

I'm back. This time without Google - ahmedatia
http://www.ahmedatia.com/Blog/IamBackWithoutGoogle.aspx

======
themartorana
> 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.

~~~
privong
> 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

~~~
themartorana
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...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antivaccination-parents-dig-
in-heels-even-after-receiving-medical-info/)

[1] (PDF) [http://web.archive.org/web/20110511211719/http://www-
persona...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110511211719/http://www-
personal.umich.edu/~bnyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf)

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mark_l_watson
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.

------
dan_bk
> 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/](https://prism-break.org/en/)

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

Oh, the irony.

~~~
clubhi
Hey, I believe in exercise.

~~~
pooper
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).

------
fpgaminer
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.

~~~
e15ctr0n
> 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](http://www.duckduckgoog.com/browser)

------
bmoresbest55
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.

~~~
danieldk
_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.

------
akerl_
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.

~~~
ahmedatia
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.

~~~
akerl_
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.

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

------
kwestro
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.

~~~
ilaksh
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.

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

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

~~~
jebblue
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.

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

------
scoot
_" 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%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fcache.nevkontakte.com%2Fproxy.html#!go/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ahmedatia.com%2FBlog%2FIamBackWithoutGoogle.aspx)

Oh, the irony.

~~~
thu
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.

~~~
ahmedatia
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.

