to choose one that can last me 5-10 years. Fastmail was that choice but uncertainty about Australian encryption laws throws a wrench into that equation.

My concern with encryption law is not necessarily that FastMail will respond to warrants (though total non-compliance in a non-5 eyes country would be ideal), its how frequently and do they need to otherwise compromise the security of the product in order to do so. FastMail seems to think that the new laws will impact them negatively.[0] FastMail's response to these claims has not been exactly confidence inspiring as the Australian government could compel the company to comply not just individual coders.[1]

The real question I'm asking is, is fastmail my only real alternative to gmail?

0: https://reclaimthenet.org/fastmail-australian-encryption-law... 1: https://fastmail.blog/2018/12/21/advocating-for-privacy-aabi...

BlueTemplar• 7 years ago

I feel that those are the easiest. ProtonMail. IM : XMPP(Conversations/Pidgin/Jitsi) or Matrix

Meanwhile, it's getting rid of YouTube, Google Play Services and Captcha that is proving problematic...

mxuribe2• 7 years ago

+1 on the mention of Matrix!

bbatha3• 7 years ago

ProtonMail

How's the imap support or using 3rd party email clients?

XMPP encryption is super janky, and the ecosystem is dying a slow death. Matrix is looking pretty appealing, but it doesn't work that great as a direct messaging platform. I've found that notifications are often delayed and and the UX is focused on the chat room case.

Google Play Services

that's the easiest, don't use android :)

tmitchell• 7 years ago

Can't help with hangouts but I've been starting to play around with Helm (https://thehelm.com/). You self-host a little box at your home, it sets up TLS certs via LetsEncrypt and tunnels to an AWS frontend with a clean IP that ferries your data to/from your network.

All data is secured on your device. Bring your own domain, supports IMAP/CalDav/CardDav. So far, I'm a fan but I'm still battle testing it before I start moving in earnest.

andyjpb3• 7 years ago

For Hangouts replacements there are quite a few WebRTC video conferencing sites that can work with URL sharing and either with or without accounts.

I regularly use https://meet.jit.si https://appear.in/ and https://appear.in/

wwweston• 7 years ago

Anyone know of a good replacement for Voice? It's funny, because it seems that Google doesn't care about it much, but it's the stickiest of all their products for me. It's been incredibly convenient to have a combination of a phone # alias (under which I've changed phone service at least a dozen times) and cloud-stored web-accessible messaging history and send/receive interface. Easy setup, mobile-device independent.

t0astbread7• 7 years ago

Is FastMail really a good choice for privacy? I mean yeah, their feature set is awesome, they support (and develop! [1]) open standards and they sound pretty genuine. But they're based in Australia and given recent events ([2], [3]) I'm not sure if I would like to place my data in that country.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19839104 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20113646 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18616303

nbrempel• 7 years ago

Fair point

mfer• 7 years ago

While IANAL, I'm not sure keeping email in a US company causes it to have privacy. For example, law enforcement in the US can subpoena email contents older than 180 days. No warrant required.

Google's transparency report shows they've shared a lot of data. Google's support site has details on the process.

Both Google and Fastmail have access to email. The encryption circumvention doesn't matter to Fastmail because they already complied with law enforcement just like Google does.

I'd be curious if someone has details or an argument different from this.

ocdtrekkie6• 7 years ago

I just responded to another comment about the FUD about Australian privacy concerns: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20166077

tl;dr: The law passed doesn't affect FastMail at all, and your data is at least as private with FastMail as it is with Gmail, which also responds to lawful government requests for your data.

t0astbread7• 7 years ago

Yes, I understand that. And I know that I might be spreading FUD here (which I wanna avoid).

However I'm concerned that the Australian government (given their recent authoritarian actions) might be a little too quick to request my data from FastMail.

timbit422• 7 years ago

All you did was argue it is no worse than Gmail for privacy, which is not good for privacy. I wouldn't use either.

mark_l_watson• 7 years ago

I used Fastmail for a few years and liked it. I recently switched to ProtonMail and it is also very good. ProtonMail provides a ‘bridge’ that makes email on a laptop very convenient and I like their iOS client.

I still use gmail as a backup email, but I receive little email on it.

Anyway, if you are concerned with Fastmail and the Australian government, I think you would also like ProtonMail.

t0astbread7• 7 years ago

I already have ProtonMail but I'm not really happy with it [1]. For now, it's the best solution I have though, I agree.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20166820

3xblah• 7 years ago

"Side note: recently duck.com was acquired by DuckDuckGo. I hope there is a plan for them to rebrand as simply "Duck" because if I recommend the search engine to someone who is not as embedded in the internet as I am (nerd), they often won't use the service based on the name alone."

Who previously controlled duck.com? It wasn't Google, was it?

jahewson• 7 years ago

It’s true, I had never heard of the children’s game of Duck, Duck, Goose until I moved to the US and had kids, so a lot of people probably see that name and think “WTF?”.

Youden• 7 years ago

I've substantially de-Googled but there's still the huge issue of mobile operating systems.

If I choose iOS, I get a device that respects my privacy and gives me some degree of control over what apps on my device can do (e.g. GPS permissions are much more useful) but I can't install what I like on my device and I can't globally block ads and trackers.

If I choose Android with Google's apps preinstalled, I give up OS-level privacy and control but I can install what I like, including a device-wide, whitelist-based firewall, with which I can restrict ads and trackers.

If I choose Android without Google's apps, I get a much greater amount of privacy and control over my device but I can't use common applications like my local public transit app.

Slippery_John• 7 years ago

I've almost entirely de-Googled, with the one straggler being YouTube. There just aren't viable competitors. I pay for YouTube premium to get rid of the ads while still paying for usage (combined with all the tracker blocking I can reasonably do), but man that $12/month is crazy. I don't care about youtube music, youtube gaming, or any of their other "value"-add junk so it's an increasingly hard pill to swallow. I just want an ad-free plan. $8/month was much more tolerable in that respect. Hell, why doesn't Google offer a Google-wide tracking / ads opt-out plan? With their reach they could probably set up a plan wherein sites with google ads get a kickback of a subscription in exchange for not displaying ads. I'd be willing to bet Google would make more money off of me if they did that.

The other product I gave up recently was Fi. It was a hard thing to give up because if you can use it then it's really the best service out there for most. What ended up kicking me there was the paltry phone support (only token support for iOS, which I switched to, and only a handful of android devices). When I found out I could get a T-mobile plan through work that offers all of the functionality I want (though some things are gimped in comparison) for a price that, while high, was at least tolerable.

WorldMaker3• 7 years ago

I don't care about seeing disclosed, paid ads so much as seeing YouTube's garbage recommendations algorithm. If they offered a paid program to entirely disable the recommendations section and get back a proper chronologic playlist of my subscriptions I'd be sorely tempted to pay for that. (I hate YouTube's Autoplay and disable it on every device.)

As it stands it is probably a lot healthier for me not to pay for YouTube Premium: the more obnoxious they try to make the ad breaks (and they have), the more it becomes a continual reminder I should not use YouTube and should encourage the people I follow to explore other less-user-hostile platforms for sharing their video content.

qqn• 7 years ago

I'm surprised this post is so popular. I wish s/he'd mentioned other alternatives like Tutanota/ProtonMail, Startpage, or Matomo (formerly Piwik) analytics.

I also wish there was mention about how no one is truly Google-free until their contact is no longer in a friend's Gmail address book (and even then)...

boh• 7 years ago

Does paying for Google (G Suite) count as de-Googling to some extent? Supposedly I own any data within the Suite core services (which ironically doesn't include search, so DDG for that).

De-Googling My Life

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