
Bye, Bye, Google - Bogdanp
https://defn.io/2019/02/04/bye-bye-google/
======
qubex
It’s fascinating how regularly the beloved underdogs of the tech world rise to
become monopolistic titans, betray (or are perceived as betraying) their
original ethos, and are turned on and repudiated by the technorati. I’ve seen
it happen three and a half times in my life: the monopolistic phase for
Microsoft, the rise and repudiation of Google and Facebook, and something
along those lines for Apple (though they’re somewhat _different_ , probably
because of very snide perception-management).

I’m not saying it’s wrong (I actually think it’s fair), it’s just that the
regularity is amusing. When Microsoft was represented by a Locutus-ified Bill
Gates on Slashdot two decades ago, “do no evil” open-source champion Google
could do no wrong,

I was about to write “oh, how far the mighty have fallen!” but upon closer
consideration that would be the wrong epithet. It’s precisely because it has
not fallen, and because it has become _too_ mighty, that is now viewed with
ever-growing suspicion.

The vaunted free market that so enamours Silicon Valley and digital
utopianists cannot avoid corrupting these companies’ moral cores, apparently.
Quite the opposite of the declared ethos.

EDIT: The cherished underdogs of today, if they do not succumb, regularly
become the maligned monsters of tomorrow. It’s almost as if there’s something
built into the system that corrupts them...

~~~
domador
My rule of thumb:

If a company is a public company, it can't help BUT be evil.

Corollaries and commentary:

1) Evil arises from public companies' duty to generate as much money as
possible for their shareholders. Private companies have more freedom to make
less money and to not be evil--or even to choose to "die" while retaining
their honor and that of their members.

2) A public company might not be evil now, but if it keeps growing, it will
eventually be evil.

3) This applies regardless of the initial size, values, and idealism of the
company; the choice to be a public company seals its fate.

~~~
the_gastropod
This is a good point, but I don't know if the public/private distinction is
_that_ relevant. Lots of private companies still take funding from VC's or
other investors, who still generally demand a profit-at-any-cost approach.
Uber is an easy example of this.

~~~
domador
Private company have the OPTION of selling themselves out. Public companies
have no choice but to do so.

(I might be oversimplifying, but hey, it's a rule of thumb!)

------
harianus
This is amazing. So many people are starting to de-Google their life. It
somehow become a popular subject. Earlier this week Fast Company wrote [1]
about it, DuckDuckGo reached 1 billion monthly searches [2] and it's a common
thing to see in Hacker News' posts lately.

I'm personally very happy with the raise of awareness. I'm hoping it's will
reach the regular folks.

I realized this a few months ago when I started Simple Analytics [3]. I see
that advertising is almost done automatically by the press. When Facebook or
Google has bad press, it's great for privacy first tools.

[1] [https://www.fastcompany.com/90300072/its-time-to-ditch-
googl...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90300072/its-time-to-ditch-google-
analytics)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1091709578444750849](https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1091709578444750849)

[3]
[https://simpleanalytics.io/?ref=news.ycombinator.com](https://simpleanalytics.io/?ref=news.ycombinator.com)

~~~
londons_explore
DuckDuckGo is really Bing under the covers... People are literally moving from
Google back to Microsoft, and feeling good about it because it has different
branding.

Source: [https://www.quora.com/How-is-the-Bing-API-used-by-
DuckDuckGo](https://www.quora.com/How-is-the-Bing-API-used-by-DuckDuckGo)

~~~
rjf72
I don't understand why people spread such fake news so readily. In this case
you can TRIVIALLY prove this true or false. Did you decide to test this before
stating it? No, obviously not.

I decided to search for "space engine exhaust". The reason I searched for this
is because it has some hot keywords, but also some keywords that are probably
fairly uncommon. The idea was to get a mix of softball hits along with some
per engine unique hits. And it looks like it was a pretty good test query.
Here they are:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=space+engine+exhaust](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=space+engine+exhaust)

[https://www.bing.com/search?q=space+engine+exhaust](https://www.bing.com/search?q=space+engine+exhaust)

And, lo and behold, they give very different results. DuckDuckGo may utilize
Bing's results, but they are not "Bing under the covers" by any stretch of the
imagination.

\-----

Just for the sake of completion here is the google search for the same:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=space+engine+exhaust](https://www.google.com/search?q=space+engine+exhaust)

Interestingly enough I think is a good example of the increasingly large
percent of queries where Google gives the clearly worst results. Their top 4/4
results all being for spaceengine.org which is a universe simulator, but very
unlikely to be what somebody who was searching for 'space engine exhaust' was
after.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> here is the google search for the same

That's one of the issues for me: those are your results, but there's no
telling what anyone else might get when clicking on that link. "Feeds" of all
kind, personalized by black boxes rather than explicit parameters we have
access to, deprive us of a common (virtual) world to discuss.

My top 4 results were [http://spaceengine.org/support-
old/](http://spaceengine.org/support-old/) ,
[http://forum.spaceengine.org/viewtopic.php?t=33](http://forum.spaceengine.org/viewtopic.php?t=33)
,
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/05/23/the-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/05/23/the-
emdrive-nasas-impossible-space-engine-really-is-impossible/) and
[https://www.nasa.gov/returntoflight/system/system_SSME.html](https://www.nasa.gov/returntoflight/system/system_SSME.html)

~~~
rjf72
Yeah, this is a very good point. I never use Google anymore and assumed that
going incognito would have been enough to get roughly 'bare' results. Perhaps
a reminder that just because you don't use Google doesn't mean that Google
isn't tracking you extensively in any case due to analytics and countless
other indirect forms of tracking and profiling.

I just kept reloading the same search through a bunch of different TOR
identities + anti-finger printing, and it was like playing search roulette.
And indeed there were, on occasion, actually some great results that don't
show up elsewhere. It's such a shame that they're all masked behind some black
box of tracking with another black box of ML and filtering. It's like two
people going to the same library where librarian deciding to hide books from
one person or the other because she, and her all seeing eye, thought they'd
have less interest in them than other books.

------
jonathanstrange
Congratulations! Personally, I'm not that radical but I agree with the
motives.

I don't use gmail or google docs for anything essential and have my own email
address for the past 20 years anyway, but getting away from Youtube is harder.
There is a lot of interesting content on Youtube, like Numberphile and
3Blue1Brown, and I wouldn't know where to find this elsewhere. I also use
Youtube for its intended main purpose, listening to illegally pirated music
content. I don't understand how Youtube's management have succeeded in staying
outside prison so far, it seems that the laws in this area are applied
extremely selectively. Anyway, you can find and listen to almost any record
from any time period at any time on Youtube without paying a cent, and I
haven't found a replacement for that yet either.

~~~
amelius
> I also use Youtube for its intended main purpose, listening to illegally
> pirated music content.

Can you stand the ads that are played after every other song?

~~~
megous
That's avoidable too, with use of youtube-dl/mpv and such.

------
Klonoar
I avoid Google when possible, but... can we stop saying shit in these articles
that isn't proven true? Google doesn't release your email address if you
delete it. Squatting isn't an issue there.

When we just start saying things that are proven incorrect it makes the entire
discussion look like a bunch of spooks, it's not helpful.

~~~
Bogdanp
Sorry! I should've been more clear. I'm keeping it so there's no chance of
them releasing it without my knowledge down the line. Whether their policy
right now is to release it or not, I feel safer by not deleting the account.

~~~
bachmeier
FYI, Fastmail _does_ recycle names if you use a fastmail.com address, so stick
to your own domain if using their service.

~~~
harianus
Fastmail is not a good privacy first solution. People do share it as a great
Google Mail alternative, but it's not more privacy friendly [1].

[1] [https://www.quora.com/Fastmail-or-Protonmail-Which-one-is-
tr...](https://www.quora.com/Fastmail-or-Protonmail-Which-one-is-truly-more-
secure)

~~~
samcday
It's a good point.

As an Aussie who vaguely follows Aussie politics. I know that at the very
least the current ruling party has some pretty funny ideas about internet
privacy [1][2]. So it kinda scares me that Fastmail is based there.

That said, I'm currently using Fastmail since switching to it from Gmail a few
months ago. The service itself is excellent. As far as I can tell, they don't
seem to actively scan the contents of your email to build a profile on you
like Google does [3]. So, at least for now, there's that.

[1]: [https://www.cyberscoop.com/australia-encryption-backdoors-
la...](https://www.cyberscoop.com/australia-encryption-backdoors-law-passes/)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austral...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia)
[3]:
[https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html#sharing](https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html#sharing)

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> they don't seem to actively scan the contents of your email to build a
> profile on you like Google does [3]. So, at least for now, there's that.

I thought G stopped doing that for mail?

~~~
samcday
Really? That must be recent, because when I stopped using Gmail late-ish last
year, it was still doing that kinda-cool-but-still-pretty-creepy thing of
overlaying airline reservation information gleaned from emails onto Google
Maps.

~~~
jankeymeulen
You'll still get the overlay but information from Gmail but aren't served ads
anymore based on the contents. It changed somewhere in 2017 iirc.

------
mark_l_watson
I have just done the reverse process. I decided that with integrated Cloud
Search (of Gmail, docs, sheets, calendar, Drive, etc.) that help me quickly
find research notes, etc. on all devices, that I quit Fastmail (which is an
excellent service!) and transitioned to a $10/month Google G Suite account. I
find it well worth the money.

I still use DuckDuckGo and my once a month visit to Facebook is done with a
container to avoid FB tracking. I also don’t use Google Analytics on my web
sites (except for my blogger account, no way around that). Using Firefox
containers for all separate browsing modes is the advice I give my family and
friends. I do still use GCP because I like it better than AWS, but that is
just a personal preference (AWS is also a great service).

~~~
acqq
"Starting on April 2, 2019, G Suite Basic Edition will increase by $1 (from $5
to $6 per user/month) and G Suite Business Edition will increase by $2 (from
$10 to $12 per user/month), or the local currency equivalent where applicable.
These increases will apply globally with local market adjustments for certain
regions"

------
bad_user
I have also de-Google-ified and it wasn't a very focused effort or a life
goal.

Google's productivity apps win via their integration, but when judged
individually the alternatives are better, at least for me.

E.g. if you use Google Drive it's hard to not use Gmail because the price of a
G Suite Business subscription is really good, but then Google Drive's desktop
client is a piece of shit that doesn't work. If you use Gmail it's hard to not
use Chrome, because Gmail doesn't play very well with classic IMAP desktop
clients and for the web UI the "offine email" feature is Chrome-only, plus
Gmail's web interface is now really bloated and slow and by using it in Chrome
it sucks the least, because Google doesn't give a crap about other browsers.
If you're on G Suite, it's hard to not use Google Docs, it's great for
collaborative editing, but compared with Microsoft Office it has performance
issues and has missing features that makes it painful to use for serious
stuff.

There are 3 products that are hard to replace:

1\. Google Search can give better results, but usually DuckDuckGo does the job
well; I switched to DDG after noticing ads following me on the web based on
searches I did

2\. Google Maps (and Waze) because they have really good real-time traffic
information, otherwise the POIs are better in OpenStreetMaps in my country

3\. YouTube which currently has no replacement if you're a consumer

I'm not a fanatic btw, if Youtube Premium would be available in my country, I
would pay for it.

------
flaviocopes
> [...] they have access to most of our web browsing via Google Chrome (62.5%
> market share – although given the amount of broken websites (some explicitly
> Chrome-only!) I’ve found since switching to Firefox, I believe this number
> may actually be higher)

Anecdotal, but I got in touch with a pretty popular newsletter hosting tool to
tell them the charts on Firefox didn't render correctly, only to be told to
use Chrome.

~~~
deadbunny
Ah, the good old days of "This site was built for IE6".

~~~
rplnt
Google went this route as soon as Chrome gained non-negligible market share.
The "Works better with chrome" native ads or outright blocking other user-
agents.

------
jbergstroem
For those who host their own email (read: use your own domain for incoming),
I'd like to remind/raise awareness about using `.io` which had two pretty
serious security incidents recently (<3 years). Last incident:
[https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-
all...](https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all-io-
domains-with-a-targeted-registration/index.html)

------
raffomania
For anyone interested in more alternatives,
[https://switching.social](https://switching.social) is a well-written and
maintained directory.

~~~
nichos
Good list, but the font on that site makes it almost unusable.

------
craftoman
Should we start de-Googling our lifes after the monopolistic market share of
smartphones? Most privacy violations exist in Android phones and personally
there's no way I could give 1000$ for an Apple phone. If there was a trully
open source mobile OS that could run on every mobile CPU with every necessary
drivers we could actually build cheap phones without any software from Google.
Imagine if phones were like desktops and you could grab a tiny motherboard
stick some RAM, a CPU, a flash drive and you were ready to go.

------
mcbetz
Some privacy-conscious Gmail alternatives from Europe (I use them all):

    
    
      - Mailbox.org (DE), from 1€/month, basic custom domain, aliases possible
      - Posteo.de (DE), from 1€/month
      - Migadu.com (SUI), from 4€/month, run unlimited custom domains with very flexible settings (mailboxes, aliases, forwarding)

~~~
bubblethink
There's also mailcow that's popular in the self hosting crowd. Anyone use it
and can share experience ? I'm a bit lazy to switch email since the other end
of the mail is going to be gmail/outlook etc. anyway. So not much net gain.

~~~
londons_explore
Does it have a decent mobile app with push notifications for important mails?
That always seems to be where the other providers fall down...

~~~
bubblethink
What client you use is up to you. It's just a mail server. Any client that
supports IMAP idle should work. I imagine k-9 will do fine.

~~~
londons_explore
IMAP idle doesn't really work on mobile devices anymore, because no recent
version of Android or iOS allows apps to keep the radio alive with persistent
TCP connections - you need something that supports APNS and GCM, converting
every notification into an HTTP Post request to Apple or Google or another
notification provider.

So far, there seems to be no standard extension to IMAP to integrate with
those, so you need some app which has a server side component to do it. (Which
is exactly what Gmail, Outlook, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, etc. all do).

~~~
bubblethink
k-9 works fine for me without gcm. So at least on latest aosp, it appears that
imap idle is all that it needs. Also, signal, whatsapp and telegram work
without gcm as well.

Edit: I don't remember if I had to whitelist k-9 under battery optimisations.
Maybe that's a requirement to use notifications without gcm, as it's a common
theme in all apps that support notifications without gcm. On Apple devices,
you will be generally out of luck, but that's a foregone conclusion.

------
CohrinDrake
I switched to Fastmail from Gmail years ago. In the beginning I missed the
tagging when I went back to a folder structure, but you get used to it. Other
then that, I'm super happy and can only recommend the service.

~~~
chrismorgan
Labelling is definitely something that I miss from Gmail; I live without it at
FastMail, but I and a few others of us in the company would really like it.
Fortunately, we’ve established the technical foundation for supporting
labelling with JMAP, which can work with both folders and labelling; I have no
timeline (I don’t think it’s on a concrete scheduled roadmap yet), but we are
planning on supporting labelling as an alternative to folders.

~~~
londons_explore
Labelling was put into gmail and other google services because directories
were _too hard to implement_ and labels were seen as an easier approach.

A single table in a database mapping labelName to documentId can implement
labels with no extra constraints, and it scales really well.

Put an index on labelName and you can easily list all documents with a given
label. Put an index on documentId and you can easily list all labels a
document has.

I don't understand why other providers go to the significant _extra effort_ of
trying to implement directories.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The largest issue with labels is that it isn't standards compliant. Gmail does
some absolutely weird crud at the boundaries of anything not Gmail, such as
IMAP or your Takeout export, neither of which understands labels.

FastMail's choice to wait until a new standard that supports it is available
is a strong choice towards interoperability and standards.

~~~
londons_explore
Gmail was launched in 2004, and now 15 years later, the standards haven't
caught up with something to support a widely used feature...

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Our standards haven't meaningfully changed in over 15 years, JMAP may be the
first good attempt at doing so.

I wouldn't say labels are widely used, Gmail is still really the only provider
doing them I know of. It's just that that one provider is a monopoly.

------
StreamBright
I am doing the same. Chrome was the hardest move but Safari got much better
recently and 90% of the websites are working perfectly only few exceptions.
Has anybody tried Amazon Workmail yet? I would be interested in the
experience.

~~~
the_duke
If the point is to get away from large, data hungry corps than going to Amazon
would be a funny choice.

~~~
StreamBright
Remind me again when Amazon was tracking me on every single website what I am
visiting. Amazon's business is not primarily driven by ads and massive data
collection. Google is an ad company with some distraction products like
Android and Gmail so that they can collect more data and track you better.
Amazon's revenue comes from the web store by selling goods and from AWS
providing IT cloud services. I am not sure how could you equate Google and
Amazon.

~~~
propogandist
Amazon is in the ad-biz and they're already near the top of the pile [0].
They're in the silent data gathering phase. All the data they have from 1)
eCommerce 2) device like Firestick/kindle/alexa 3) apps like Audible 4) retail
(wholefoods) and all their other operations can be combined (if not already
governed by a single privacy policy) to leapfrog any competitor.

As you say, they are not dependent on their ad business, but they are making a
lot of money from it. Expanding operations to improve profits is a no-brainer
and they can existing distribution networks like AWS to have an extra edge.

[0 ][https://digiday.com/marketing/amazon-ad-
revenue-2-2b-132-per...](https://digiday.com/marketing/amazon-ad-
revenue-2-2b-132-percent/)

------
jumbopapa
What are your guys thoughts on using Android? I really do prefer it to iOS,
but the urge to de-Google has me seconding guessing my OS choice. I've thought
about using LineageOS or something, but from what I understand is many people
do not like using it without Google Play services enabled.

~~~
japanoise
I had the same thought. I guess it depends on what one actually uses the phone
for. For me at the moment that makes me (somewhat) tied to the play store,
since the keyboard app I use and several language learning apps are play-store
only (not on f-droid)

~~~
jumbopapa
What keyboard app are you using? I should probably quit using Gboard, but its
been the best I've tried.

------
mjrpes
More and more people are using Google docs instead of Ms office. How do you
get away from having a Google account to edit a shared doc that another
company or consultant had shared with you? Keep a dummy account just for these
instances?

~~~
Cthulhu_
> More and more people are using Google docs instead of Ms office.

Source? I haven't heard much about this space in a long time now, and due to
that I get the feeling that it's kinda meandering.

~~~
mjrpes
Totally anecdotal. Should have been clearer on that. When we are working with
a consultant or someone else in a sharing context, Google docs is practically
assumed.

~~~
londons_explore
Google docs is the only semi-good real time-collaborative spreadsheet and word
processor.

It isn't even very good, or have many features, but still seems to be the
best.

In my opinion, the area is ripe for disruption, but I suspect nobody wants to
spend their life re-reinventing the word processor in javascript.

------
stojano
Cool... Congratulation. This is a project for me as well, which started two
months ago. Still moving the drive files and re-registering all accounts where
I used @gmail.com and my domain email. It's a pain after 16years. Everyday
something pops up which I didn't consider. I'm doing it with own server
(hetzner) and protonmail.

------
ionised
I de-Googled completely a few years ago and it's nowhere near as difficult as
people think.

The initial switching of accounts can be tedious, but it's a one-time job, and
there are alternatives all all Google's services out there (some better than
Google's offerings).

Personally the dreaded 'convenience hit' was temporary for me.

------
agnelvishal
"If it's not open source, it's not safe" \- Richard Stallman.

DuckDuckGo is not open source. DuckDuckGo says they don't track but you never
know.

Let me give you a trivial example.

Bill Gates wrote the program for seat allocation for his school. He made sure
girls he liked sat near him. If Bill Gates had to submit the source code, he
could been caught. But he didn’t and his practice continues till date.
[https://www.businessinsider.in/Bill-Gates-and-Paul-Allen-
hac...](https://www.businessinsider.in/Bill-Gates-and-Paul-Allen-hacked-their-
schools-computer-to-help-Gates-meet-girls/articleshow/50856013.cms)

------
atombender
I have migrated away from Google for personal stuff, except for Maps, and I've
not found any alternatives for my use cases. I'm fine with Apple Maps or Waze
for general navigation. But I also use Google Maps for two things.

(1) Keeping track of my saved places. These are split into a bunch of lists:
Favourites, coffee shops, restaurants I want to try, general places I want to
travel, etc. (Because Google Maps' place system is an afterthought, I also
have to split it up by area: So I have "NYC coffee", "Berlin coffee", etc.,
otherwise the list view becomes impossible to use, ugh.) Apple Maps allows you
save "favourites", but that's all. My ideal app would let me easily manage
lists, add notes and photos and so on, and share the lists to collaborate with
people, and group things like Google Map's little-known "My Maps" feature.

(2) Keeping location history. I just want the ability to see where I've been,
going back forever, as a kind of automatic diary (where was I on July 4, 2016
again? Oh, that was that party). Google Maps is neat in that it magically
figures out what transportation method you used to travel, and uses your saved
places as a hint to figure out what location you were in at any given moment.
I don't want Google to have this data, of course. There's an iOS app called
Life Cycle which is pretty good (for example, it has a view showing all the
countries you've been to), but it's not fine-grained enough. Day One, an
actual diary app, only remembers your location history for 30 days or so.

Any tips?

~~~
robolange
I see people mention Waze frequently as a competitor or alternative to Google
Maps. It's useful to remind people that Google also owns Waze, so it's really
just another Google product.

------
bigbugbag
De-google-ify Internet: [https://degooglisons-
internet.org/en/](https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/)

~~~
PavlovsCat
Even just that image made my day. Probably started as a sketch in someone's
notebook, and I'm off to listen to "Bombtrack" now.

[https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/carte-
roman...](https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/carte-
roman-2014-2016.png)

------
scrumper
> explicitly Chrome-only

That’s a thing?! Web developers have already forgotten those ridiculous “Made
for Internet Explorer” badges and the mess that caused? We won that fight!
Wtf!

------
deanmoriarty
My main problem in getting away from Google is: who will protect my
email/phone accounts as well as Google does with GMail and Google Voice?
Sadly, those are the main means of authentication for my multiple financial
accounts (for most banks phone and emails are the only 2FA methods available).

I am not worried about the privacy issues, I'm mostly worried about Google
deciding to terminate my account for some reason. I'm also not worried about
getting locked out due to losing my 2FA secrets, since I backup them in
multiple places.

The obvious solution would be: buy my own domain and then connect it to
another email provider or G Suite, right?

However, now I have a point of failure that is my domain registrar and my DNS
provider, and I'm sure that even the ones that offer strong security (e.g.
Gandi with U2F) are more prone to getting successfully hacked than @gmail.com,
from both a technical point of view (e.g. attackers violating their systems
and change the DNS records for my domain) and social engineering point of view
(e.g. crafted support requests pretending to be me and begging to reset my
2FA).

------
3xblah
He mentions a number of "de-Google" measures.

Here is one he omitted: What if those running websites stopped treating
"Googlebot" as different from any other "bot"?

No more preferential treatment for Google.

What if websites made it as easy as possible for anyone to
download/copy/create a webcache like Google's (or even just a small cache of a
particular segment of the web that interests them).

Nothing would radically change and democratize the web faster. No need for
every web user to use the same search engine, believing it has a superior
cache. With preferential treatment removed, every search engine could have the
same cache of the web's public information.

We could have a content-based web instead of a location-based one. There could
be unlimited locations from which to retrieve any of the web's public content.
("CDNs" already hint at the effiencies of this approach.)

As another commenter points out, switching to DuckDuckGo is more or less
switching to Bing, which one might argue is just a copy of the Google webcache
(Microsoft did not build it from scratch).

------
dylan-m
I was doing my own, much lighter de-Googling, (also last week). I've been
really impressed by the amount of control you get with Fastmail. You can add
all the domains and aliases you want, including ones that forward to multiple
addresses, the filtering rules are very useful, and everything feels much more
transparent than Gmail.

I haven't moved all my stuff off Google, and I don't expect to, but I find it
really interesting how straightforward it is to move PIM stuff to other
services. Contacts, calendars and mail really haven't changed much over the
years. There is some stuff missing, but it's refreshing being able to add
features by choosing the right software (or, heck, fixing it myself) rather
than hoping for Google's unlikely mercy.

(Granted, I found this notion harder to stomach until they killed Google
Inbox, at which point it became clear they're going all in on not bothering).

------
romanovcode
> I’ve debated deleting the @gmail.com e-mail address, but I think it’s wiser
> to keep it and essentially squat the username lest someone else take it over
> and cause me trouble down the line.

No need. The google does not allow to register email addresses that was
already deleted.

~~~
bluehatbrit
For now, and it's likely they won't change it, but if you hold onto the
account at least you can be sure it won't go to someone else any time soon.

------
auiya
I submit that you did not, in fact, "de-Google" your computer usage. Not
entirely at least. You may have reduced your usage of a handful of their core
services, but until you're running every device you use through a tunnel that
completely filters out their entire IP space like this person[1], you haven't
truly discovered just how deep they have their tendrils into your every day
Internet usage (fonts, analytics, ads, GCP, etc).

[1] - [https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-
screwed-u...](https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-up-
everything-1830565500)

------
lelima
I'll recommend before deleting everything, download all your data, or at least
everything that google have stored, you can do it here [1].

If you're in Europe you can apply the Right to be forgotten, implement that
can be a real pain (data engineer here), link for the template[2].

[1]:
[https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en)
[2]: [https://gdpr.eu/right-to-erasure-request-form/](https://gdpr.eu/right-
to-erasure-request-form/)

------
mesaframe
I think deGooglying is easy but less important than stop using Facebook
services yourself. As in case of Facebook you have to make your family stop
using Facebook services before it can really make an effect

------
sweetp
I de googlified over a year ago, but just realised I was still serving some
fonts for my site via google... I'm totally happy to be "mostly" google free
now.

I still need my hit of youtube... :(

------
mattkevan
I de-Googled as much as possible last year. It was surprisingly painless as I
already used custom domain. Gmail to Soverin, GFonts to self hosted, GA to
Clicky, Drive to iCloud/iWork etc.

Haven't yet managed to give up Google Maps as I still don't fully trust Apple
Maps for driving directions. Although the way GMaps refuses to save locations
without search history turned on is seriously annoying, and a dark pattern to
boot.

All other Google products, like YouTube, I refuse to use while signed in.

------
scaasic
Does anyone have recommendations for a good, privacy-focused domain registrar?
All of mine are on Google at the moment but I'd like to switch away.

~~~
mikro2nd
[https://njal.la/](https://njal.la/)

/me: No affiliation with them.

------
coryfklein
> Why go through all this trouble? I’ve grown increasingly concerned this past
> year with how much access Google has to our lives. They are the world’s
> biggest advertising company and they have access to most of our web browsing

I come across this sentiment all the time, but serious question: why does this
bother people?

Does anybody have practical examples of real harm being done that would have
been prevented by deleting Google?

------
zelon88
I wrote an article with some other ways to unGoogle [1]. I still intend to
revisit Part II but self-hosted email kicked my ass. I'm open to suggestions
though.

[1] [https://www.honestrepair.net/index.php/2018/07/23/un-
google-...](https://www.honestrepair.net/index.php/2018/07/23/un-google-your-
life-part-i/)

------
paride5745
I almost finished de-google-fy my digital life as well, but I really can't
fully leave Youtube, there is simply too much good content there.

~~~
zuron7
If you want to just avoid some of the tracking and logging, you could use an
app like NewPipe which will stream only the video from youtube. I wonder if
there's anything on the same lines for the PC.

~~~
paride5745
I watch mostly from the PC (I'm old school I guess), so NewPipe does not work
for me :/

------
deevolution
I think the pendulum is slowly but surely on it's way back towards
decentralization. More and more people are getting increasingly concerned
about the explotative behavior and control these mega corps have. An enormous
amount of progress still needs to be made in terms of viable alternatives,
increased awareness by the general masses, and easier accesability for
adoption.

------
Fudgel
Is there a service that will let you upload a video and then it cross posts it
to your YouTube & PeerTube & Vimeo etc.? - similar to those apps that can
cross-post a social media post to your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.

I like the idea of moving away from Google, but I also think it might be good
(in terms of content) if you could post to many platforms instead of one.

------
tfmatt
How did you change the two factor authorization codes from Google
Authenucator? I think they are needed for crypto sites like Kracken.

~~~
Bogdanp
I never used Google Authenticator. Instead, I use 1Password's 2FA
functionality.

~~~
bubblethink
Not a great idea to combine your first factor and second factor in the same
place.

~~~
ggm
Backup codes and then the protection is against illegal SMS porting which is a
social engineering attack hard to otherwise defeat. Your phone is fulfilling a
different function and yes it does collapse both factors onto one device but
the primary risk wasn't loss of phone, it was weak password and no variant
second factor and then porting attacks on SMS.

~~~
bubblethink
I didn't understand the point your are making. I'm referring to the overall
attack surface area of apps like 1password (which I think also have browser
extensions ?). TOTP is better than sms, but why put it in the same app as your
password ?

~~~
ggm
You have to ask yourself what's the primary threat. Yes,the point in strong
sense of a second factor is a fully independent test. But the actual threat it
mostly protects against is credentials threats. Not loss of devices or
compromise of a keystore. SMS as second factor is way way worse because of the
porting problem. Otp inside 1password is a compromise but it protects against
the primary threat.

If you crypt your disk and use a good passphrase or a long pin and passphrase
on a phone you are not that badly exposed.

------
OJFord
> I started by moving all of my websites off of Google App Engine and onto a
> dedicated box that I had already owned. That was straightforward enough.

That surprises me, that it was straightforward, I haven't used GAE for some
time, but when I did it was python but with a custom ORM etc. - you couldn't
just use anything.

~~~
Bogdanp
It was easy for me because I had been using GAE as a fast/free static website
host. None of the sites that I moved were dynamic.

~~~
tzfld
>dedicated box

What kind of dedicated box are you referring to?

~~~
Bogdanp
One of these: [https://www.online.net/en/server-
dedicated/pro-2-m-ssd](https://www.online.net/en/server-dedicated/pro-2-m-ssd)
. I had it for a while and wasn't using it for much.

------
pradn
While I admire the author's choice, individual actions, even when considered
as a whole, are not going to fundamentally change things without regulation or
other higher force pushing against a company's practices. Which has more of an
effect - fuel efficiency standards or people choosing to buy a hybrid?

------
numbers
This is great to hear! I forget exactly where it was posted but a journalist
attempted to do this and she was not as successful as you.

I started the process, but it’s going very slowly. Mostly because I didn’t
want to leave Gmail. But since you mentioned the 1Password truck, I will try
that. Great post!

------
tombert
I've moved all my stuff off of Google infrastructure...except YouTube. I tried
using streaming services and the content just isn't there.

I really don't know how a company or system will be able to steal the traffic
from YouTube...it seems like it's too big.

------
close04
> I’ve made it forward and delete any new mail it gets to @defn.io

Deleting doesn't do much, by that time Google already gobbled up all they
needed. You'll get the real benefit when the trickle of emails to that address
dries up.

------
sudo_rm
Does anyone have a good alternative to Google Maps? I recently purchased a
Nexus 5X and installed LineagosOS with no Google Services. The one thing that
I am having trouble with is finding a good navigation application.

------
kerng
Interesting enough for me, I degoogled around 2005. And just now I have to use
their online office tools and mail. Its horrific experience. (1) gmail is ugly
and unproductive- not even possible to attach another mail to an email,
seriously? (2) Calendar - omg, what is this. Its clunky, invites are
unreadable and difficult to parse. Want to send a quick note that you are
running late? There is no mail integration with the calendar... (3) Sharing -
everyone over shares documents, the UI encourages, sometimes even silently
grants powerful permission to others. So people have access to things they
shouldn't- this is a real security issue in my opinion. (4) list goes on...

I really never thought I would miss Microsoft Office, but GSuites really makes
me miss Office.

~~~
hnnh44
1\. This is easily done, both on free and gsuite (paid) depending on how you
want to implement it. I have multiple Gmail accounts with dozens of emails
attached to each. Multiple configuration options.

2\. I've never used a calendar outside of Google, and avoid it where possible,
but find Google's calendar easy.

3\. I think this is a great feature. I use it to collaborate on tons of
things, with the understanding that it's not 100% secure, and acting
accordingly. Maybe it doesn't suit your particular use case... and that's
fine. It doesn't mean it doesn't work great for other uses.

^ all of that considered, I still agree fully with the original article. I've
taken a few steps to have working backups and have fallback plans but having
an account closed would still be disastrous.

------
leemailll
For me the hardest part is other accounts associated with an old email
address. I’m also moving away from google, but it is tiring to change accounts
associated with gmail address to a new one

~~~
r3bl
Third party email services have an import feature and you can set up
forwarding of all emails from Gmail to your new address.

That alone allows you to make a move today (from my experience, it takes less
than an hour), and then you can move your accounts as you go one by one.
You'll probably get rid of a bunch of accounts in the process as well.

------
addajones
When everyone in the comments mentions Gmail are you referring to @gmail.com
switching or GSuite? Two different policies. Just curious why people don’t
consider it an option.

------
agnelvishal
I am making an open source alternative to Google news at
[http://www.condense.press](http://www.condense.press)

------
acd
Bye bye Google Bye bye Facebook Bye bye private surveillance state by
advertisement companies selling private information for profit

------
muvek
Your site is really performant Bogdanp. Mind me asking if you use a paid host
or something like netlify?

------
ttty
Be very careful if you somehow lose your phone number... You might lose your
Gmail account completely.

------
kentiko
I don't know how to quit Gmail. Any suggestions?

~~~
robjan
Buy [yourname].com on Gandi. Comes with two 2GB mailboxes or 50GB for
something like $1/mo. Forward your GMail to your new address.

Then stop entering your old email address anywhere. If you notice yourself
typing your old address, migrate the account to the new one. Eventually all
the accounts that you care about will be moved over.

~~~
Leace
I agree with that strategy. I was using @gmail.com since 2007 and just setting
up new e-mail on new domain and using it was enough to reduce old @gmail.com
traffic to max 1 new e-mail per week.

------
hajderr
welcome! Have you tried Protonmail instead?

------
sureaboutthis
> While I don’t believe that folks working at Google are actively trying to do
> harm

This is my issue with all these de-Googling articles. In what way has anyone
had harm put on them by anything Google has done?

Ignoring technical glitches where one has lost email or docs files and
similar, or legal issues the user got themselves into, what harm has Google
caused to anyone?

~~~
justinclift
> Ignoring technical glitches where one has lost email or docs files and
> similar, or legal issues the user got themselves into, what harm has Google
> caused to anyone?

Apart from the several times they've been fined in the EU and various other
countries for (summarising here) slurping data, lying about deleting it,
favoring their own services, and so on?

From a very quick online search:

* [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/30/google_slurp_ok/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/30/google_slurp_ok/)

* [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/technology/eu-google-fine...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/technology/eu-google-fine..).

* [https://variety.com/2019/data/global/google-fined-57-million...](https://variety.com/2019/data/global/google-fined-57-million..).

Of course, such fines (etc) are subject to potential change over time because
lawyers.

Then there are the many reports of people demonstrating novel things to them
during interviews and/or potential-partnership intro's, later on finding out
Google has ripped off the idea(s).

Or were you more wanting to ignore that stuff, and instead are asking about
Gmail specific things?

~~~
sureaboutthis
Nothing you listed shows any harm put onto every day users of their services.

~~~
PavlovsCat
The original criterion was "harm", and you asked if harm had been put on
"anyone". The issue you claim to have with "all these de-Googling articles" is
resolved, whether you acknowledge that or not.

~~~
sureaboutthis
You still have not stated any harm caused.

~~~
PavlovsCat
If you clicked the links, you may have noticed the second one was broken, as
is the one to the "rap sheet" linked in the article of The Register. However,
easy to find:

[http://googleopoly.net/wp-
content/uploads/pdf/Googles_Rap_Sh...](http://googleopoly.net/wp-
content/uploads/pdf/Googles_Rap_Sheet.pdf)

Take your pick. I chose this (you have to copy and paste the shortened URL and
paste it)

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/google-caught-
pi...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/google-caught-pilfering-
kenyan-business-directory-in-sting-operation/)

> "We were mortified to learn that a team of people working on a Google
> project improperly used Mocality's data and misrepresented our relationship
> with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites. We've already
> unreservedly apologized to Mocality."

So where you see no harm at all, Google management is "mortified" by what
employees had done. I guess a potential out would be trying to split hairs
about what constitutes "Google". Not that _every_ one of these stories ends
with "oh no, what did these rascals do while unsupervised?", but for the ones
that do, you could try that.

~~~
justinclift
Oops, bad cut-n-paste on my part there. The links should have been:

* [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/30/google_slurp_ok/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/30/google_slurp_ok/)

* [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/technology/eu-google-fine...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/technology/eu-google-fine.html)

* [https://variety.com/2019/data/global/google-fined-57-million...](https://variety.com/2019/data/global/google-fined-57-million-in-france-for-breach-of-data-protection-rules-1203113722/)

------
fxfan
Outlook online now has labels (categories) and skype chat (that works) built
in online. The spam filter sucks for me though.

------
Zelmor
Switching from one email service to another instead of self-hosting, isn't he
just trading a cow for a cattle?

~~~
detaro
IMHO, the key is using your own domain. It's fine to outsource the actual
running of a mail server to professionals if you can freely choose who that
is, and switch if your opinion changes, self-hosting being one option.

~~~
trumped
There's a privacy tradeoff in using your own domain for email.

~~~
detaro
That's true, and I personally keep some "unbranded" e-mail accounts for those
cases, even if I can't move those.

You also add a potential weak point in that not only your e-mail account, but
also your registrar/DNS accounts could be compromised.

------
nailer
I second Fastmail. GMail is 6MB now according to devtools, Fastmail is about
half a meg. The latency in Gmail using any non Google browser makes it
unusable.

~~~
flixic
I've recently moved away from Fastmail (been a paying client for 5+ years) to
Mailbox.org. The Australian Assistance and Access bill scared me off.

~~~
ThePhysicist
I like mailbox.org but they also do not operate in a legal void and can be
forced to hand over your data to law enforcement. Recently there was a ruling
by the federal constitutional court
([https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemit...](https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2019/bvg19-007.html))
which clarified that providers don't have the right to ensure
anonymity/untraceability of their users by technical means and are required to
implement surveillance measures when asked to by a court. It does not mean
that they need to track users indiscriminately though.

That said I still prefer having my mail hosted by a "normal" company located
in my country of residence, as it would probably be much easier for me to get
hold of them legally if they e.g. decide to delete my e-mail account or revoke
my access to it.

------
abhij89
Great. Congratulations.

> (62.5% market share – although given the amount of broken websites (some
> explicitly Chrome-only!) I’ve found since switching to Firefox.

There is a reason why this percentage is high. Other browsers suck, firefox
for me takes forever to start and don't get me started about how long it takes
to load a website. It has been copying chrome with it's last few updates but
still way too far. I would happily switch to an alternative to chrome which is
equally good or atleast is near it but there aren't any I believe.

~~~
bluehatbrit
What are you running on? I'm not saying you're wrong at all, but I've not seen
any startup or load time differences on my macbook or win 10 desktop. If
anything firefox is a bit faster and consumes less memory on my macbook.

~~~
abhij89
windows 7 professional, 8gb ram

