De-googling, so far

https://blog.nradk.com/posts/degoogling/

by nradk • 2 years ago

196 192 2 years ago

blog.nradk.com

terr-dav• 2 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20240531193815/https://blog.nrad...

I think Nebula.tv is promising, and a bunch of creators I like upload their videos on it. I do have a Nebula account but rarely end up using it, since most videos get uploaded to YouTube as well, and when I open Nebula, I find myself having already watched all the interesting videos on YouTube.

I've just gotten in the habit of opening up Nebula first and only then switching to YouTube when there's nothing new there. Even if you do this only once every few days it's usually enough, because a lot of creators upload to Nebula a week before they do YouTube.

cyberpunk• 2 years ago

Sadly none of my 'creators' are on nebula; But one thing worth trying if you do want to avoid going to youtube -- just have some cronjobs running yt-dlp every few hours on each channel you're interested in on YouTube, served up with a little auto index httpd via Tailscale -- makes for a pretty nice experience.

(Seems to be limited to 1080p, but I don't really care about the quality of those videos tbh).

bogwog2• 2 years ago

I just use FreeTube. It's perfect.

riddley3• 2 years ago

Nebula drives me insane. I want so much to like it, but the TV app is so terrible. You can follow creators, but it won't show you when they release a new video. Did you have to pause a video and go away for a bit? Well too bad. Unless you search the name or use their bookmark feature, you can't get back to it. There's no way to tell it that it's suggestions aren't interesting. If the thing they've put a huge banner across your screen about is a podcast and not a video, clicking it does nothing. No error, no nothing (again on the TV app.)

derlvative• 2 years ago

I liked duckduckgo a couple years ago before it started insisting on showing results in the language associated to my IP address. Since then I've liked brave a lot better.

neilv3• 2 years ago

If you're using the DDG Web site, and a bookmark, can you force the language in the bookmark?

Example: https://duckduckgo.com/?kl=us-en&kad=en_US

autoexec2• 2 years ago

Duckduckgo used to advertise that they were all about getting out of the filter bubble but they insist on throwing a bunch of irrelevant totally unrelated garbage in their search results based on my IP address. The service has really gone downhill and I can't even blame it on bing

SassyBird• 2 years ago

I’ve been getting weird results for a while: somewhere around the end of the first page of results or beginning of the second I get results which have nothing to do with my queries. Instead they look as if someone entered geoip result for my ip address as text of the query. Maybe those are some LLM experiments and that’s part of the prompt now?

least2• 2 years ago

The only thing irreplaceable for me is Youtube. Even if it's gotten worse as a platform over time, I still consume it more than any other type of video media and there are no good alternatives for much of the content that I enjoy watching.

autoexec2• 2 years ago

The good news is that none of the content you care about is Google's. As soon as someone else provides a space for content creators to move to you can get rid of Youtube and never miss a single thing about it. Google has successfully pissed off enough youtubers that they're just waiting for the first chance to jump ship, just like we are as watchers.

In the meantime, try to give as little as you can to Google. Use Newpipe and youtube-dl so you never see an ad.

annexrichmond2• 2 years ago

Yeah but operating a service like YouTube is such a money pit (given on recent HN threads I've read). It seems like they've been mostly able to work because of their huge ad network, targeting, etc.

hot_gril4• 2 years ago

This generously assumes that the new provider won't take the same steps YouTube did. I feel like the only solution is to not care all that much about watching videos.

AmpsterMan• 2 years ago

Nebula is such a streaming service. From what I understand, they are a subscription based company that has a profit share incentive for it's creators. Consequently, the creators skew toward educational-esque content.

mobilejdral• 2 years ago

That is so wild to me. I only consume media there if I am sent a link. Every time I have gone there I find content that is literally optimized to use up and waste as much of my time as possible under the incentive of maximizing viewer minutes. I wonder what it would be like to spend a day in your shoes.

itishappy• 2 years ago

Every time I have gone there I find content that is literally optimized to use up and waste as much of my time as possible under the incentive of maximizing viewer minutes.

It's a feed, and it responds to your use. I click on longform educational content, I get lots of longform educational content. I find the act of opening clickbait videos in an incognito window along with judicious use of the "not interested" button has kept it quite usable.

readthenotes1• 2 years ago

Live the speedup ability in YouTube videos. Minimum 1.5x, some faster (because it's pretty obvious the creators slow the content down)

the_af8• 2 years ago

Every time I have gone there I find content that is literally optimized to use up and waste as much of my time as possible under the incentive of maximizing viewer minutes.

Depends on what you're watching.

I mean, everyone on YouTube is playing the algorithm game somewhat -- assuming they want to have their videos watched, and they do, or they wouldn't be there to begin with.

Having said that, I watch a ton of YouTube videos. Not randomly, like zapping through TV channels (do people still do that, by the way?). I watch videos from the dozens of channels I'm subscribed to, by authors I enjoy watching and about topics that are relevant to me. YouTube is unbeatable for this, because almost everyone is on YouTube, but few other video platforms are as universal.

And yes, I pay for YouTube Premium because ads absolutely break YouTube. Ads make everything worse. I'm still upset about the recent trend of authors placing "sponsor segments" embedded in their videos (looking at you, Squarespace -- you can go f*ck yourself); I wish paying for Premium automatically skipped these segments too, but oh well. At least some authors make self-deprecating jokes about their sponsored content.

hot_gril4• 2 years ago

Same, with a few exceptions. Once in a blue moon, I check if one of the two creators I care about has something I want to watch.

waveBidder• 2 years ago

I more or less ignore the front page and use the bell as an rss, having found channels I like via recs from channels I like and friends

corytheboyd• 2 years ago

Mindlessly consuming the video feed is not the only way to use YouTube. If you are looking for something in particular, it is very hard to beat. Besides, at that point, is it really any different than TV, or other streaming services?

annexrichmond2• 2 years ago

I've personally been watching YouTube less and less. The ads are insane. I would normally spend more time watching videos but it's become so disruptive

I think most of us can agree that many videos are unnecessarily long (as it's incentivized by the creator for ad revenue), so there's far more fluff in it. With the rise of LLMs, etc for getting knowledge fast , I just can't see how this model is sustainable. I don't want to waste time watching videos that could have been a short paragraph. And when you add 30 second ads every 5 mins it makes it even less compelling

lawn2• 2 years ago

Don't everyone on HN use ublock origin? I haven't seen an ad in years.

throw_pm23• 2 years ago

Where do you see ads on Youtube? I have seen maybe one or two in 10 years.

wolpoli• 2 years ago

It's harder to avoid bad quality videos that now you can't see downvotes.

As for the video being unnecessarily long - I have played with copying the transcript from the video into ChatGPT, but they tend to be too long for ChatGPT to handle.

the_af8• 2 years ago

The ads are insane.

The ads are indeed insane. They break YouTube in practice. YouTube, in its wisdom, much like a mobster in the protection racket, offers you an out: pay for Premium. I ended up doing this because YT is one of the things I use the most. The alternative was having Firefox with uBlock Origin on every mobile device in my household, I suppose, but this wasn't feasible.

YouTube Premium took the win :(

I just can't see how this model is sustainable. I don't want to waste time watching videos that could have been a short paragraph

Depends on what you're watching. I always disliked, say, programming tutorials in video form -- give me text, to read and understand at my own pace. Many video tutorials are unnecessarily longwinded and always go at the wrong pace for me, either too fast or too slow.

But I watch tons of videos about other topics where video is the right form. I watch hobby tutorials, I watch videos about cinema/art, etc, and I feel video is the right format for me.

guyzero3• 2 years ago

I find it crazy that someone will say "I still consume it more than any other type of video media" but somehow just paying for it isn't an option. You can pay to make YT ads go away. And the payments go to the video creators (eventually).

PodgieTar• 2 years ago

I’m conflicted on this. I pay for YouTube premium - for background playing on my phone and for Ad-less on my TV.

I pay more for Netflix, and I use it a lot less.

So I’m airing on the side of agreeing, but I also think Googles tactics have been incredibly shoddy, and I can understand someone not wanting to support that.

rc_mob2• 2 years ago

I don't want to send google money. I happily pay nebula though.

sneak4• 2 years ago

You can’t pay YouTube to remove in-video ads that the video creators put in. For that you need SponsorBlock anyway, so might as well use a 3p client that supports blocking both kinds of ads, without giving money to Google to continue building ad surveillance software.

tomrod3• 2 years ago

Flex the steelmaning and incentivize me to buy YouTube Premium when adblocking gives me the same functionality and I own the process to block.

I'm happy to watch an occasional ad. Maybe 2 minutes for every day, curated and high quality advertisements relevant to everyone. No, I will not pay with my data. No, I will not accept interruption in flow, within or between videos.

Interrupting during a video means adblocking is justified.

Adding adverts to nonmonetized channels means adblocking is justified.

It's my time. Google isn't paying for the use of my eyeballs, and I actively don't purchase things I see advertised via YouTube. I'm not alone in this; most people don't buy for digital ads. They already nefariously steal my data at every opportunity.

zamadatix3• 2 years ago

Interestingly the comment you're responding and the article the comment is responding do not mention ads as the problem being solved by de-Googling.

I also think YouTube has gotten worse over time and I'd be happy to find a workable replacement despite being a long time YouTube Premium subscriber. I do use SponsorBlock though as I found supporting creators directly while paying YouTube for serving the content left still getting sponsorship ads as a bit ridiculous. It's a good product, just often intentionally shy of being great in interest of metrics

lc5G• 2 years ago

I would pay for youtube if they provided an official API to download videos and stream videos in a client of my choice.

I prefer to watch youtube with a custom player (mpv+yt-dlp on desktop, newpipe on android). I do not want to watch youtube on the youtube website or official youtube android app. The custom clients I am using are unofficial. They reverse engineer youtube to make it work. They often break when youtube changes something.

riddley3• 2 years ago

If only that were true!

Like the OP I consume a ton of YouTube and despite my misgivings about Google, I was a long time subscriber to the YouTube/music combo deal until they started showing ads despite my subscription.

It would happen a few times a week, and if I'm being charitable I could chalk it up to a deployment error, but it happened too many times for me to not get the impression that no one at YouTube gives a shit about subscribers.

least2• 2 years ago

I do pay for Youtube Premium precisely because it is something that I use basically every day. It's just kind of an opaque system where it's not really clear how much it is actually supporting video creators, how much of it is maintaining the service, and how much of it is lining Google's pockets.

I watch quite a bit of videos by creators with very lower viewership and sub counts and I suspect they're not seeing a penny.

homefree• 2 years ago

Maybe they do pay for it? It's not obvious they don't. (edit: they mention they do pay for it below)

I would have written a similar comment and I pay for Premium. I don't use any other Google service at this point, but I do have an account just for YouTube (I dig into the privacy settings to disable all the things I can).

It wasn't really that hard if you use Apple for almost everything and Fastmail for mail.

I use DuckDuckGo for search and occasional search again on Google, but that's becoming less relevant over time with LLMs (and generally reddit or youtube is the best place to search anyway for most things).

violet132• 2 years ago

They by and large don't. Most creators on YouTube aren't even eligible to monetize, especially if they're making niche educational content.

Google just pockets all the revenue if you have fewer than 4,000 "public watch hours". If you put together an a concise 4-minute DIY video, an average view time will probably hover around 1 minute, and you will need 240k views to qualify. Most videos on YouTube get under 1k views.

There is a negligibly small percentage of content creators / content farmers who live in a symbiotic relationship with the platform and actually make good money, but let's not pretend you're patronizing the creators when you're paying for YouTube Premium.

YurgenJurgensen2• 2 years ago

Paying won't make Shorts go away. Nor will it remove the 8 other elements of the YouTube UI I have to block to make the site somewhat useable.

Also I believe the payouts are split entirely by watchtime. Three minutes of watching an original song with a high-quality music video is worth more to me than 8 hours of some game stream or rambling video essay I happened to have on in the background while doing chores, but if YTP values both equally per minute it'll basically send no money to the creators who I believe bring the most value to the platform. There's even a like/dislike system, but there's no indication that it matters for Premium money. Channel memberships and superchats don't even remove ads, so even if I did decide to sub on a per-channel basis, I'd still need an ad blocker.

cjk2• 2 years ago

I use yt-dlp to download the videos, then play it on VLC on my iPad. Much nicer experience!

qwerpy• 2 years ago

This is also my preferred way of consuming YouTube. In addition to zero ads, you get instant seek, consistently high bitrate, ability to watch anywhere, and no autoplay for the kids to get sent down an addiction spiral.

timenova• 2 years ago

+1 for Nebula [0]. It's a great streaming service, and while the author primarily watches YouTube, and goes to Nebula occasionally, I do the opposite.

I use it as my primary source for news (TLDR Daily), and watch content from creators such as RealLifeLore and Half As Interesting, among many others.

Because of that, I rarely open YouTube, and even then I use SmartTube [1] on my Chromecast which gives a great experience.

[0] https://nebula.tv

[1] https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube

gfourfour3• 2 years ago

I “de-reddited” with HN.

the_af8• 2 years ago

HN is not a replacement for Reddit in general though.

Reddit is a collection of forums/communities with wildly varying topics. HN is just one specific forum.

Some of the worst behaviors that are common in many Reddit subs are discouraged here in HN, and for that I'm thankful. But the topics aren't the same, so one cannot replace the other in general.

gfourfour3• 2 years ago

A farmers market has a narrower selection than a supermarket, but you’d be healthier in the long run only shopping at the farmers market than going to the grocery store and being bombarded by processed garbage, even if you try to stick to the good aisles.

The problem with Reddit is that the worst of Reddit inevitably pollutes the best of Reddit. Better for your mental diet to avoid altogether.

basch• 2 years ago

If the goal is to fill some time with something mildly educational, it replaces the dopamine/serotonin hit all the same.

Animats2• 2 years ago

Why is this hard? Since I quit offering a Chrome plug-in, my last connection to a Google account is gone. I should cancel my Google account, if and when I find the password.

I post videos on Hardlimit, which uses PeerTube. I don't care about "discovery"; they're to illustrate blog postings elsewhere. So all I need is hosting and playout, which Peertube does just fine. (Peertube handles playout by mooching bandwidth off of other people using Peertube. So it can scale if many people are watching the same video. Permanent storage, though, is not distributed. It's not Bittorrent.)

I've been using LibreOffice and its predecessors for decades now. My last purchase of a Microsoft product was Word 97. Desktop browser is Firefox. Mail client is Thunderbird. Backups are IDrive. Add blocking is the EFF's Privacy Badger, which breaks many ad systems while enforcing privacy.

My phone uses F-Droid. It is not connected to a Google account. Browser is Fennec. App store is F-Droid. Search is DuckDuckGo.

What's the problem?

afavour• 2 years ago

What’s the problem?

…did you read the article?

The author lists the Google alternatives they’ve been using, along with both the successes and the problems with those alternatives.

hot_gril4• 2 years ago

What's your email provider?

Animats2• 2 years ago

Outgoing is Sonic.

Incoming is a site of my own, "animats.com".

stalfosknight• 2 years ago

It's not hard but many don't want to let go of YouTube or Gmail for some reason.

yjftsjthsd-h• 2 years ago

for some reason

Because nobody else has a content library to rival YT. (Gmail I don't know; this should be relatively easy to switch.)

kelnos3• 2 years ago

The "problem" is that other people have different needs and usage patterns than you do. Acting like your experience should be universal is a bit weird.

schaefer• 2 years ago

For me the degoogling sticking point is that I have a custom domain (registered through Google domains) that i use for both for my email addresses and my small personal home page.

It would be nice to find a host that offers both hosting and email through a custom domain too.

jdpedrie• 2 years ago

Fastmail lets you use custom domains for email and offers DNS and simple hosting.

https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000280141-Ho...

Not affiliated, just a longtime customer and fastmail enjoyer.

marssaxman• 2 years ago

I use pair.com for that and they have served me well for many years.

stvltvs• 2 years ago

Lots of hosting services would gladly provide webmail and web hosting on custom domains. I currently use Dreamhost.

pyrophane• 2 years ago

To host email for your personal domain on Google don't you need to sign up for a business workspace plan?

jiayo2• 2 years ago

Google Domains was sold to squarespace. Your domain will be migrated soon/already has been. Check your inbox.

Your Google domain has been migrated to your Squarespace Domains account. You can now log in at Squarespace Domains with your Google account to manage your domain, example.org. This is part of Squarespace's acquisition of all domain registrations and customer accounts from Google Domains.

jorams• 2 years ago

That's an odd sticking point. Domain registrars that don't do all those things are an exception. For the vast, vast majority of them the primary things they do aside from registering domains is offering email and hosting.

neilv3• 2 years ago

OpenStreetMap-based apps like Organic Maps are great and I frequently use them, but I find myself using the Google Maps website a lot, for tasks like searching for restaurants to getting an estimate of how long my commute is going to take.

Agreed, as someone who walks almost everywhere, Organic Maps is great on GrapheneOS.

The only things I use Google Maps for are more rare: (1) see what hours a store is open, which IIUC is being worked on by OSM; (2) planning a trip via public transit; (3) StreetView, which is really an awesome feature.

NoboruWataya• 2 years ago

(1) in particular is something that you can easily contribute to fixing yourself. Organic Maps lets you edit store details from within the app.

Personally, (2) and (3) are the ones that keep me on Google Maps, along with the real killer feature for me which is that I can just search "good {coffee,food,whatever} near me" and get a list of pretty good recommendations.

jiayo2• 2 years ago

For what it's worth, both Apple Maps and Bing Maps now have street-view like features, at least in my neck of the woods (Canada).

colingoodman• 2 years ago

Just about all of Apple's alternates to Google services are fine in my experience. I recently switched from Proton Mail to Apple Mail and have been satisfied saving a few bucks a month there. I don't know how to evaluate Apple's claims to privacy though.

kelnos3• 2 years ago

I guess that's fine for diversifying the big corporate overlords you rely on, which I'll agree is an improvement over relying on Google for everything. But still, I wish there were open alternatives.

poochkoishi728• 2 years ago

Does anyone know how private ProtonMail is? I heard admittedly crackpot-sounding rumors that it was some sort of NSA honeypot, but verifying them seems like proving the existence of a divine being.

balderdash• 2 years ago

I mean after the Crypto AG / Project rubicon came to light (let alone many of the disclosures since) I don’t think you can rule it out - but at least it’s unlikely your data is for sale /being actively used against you for commercial purposes

protonmail2• 2 years ago

We understand your concerns, however there is no comparison between Crypto AG and us. Our encryption occurs client-side, our cryptographic code is open source ( https://proton.me/community/open-source ), and our tech can and has been independently verified. More about this here: https://proton.me/blog/is-protonmail-trustworthy.

protonmail2• 2 years ago

Proton's encryption provides privacy by default - we cannot access any of the email content, email attachments, calendars, files stored on Proton Drive or passwords, 2FA codes, notes etc. on Proton Pass, and therefore cannot share any of this with any third parties. We have also discussed such baseless claims of connections to NSA with our users on multiple occasions, including here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/14demhj/debunki....

jb1991• 2 years ago

The problem is all the shared spreadsheets that are ubiquitous in many jobs and you typically need a Google account to participate in those.

timbit42• 2 years ago

You can still move your personal life off of Google.

causal• 2 years ago

I appreciate that this also avoids other big tech solutions; i.e. MS and Apple.

neilv3• 2 years ago

I was even able to take trips through Uber’s mobile website, which was a pleasant surprise. The location functionality did not work, but I believe that was due more to the browser than to Uber itself.

I'm delighted that this works now.

Of course companies like the proprietary-platform apps, in some ways. So it's great to see a tech company also embrace Web open standards as an option for users/customers.

yaky2• 2 years ago

Lyft's website used to work really well circa 2019, but stopped shortly after.

rav3ndust2• 2 years ago

i 'de-googled' my life quite a bit a long time ago - switched to an android distribution with no G services (lineageOS), moved from gmail to tuta, switched search engines, and like mentioned here, the one i can't fully leave is youtube, for the moment.

i like odysee a lot as a platform, but it can't fully replace YT just yet for me, as a good deal of the channels i watch are still YT-only. i'd say my video-watching time is split maybe 80% yt, and 20% odysee at this point.

yaky2• 2 years ago

To add to your list (I made very similar choices):

Standard Notes was pretty decent for acessing notes between multiple devices when I used it. Now that I am back on Android, I use Syncthing for both pictures and notes, without a cloud intermediary.

Aegis instead of Google Authenticator. I found it the most straightforward, and it has backups/transfers not tied to any account.

QKSMS instead of Google Messages. It doesn't support RCS and reactions come across as texts, but no issues otherwise.

Fossify apps for other basic functionality.

Something to keep in mind with custom ROMs and OSes is that only some have VoLTE support. Which, with 3G shutdown, is a must in the US, unless you are in a great 2G coverage zone.

joshuaturner• 2 years ago

I can appreciate the hesitancy because you need an account, but Kagi is such a great search engine. Their incentives align much better with their actual users and because of that they support tons of customization/filtering options Google just can't (read: won't).

abenga2• 2 years ago

I tried Kagi once and never really felt like it was good enough to make me want to pay for it. Search is like air. Very important, but available everywhere for free. Pretty hard for me to justify adding another subscription to the already extant mountain.

pbronez2• 2 years ago

Continuing that metaphor…

Google is the air of a teeming metropolis in a developing country. Every breath is polluted with foreign substances that someone else out there. Your capacity suffers as each action is taxed by the aerosolized tar.

searX is mountain air. Pure, but cold and so so thin. You struggle to collect enough oxygen, waiting for the life-giving molecules to trickle in. A bracing adventure for most, a home for the hardy, adapted few.

DuckDuckGo is the air of a rich suburb. The pollution is manageable and pressure sufficient. You breathe freely, undistracted, content in the assumption that your essential need is satisfied. It is sufficient, comfortable, unremarkable, there.

Kagi is a seaside breeze, wafting the richness of a vibrant and alien ecosystem through your awareness. You may sense the oily tang of a nearby dockyard; it’s but one note in the harmony, fading behind the marine life, the ocean salts, the sizzling morsels of upshore boardwalk. You breathe deeply. Your awareness stretches, stitching scent to sound; your focus dances across the possibilities, musing which possibility to explore today. A corner of your mind resents the cost of your rented villa; another fantasizes about buying it, about making this place your home. Could I afford it…?

rc_mob2• 2 years ago

Man yeah I'm trying my best to do the same. it is so hard. I pay for kagi and email services.

Buut yeah can one of you hackernews geniuses please create an alternative to youtube? The only alternatives I can find are crazy republican right wing websites that I have no desire to help or support.

zeagle• 2 years ago

Nice write up. I've had a similar journey. I've been using Android auto on grapheneos without issues FYI. I did switch from nextcloud to Baikal as was using seafile for the file storage anyway. I gave up on protonmail and am using migadu with great effect. My plan was to eventually to switch to immich so perhaps a weekend evening project.

LAC-Tech• 2 years ago

Duckduckgo has been my search engine for years now, never use google anymore.

Only other search engine I use is yandex, which is very useful for search terms that US-hased search engines mess with the results of.

bogwog2• 2 years ago

OP and I are very similar lol. I bought a Pixel 7 Pro on eBay specifically so I could use Graphene (screw buying new; used is good for the planet and it doesn't give money to Google). So far, I have been loving it!

Also switched to Organic Maps, but still use Google Maps for finding businesses/hours. Organic Maps is nice, but searching for directions is awful (at least in my South Florida area). Typing in any address tends to return results that only show the name of the street, and they're all identical. E.g. just a bunch of "Southwest 123rd Street, Florida", no house number or anything useful to distinguish them. Often times I'm forced to use Google Maps. This is currently the hardest Google service to quit for me.

I went from DDG to Kagi, and stuck with Kagi because of the superior results. Luckily I got in early, and have an early adopter plan. It's a shame they can't offer better pricing though because it really is a superior service. Recently I've had some privacy concerns that have made me a bit skeptical of Kagi, but it's hard for me to go back to DDG or even Google now. It's just that good.

For files I use Nextcloud exclusively. While it is slow and bloated as hell, I like it because I share the instance with family members, and it's easier for non-techie people to use it. It's also possible to mount it as a network drive using WebDAV so you can skip the bloated web interface. It works very well for me on KDE Dolphin.

For email I use ProtonMail with custom domain too. They're overpriced and overrated, but it's too much work for me to switch at this point, and their app isn't that bad. I would recommend FastMail to anyone looking for a new email provider though.

For YouTube, I use FreeTube. It's basically just a custom front end l. No ads, no spyware. Sure, I deprive creators of ad revenue, but that's a good thing. The less money they make on YouTube, the more likely they are to post on different services. I haven't heard of Nebula before, so I'll definitely be checking that out.

Andrex• 2 years ago

For email I use ProtonMail with custom domain too. They're overpriced and overrated, but it's too much work for me to switch at this point, and their app isn't that bad. I would recommend FastMail to anyone looking for a new email provider though.

I went the opposite route, but I feel like Proton is better geared to business use (the plans and included products just seem more attractive to me). And yeah the Swiss angle is mostly PR but eh, maybe that could be useful and it's one more thing. "Defense in depth," kinda.

When I switched I didn't really notice Proton being that much more expensive for my uses either.

blauditore2• 2 years ago

Although this author seems pretty reasonable with regards to actual privacy (preferring self-hosted software), I find the popular echo chamber of "avoid Google, they steal your data" quite misguided.

Yes, Google accumulates data and does stuff with it. But Google also has rigorous processes to lock down data and access to it, unlike virtually any small-to-medium cloud software provider. I've heard crazy stories like people looking up their friends' health insurance details for fun, just because almost everyone in the engineering part of that company had access to the production database.

Plus, Google is so large that it constantly receives attention by public institutions, which makes it harder to pull off shady stuff without getting caught. If <random SME> sells your data to the highest bidder who will spam you with cold calls, no one's gonna bat an eye.

noman-land6• 2 years ago

Don't forget any large hoard of data is ripe for government abuse. It might not be a cold caller but a police department parallel constructing you into a crime conviction using faulty GPS data.

blauditore2• 2 years ago

Never though of it that way: With enough data, it's likely to find something that looks suspicious, for some definition thereof, even if just due to software errors. When looked at in isolation, this could convince people like real evidence.

This would basically be the same as p-hacking.

extr3• 2 years ago

For me the point of de-googling is not to literally stop using every single Google service but to disengage enough that your entire online identity isn't tied to Google such that losing your account would be catastrophic.

For example, I still have a gmail account I use for lots of random things, but critical bank/financial accounts go directly to a separate fastmail address (where I am confident I could get a human to help me if there was a serious account problem). I still use Google Docs suite, but "important" documents are stored locally as Word/Excel files. I still use Google Drive/Google Photos, but I make periodic backups to a local SSD + other online backup services (iCloud/OneDrive). Etc.

I don't understand why you would want to "ditch every Google product and service". Some of them are objectively pretty great, or inherently have low switching costs (like Google Maps).

assimpleaspossi2• 2 years ago

What happens if fastmail goes belly up?

mfiro2• 2 years ago

If you use it with domain you own, you can just point it to another email provider.

varun_ch• 2 years ago

If you own your domain and make regular data exports/backups, nothing.

toomuchtodo• 2 years ago

MX record change and you’re off to the races. Tangentially, I’d also be interested in putting an acquisition together to acquire FastMail if ever in financial peril, in order for it to persist as a going concern and arguably, a public good (like Let’s Encrypt).

gessha• 2 years ago

What happens when Google kills Gmail?

noman-land6• 2 years ago

Simple. Google is in the business of collecting and monetizing my data and removing my privacy. I want them to have as little access to my life as possible.

extr3• 2 years ago

Day to day what does "monetizing my data and removing my privacy" actually mean to you? Are advertisers following you around town? Bothering you at work? Hounding you in the loo? Personally it seems like my data has been stolen from just about every company I've ever given it to EXCEPT for Google.

pawelmurias• 2 years ago

They are in a business of showing you ads. Showing your private data to someone is not in their interest.

pennybanks2• 2 years ago

for me its not about losing anything important or practicing safety with backups. i just dont want bloat and activity everywhere. too many connections too many extra features suggested or mandatory etc etc. i guess im a minimalist in that sense. just want cleaner faster everything even if its a bit more inconvenient.

m463• 2 years ago

I think we should applaud the people who take these steps.

These tech companies work with all the rest of the companies to use our own computers against us.

Most folks have normalized the data collection, the dark patterns and the faustian bargains that are now happening on a daily basis.

Treating them with ridicule is just not necessary. The folks who say no are really working for the rest of us.

I can give you a couple website that are intimately intertwined with google services:

- the california FTB website (califorina's IRS) - the california DMV website (not only drivers licenses, but real id) - kaiser permanente (health care)

Most normal people, or your kids, or your parents are required to use these sites (or it is very difficult not to use them). Why should they be tracked by advertisers? why should nobody complain?

https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/26/kaiser_patient_data/

er0k• 2 years ago

Is there any good alternative to google voice? It's the only google service I haven't been able to replace yet.

jasonriddle• 2 years ago

I've been using Numberbarn.

I've been liking it so far, no issues to report. However, I've only been using it for two months now.

Also, similar to Google Voice, some businesses won't let you use a VOIP number for your phone number.

anonymousiam3• 2 years ago

I've been using GV for over a decade. It's the last Google service that I still use regularly. I use mailinabox for my email/contacts/calendar/drive. I've looked, and there aren't any drop-in substitutes for GV. I've had a Number Barn account with two phone numbers for a few years. They seem to provide better voice quality than most alternatives, but their SMS integration is poor. I'm not sure if they even do voicemail, but I don't think they do.

Dudhbbh33432• 2 years ago

I switched to jmp.chat a few months ago and have been impressed.

You can even pay anonymously with crypto and have multiple numbers using a single app and billing account.

anonymousiam3• 2 years ago

Looks interesting. I got as far as where it asked me to pay them $15, which I'm reluctant to do without first trying out the service. How does one receive a Referral code?

christophilus• 2 years ago

I’ve done a decent job de-googling my life. YouTube is the only real holdout. That’s mainly because I’m too cheap to pay for Spotify. I guess I should get around to remedying that.

kelnos3• 2 years ago

I would really love to run GrapheneOS (or some other Android OS that can prevent a lot of Google's built-in spying), but broken Android Auto, Google Pay, and a bunch of other things would be a complete showstopper for me.

It makes me really sad that I've come to rely on a bunch of things that just aren't available at all through open software.

nani8ot• 2 years ago

Is there no bank with their own mobile payment app where you live?

strcat2• 2 years ago

In some regions, banks stopped supporting their own tap-to-pay systems or they never even got widely adopted in the first place. It's much better in the EU than the US, where most banks still have their own tap-to-pay.

strcat2• 2 years ago

The official Android Auto app works on GrapheneOS as an extension to sandboxed Google Play. We don't have our own implementation yet and it's not planned in the near term but it is available. Google Pay doesn't allow alternate operating systems but it does work on GrapheneOS from a technical perspective, it just doesn't allow using it in practice without pretending to be the stock OS on a legacy Google-certified Android device without support for hardware attestation. Most banks have their own tap-to-pay implementation in Europe but that largely got phased out in the US.

mfiro2• 2 years ago

Moving E-mail is the easiest part on this journey. For me the biggest reason, was the risk of being locked out of my E-mail accounts and reaching no (human) support.

What I found the most difficult was the search engine. Although Google search has become worse, it's still far better than Duckduckgo in my opinion. I've found DDG very inaccurate for non-English queries.

_kidlike• 2 years ago

kagi.com

you're welcome :)

hi-v-rocknroll2• 2 years ago

Does anyone host their own email in a jurisdiction with a domain and VPS US Feds can't seize arbitrarily? If so, which webmail software do you use? Do you handle backups and/or high-availability?

doublerabbit• 2 years ago

I bought Zimbra Network Edition, around £2k with 25 mailboxes.

Professional enough to resell accounts and works nicely on phones.

It supports high availability, mx relays and takes scheduled backups to directory of choosing.

I've been satisfied with support and it's a rock solid product that's finally starting to mature after many company take overs.

hi-v-rocknroll2• 2 years ago

I'm having PTSD flashbacks since I had a startup based on it when VMWare owned it where we M&A'ed small mail hosting businesses and migrated them to our ZNE instances. Our license costs totaled maybe $15k USD for a dozen instances and we had access to VMware staff on Sand Hill.

ezekiel68• 2 years ago

This seems like an awful lot of work for little benefit. Although I use and pay for kagi, it's not to de-Google. It simply is a superior search engine which honors semi-advanced search filters better. However, when I want to search sholarly refernces, Google search reigns supreme.

I guess I'm just a rube, but it never occurred to me to demand much 'something' (all the stuff Google provides me) for 'nothing' (refusal to allow use of my annonomized data). Since I bother setting my cookie settings on all new websites, I don't really get bombarded with personalized advertising anymore. That's my middle ground. (I also pay for YouTube Premium, so I don't see the ads there).

settsu• 2 years ago

The impetus for my years long (i.e., lazy) effort to de-Google wasn't just about the privacy issues but that those seemed to stem from an utter lack of empathy for users overall.

In other words, it was recognizing an intolerable pattern of behavior, which seemed inevitable that it would cause me actual, material harm in some way eventually.

barfbagginus• 2 years ago

Does the collapse of all knowledge as we know it count as a material harm? Or is it a revolutionary opportunity to craft a new Knowledge Society independent and protected from the abuses of the old and failed knowledge order?

lotophage• 2 years ago

I was very much in the Google ecosystem and although privacy became an increasing concern, the final push for me was the horror stories who had their accounts suspended or were otherwise locked out with no recourse.

twobitshifter• 2 years ago

I was an Android user, looked at this mountain to climb 6 years ago and just decided to go with Apple. They offer email, calendar, etc, but don’t run a business model based on ads and data mining. That said, I can’t get away from YouTube and I still keep my Gmail account but only as a backup.

standardUser• 2 years ago

Somehow my temperament makes me much more comfortable battling an exploitative captor (Google) than succumbing to a coercive one. The fact that these are the only workable options depresses me.

hfe• 2 years ago

my second issue with Kagi: privacy-wise, I simply don’t believe that a service that requires login and thus naturally associates all your activity with your identity is better than a service which can be used without a login.

I don't get this argument. Do you want to be protected from the services you use, or do you want a partnership based on trust? With aligned incentives, trust is easier. Without trust, not logging in won't save your privacy. Just pay the nice people money for the very nice service they provide, and let them build trust with you.

thih9• 2 years ago

Recently doing this got significantly easier for me.

In the past years I had to actively work on not using too many Google products.

Today Google products got bad that it feels like Google themselves are doing the discouraging.

skeledrew2• 2 years ago

I'm mostly degoogled myself, and disable/firewall every Google app on my device. Pretty hard to switch away from GMail as it's essentially everywhere for me, and YouTube doesn't have a viable replacement. I use 3rd party apps for both though, as well as the store. Re the store, I endured doing manual updates weekly for several years. Then recently when I upgraded my device I discovered Shizuku (allows elevated access without rooting), which connects nicely with Aurora Store and handles the installs. It's like a huge breath of fresh air.

whatindaheck2• 2 years ago

It really takes effort to scrub oneself of big-tech. I don’t know how non-HN-types are supposed to do it.

My weak point has been Apple Photos. It “just works” for me and I really appreciate that it does all processing for faces, cats, etc. locally and in a native app. Every other option I find either doesn’t do syncing, offers an Electron app, or forces viewing through a browser.

Does anyone know of a solution that fits the bill? I will happily self-host.

BetterWhisper• 2 years ago

Well, do you have the hardware to self-host? People nowadays usually are not okay with 1 week of downloading a torrent like it was in 2005. That is probably how long the embedding will take on your cpu for all the video/picture files?

whatindaheck2• 2 years ago

Ya I have hardware and already self-host some services.

daft_pink• 2 years ago

Kagi is totally the only way to degoogle. It’s the only product where the results are clearly better or on par with google. Everything else I’ve ever use I found myself subconsciously back at google a few days later.

ein0p• 2 years ago

PSA: DuckDuckGo is just a Bing frontend. So you’re out of the frying pan and into the fire. The only really independent option is Brave Search. It also happens to have better relevance than Bing, in my experience.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 2 years ago

These de-Googling or un-Googling submissions always seem to follow the same pattern: try to find a "replacement" for every company Google has acquired.

What I never see is someone who proposes "de-Googling" and foregoing a replacement.

Consider the following generic example.

Google acquires some company that intermediates some task that people perform using a computer. Now Google collects data about its users.

A hypothetical computer user makes use of this intermediary "service" as well as others offered by Google. Eventually user decides he wants to stop giving away data to Google.

User then publishes to the web the idea of ceasing to use Google-owned intermediaries by using other, "equivalent" intermediaries for each and _every_ service. Or he tries to replicate role of the intermediary himself through "self-hosting".

But he never considers that in some cases using an intermediary is itself a problem, or may be unnecessary, irrespective of whether it is Google or some other entity. Why does he need to preserve each and _every_ Google acquisition by finding a replacement.

The use of an intermediary allows data collection and in almost all cases that's why someone started a so-called "tech" company. They saw opportunity to profit from being an intermediary (middleman).

The attempt to find a replacement for _every_ Google-owned intermediary seems rather brainless. As if every Google acquisition is something that must exist and must be used.

Certainly there is an arguable privacy benefit from using disparate third parties for different tasks instead of using the same one for every task. However there is also a benefit from not using a third party at all, or even from not performing the task via a server (self-hosting).

icar• 2 years ago

Auto updates work for me with the same setup. I'm curious as to why it wouldn't work for them.

kkfx• 2 years ago

For me the point is not privacy, simply this war is lost.

The point for me is data availability, I do want to own my data. So for emails and service I do own my domain name, so I can change third parties services, if I use any (email) in a transparent manner for my correspondent. I own the domain, I own the mail address, my website URL etc, I have a "home address" on the net.

Similarly I do use third party email services, simply because hosting one myself meaning ending up too often in GMail and co spam, BUT, I own my mails because I do not keep them on third party IMAPs but on my homeserver, the mail provider is just a relay of my "incomplete" mail infra.

For contact I've used Radicale, now testing https://github.com/tchapi/davis

For files I have a desktop centric setup, the homeserver run a paperless-ngx instance with "a certain set of docs" meaning I do not mirror my org-mode/org-attach entire home structure to paperless but only some selected docs to have them available on the go via mobile if I need them and simple webdav dir to share some if needed. I do not want OwnCloud considering it a monster I can't really know by it's mere size so I prefer giving up with it.

I've tried Immich and Jellyfin for my photos and movies/music but they end up essentially unused.

For RSS TT-RSS is far from perfect but can handle conveniently a significant number of posts quickly skimming them also on the go.

Wireguard is nice enough to encapsulate my services

To make it short, my point is not avoid a company like Google than choosing another like Proton, my point is being able to have and work with my data if some services disappear in a snap.

De-googling, so far

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