
Ask HN: How have you left Google's services? - dhruvkar
Google seems to be more and more of a one-stop shop for me (and many others). There are privacy concerns, as well as concerns about data being available&#x2F;under your control for the long haul.<p>What have you done to mitigate this risk? If you&#x27;ve left Google&#x27;s services, what services have you replace, and how?<p>I rely heavily on Gmail, Search, Drive &amp; Photos. The main issue I have is making my data highly available and resilient at low&#x2F;no cost.
======
jstayton
[https://www.privacytools.io/](https://www.privacytools.io/) and
[https://prism-break.org/en/](https://prism-break.org/en/) are good places to
start. They list most (all?) of the major alternatives for the different
categories of apps.

On a personal note, it's definitely possible. I've done it without much loss
of convenience, which I think is the main drawback.

> The main issue I have is making my data highly available and resilient at
> low/no cost.

I think you'll find that most alternative, privacy-conscious services will
cost something, primarily because they're not able to profit off of your
personal data like Google and Facebook are. For me, I'm definitely willing to
pay for that value.

~~~
PaulHoule
+1 If you are not paying, you are the product.

The insistence that everything has to be free is materially harmful to
everyone who works in IT, software development, etc. You have Google on one
hand and Richard Stallman oon the other.

For $40 you can get full fat service from Fastmail with your own domain name,
which costs another $10 a month or so. That's pretty cheap.

~~~
_9MOTHER9HORSE
If you're paying $10/month for a domain name, you're paying too much!

------
Veratyr
Disclaimer: I haven't actually left Google's services but I have removed my
reliance on them. I might not be giving you the answer you want.

Most of my strategy relies on a home server (full disk encrypted), a server I
colocate nearby (also full disk encrypted) and backups.

Email: I use Gmail my own domain and regularly backup my email to my home
server. In the even that something happens to my Google account, there are
only issues for a few hours while DNS updates propagate.

Chat: After getting fed up with Facebook Messenger, I set up a hosted Prosody
server on one of my dedicated servers and use it to communicate with my wife
using the Conversations XMPP client for Android.

Photos: I auto sync photos from my phone to Google Photos and frequently
(through Google Drive) pull them back down to my home server. My home server
backs these up to Google Drive (unencrypted), Amazon Cloud Drive (encrypted)
and my colocated server.

Drive: The home and colocated servers give me a ton of storage to do whatever
I want with. I've never used a proper "sync" client however, so this isn't a
good idea for everyone.

Search: DuckDuckGo is pretty good and I use it whenever I don't want to use
Google for any reason.

Generally: I'm happy to use Google's services as:

\- They're convenient

\- Google operates in and is regulated in so many jurisdictions that I'm
confident it's no less protective of my privacy/data than any other US based
company

\- It's not going away any time soon

\- Tools like TakeOut make it incredibly easy to leave

~~~
tesmar2
How do you backup your email to your home server? Is it just an mbox dump via
takeout on a cron schedule? How would you restore it in the case of leaving
Google?

~~~
dhruvkar
[http://gmvault.org](http://gmvault.org)

Just used this to backup my inbox the other day. Compresses emails into
.eml.gz files. Also has an export option for other mail clients. Love that its
a Python package, Installable through pip.

~~~
tesmar2
Excellent! So you just put this into a cron job and it does incremental
backups?

~~~
dhruvkar
I've only used it once. According to the docs, you should be able to do a
"quick sync" which only gets the last 7 days.

Set up a cron job for that (after a full initial sync), and should be good to
go.

------
Socketubs
I'm using Fastmail instead of Gmail. Smartphone app is not really good but you
can use any other smtp/imap client. For android you can synchronize your
contacts with "CardDAV-Sync" (carddav is native for iOS).

Fastmail offer contacts and calendars too. Which have a really nice web
interface.

I'm still looking for a Drive/Photos alternative. Any advice?

~~~
jstayton
> I'm still looking for a Drive/Photos alternative. Any advice?

I haven't found any photo storage services that really sell the privacy-
conscious angle. That said, I'd trust
[https://www.smugmug.com/](https://www.smugmug.com/) more than Google,
Facebook, or anyone else.

For a vanilla, non-photo-specific storage service, there's
[https://spideroak.com/solutions/spideroak-
one](https://spideroak.com/solutions/spideroak-one).

~~~
dublinben
You should try hosting your own photos with GNU Mediagoblin.

~~~
jstayton
Looks good as a self-hosted option.

------
lettergram
Drive & Photos: Dropbox and WD Cloud[1] - similar privacy concerns, WD Cloud
works great on local network and I can ssh in to access remotely

Search - DuckDuckGo, it's not quite as good, but it works fine IMO

Gmail - Still use regularly, I may switch to Fastmail

The goal (for me), was/is to distribute who has my data. This will blur the
image of who I am, so to speak. My friends and I will also tag each others
faces in photos on Facebook - i.e. I tag myself as my wife, my wife tags me as
her. That way it'll screw with any automated process.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Diskless-Cloud-Network-Attached-
Stora...](https://www.amazon.com/Diskless-Cloud-Network-Attached-
Storage/dp/B01AWH05KK/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1471363383&sr=8-4&keywords=wd+cloud)

------
nawtacawp
I was a heavy Google user. My solution cost me some money.

-I bought a U1 rack used off craigslist and have it hosted in a local data center. -I installed ESXi on it.

made a few VMs -one runs pfsense and the rest of the VMs sit behind it -one
runs my email, contacts, calendars (mailinabox.email) -one runs my cloud
storage and private wiki -a few others running projects I'm working -each VM
is fully encrypted at boot up.

~~~
dhruvkar
This sounds like the real deal. So you're no longer using anything Google?

What did this cost approximately - the initial setup and the monthly
recurring?

~~~
nawtacawp
I'm using a Dell PowerEdge 1950 with a Intel Xeon 5345. 32GB RAM and 1TB HDD.
It cost me about $400 -- which I think was a good deal.

Then my only cost was the datacenter fees. Which runs about $50 per month --
includes 5 IP addresses and unl data.

Like I said though, I use it for multiple things, not just
e-mail/contacts/calendar/storage.

EDIT: I believe the server costs a lot less now.

------
Brendinooo
I'm a big fan of SmugMug. I wish they'd give a little more attention to their
mobile apps, but for $40/year I can store whatever I want on it, and I have a
lot of control over how I share my photos.

The company is as susceptible to NSA-type stuff as anyone, but I like that
they are a photo company, not a data company that happens to have a photo app.

~~~
jstayton
I agree. They don't sell the privacy-conscious angle as a feature like some,
but I'd certainly trust them more than Google or Facebook.

------
dyladan
Well no cost is a bit of a misnomer. Usually, unless you host your own, when
you don't pay in dollars you pay in privacy.

That being said, ownCloud is a great open source alternative to Drive (I host
mine on digitalocean which is just starting to introduce block storage but
amazon is an equally good option and very cost effective), Duck Duck Go is a
very good web search engine these days with privacy as a core value.

It really depends how you use Photos. The automatic face detection and
searching for people/events/things in your history is just about unparalleled
and is unlikely to be surpassed by a more privacy friendly option in the near
future. The reason for this is that these algorithms rely heavily on data
collection, which is diametrically opposed to privacy. If you are only using
it to backup/store photos in the cloud, ownCloud has similar functionality.

I have heard good things about fastmail to replace gmail but I have not used
it myself.

I know you didn't mention it but for chat Matrix is a fantastic option with
multiple options for open source clients. I use
[https://vector.im/beta](https://vector.im/beta) as a client to access
matrix.org but you could easily host your own matrix and/or vector server.

------
rvern
Nine steps road to privacy and freedom from Google and everyone else:

Step 1: Switch to DuckDuckGo.

Step 2: Create a openmailbox.org account. (Gives you a mailbox with IMAP and
POP3 access, but also an ownCloud account which replaces many of Google's
services. All free software, no tracking, and it's reliable.)

Step 3: Switch to a good GNU/Linux distribution that cares about your freedom
and privacy, like Fedora or Debian, and not Ubuntu.

Step 4: Use Mozilla Firefox if you are using another browser. All the other
major browsers are proprietary, browsers that aren't among the major ones
almost never support extensions.

Step 5: Install uBlock Origin and configure it to your liking.

Step 6: Install and configure the Evolution mail client with your
openmailbox.org account.

Step 7: Use Pidgin for chat. It supports (with plugins) all the chat
protocols, including the proprietary ones such as Skype, Facebook Chat,
Hangouts.

Step 8: Use duplicity to have encrypted backups of your home directory made
automatically to a portable hard drive or a USB drive.

Step 9: Use applications that run on your computer instead of web apps
whenever you can.

You now control all of your data, have all the services you had before but
running on your own computer and not on some third party's servers, use only
free software that you can trust, and are much harder to track online.
Congratulations!

~~~
ljk
> _Step 3: Switch to a good GNU /Linux distribution that cares about your
> freedom and privacy, like Fedora or Debian, and not Ubuntu._

why not ubuntu?

~~~
Nadya
This may help explain it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXnfa0H30L4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXnfa0H30L4)

Which I believe had to do with it's configuration of Unity (Ubuntu's default
DE)? (Can't watch the video ATM to confirm.)

Canonical (the people in charge of Ubuntu) have done things that the more
zealous advocates of user-first freedoms/privacy are skeptical about or have
caused distrust.

~~~
ljk
Ah I remember people complaining about Unity(which had Amazon search enabled
by default)

Any recommendation for another flavor that's more user-freedom/privacy focused
but still relatively stable?(I read somewhere Debian isn't good for personal
use since it's designed for servers, is that true?)

~~~
rvern
Debian is stable and good for personal use. All the major distributions can
usually be used on servers as well as for personal use. They are also all
stable as far as bugs are concerned (even the riskier rolling release ones),
though some distributions like Debian and CentOS use stability in a stronger
sense of not pushing any updates to the stable releases except bug fixes and
vulnerability fixes.

~~~
ljk
thanks!

------
ravenstine
The only Google services I use are its search and YouTube. I moved away from
Gmail, though I have throwaway Gmail accounts.

Email: Private server and domain

Chat: Facebook because few people seem to use anything else, let alone answer
their phones or emails. I otherwise hate it.

Photos: Keeping photos is overrated. I keep the few photos I take on a network
drive at home and rarely share anything with anyone. If it burns in a fire, I
wouldn't care very much. Yet still not worth being in the hands of some
company.

Drive: See above. If I need to share something, it's either through Email or
Box.

Search: Still mostly Google, but increasingly Bing as I feel like I get better
results(I suspect that Google is underhandedly trying to make the web more
"friendly"). Just type in some mean or evil phrase into both search engines.

Docs: I rarely have to write docs or spreadsheets. Google's online spreadsheet
is pretty good, but for a "document", I end up writing stuff in Markdown using
Dillinger.io.

Music: Most of the music and content I enjoy is free on YouTube.

Eventually, I'd like to leave Google all together. Changing search engines is
easy, but YouTube and Maps are near impossible to beat at this point.

------
lorenzhs
I moved my email to FastMail recently and am very happy with it. I still use
Google Search, Calendar (planning to move that to FastMail, too), and Photos.

My Gmail address is now a forward to FastMail, but I'm in the process of
changing it everywhere. Trouble is that lots of people have it in their
address book, so I'll never really stop getting emails to it.

Dropbox can replace Drive and Photos easily and quite well, I hear.

------
taprun
I've switched from Google's search engine to a combination of Bing and
DuckDuckGo (usually in browser incognito mode).

Google's results are increasingly full of low quality spam sites, so the
switch really wasn't painful at all.

I haven't left GMail yet, but I started using my own domain mail many years
ago. As such, that switch will be fantastically simple when I get around to
it.

------
jf
I moved my email to Fastmail (I love it!)

OneDrive for photos (I was a heavy Windows Phone user for a long time, it was
easy to set up and use)

My contacts are spread across Windows Live and Google (Again, because of the
Windows Phone)

I use DuckDuckGo for search (With the "!g" modifier when I think the results
could be better)

Dropbox for files without sensitive information, Tarsnap for files with
sensitive information.

------
conception
Fastmail users: The feature of gmail that seems unstoppable to me is server
side search. Using an imap client and doing client side searches with indexes
just isn't viable anymore on multi-GB mailboxes. Both the web and app versions
can "instantly" search all my mail, ever. How does Fastmail compare in regards
to that?

~~~
jstayton
Their web UI is extremely snappy. Definitely on par with Gmail's web UI, if
not faster.

I don't have tons of messages in FastMail — so take that into consideration —
but their web UI search seems very quick as well.

I haven't used their mobile app, so I can't speak to that.

------
seibelj
I always use Zoho[0] for email on new websites I start that need a custom
domain. It's the only web-based email provider I've found that is free for
custom domains and modern looking.

[0] [https://www.zoho.com/](https://www.zoho.com/)

~~~
dhruvkar
I used them too, but then moved all my domains to Google Domains, which has
free forwarding addresses - usually enough for most cases.

------
ShakataGaNai
I'm totally in the Google world and the idea of getting out is somewhat
appealing. However if I get out, I want to handle it myself. Fastmail seems
wonderful, but where can I find a project that provides similar functionality
that I can host myself? (And doesn't suck)

~~~
jstayton
A few people have mentioned [http://dovecot.org/](http://dovecot.org/)
combined with either [https://roundcube.net/](https://roundcube.net/) or
[http://www.rainloop.net/](http://www.rainloop.net/).

------
superboum
Personally, I've a server at home running Linux. If you don't want to run your
server at home, you can rent a server (Scaleway C1 costs ~3.5 euros / month
for 50GB SSD, Online.net first servers are at 10 euros / month for 1TB HDD).

To replace Google Drive, I'm using Seafile, which I find is a better
alternative than Owncloud (based on Python). Seafile has a mobile + desktop
client and can be used over webdav. And the killer features: Seafile handles
file versioning and encryption.
[https://www.seafile.com/en/home/](https://www.seafile.com/en/home/)

To replace Gmail, I've installed Dovecot + Postfix on my server. I'm using
Roundcube as my webmail. There is also Rainloop which is quite popular.
[https://roundcube.net/](https://roundcube.net/)

To replace Google Calendars / Contact, I'm using Radicale.
[http://radicale.org/](http://radicale.org/) . I've found some caldav/carddav
connector on the play store.

To centralize everything in one place, I'm planning a migration to Open
Xchange, an open source java software which handle your emails, your calendars
(with caldav support), your contacts (with carddav support), your files (no
more versioning or encryption however but support webdav) and you can even
edit your .docx and .xlsx in place. You have a mobile application. But it
lacks some documentation and some features are not open source, like IM or the
desktop client. [https://www.open-xchange.com/](https://www.open-xchange.com/)

To have a single account for every services, I've installed a LDAP server
(openldap).

To conclude, I try to use as far as possible open and standard protocols
(webdav, carddav, caldav, smtp, imap, ldap, etc.) as there is always a
software or a library to handle them.

And to replace Google Search, I'm using Qwant, or at least trying to.

~~~
tdkl
> To centralize everything in one place, I'm planning a migration to Open
> Xchange

Don't know if you know about SOGo, but my e-mail provider uses it and it works
quite nicely, it might be another solution to consider.

[https://sogo.nu/](https://sogo.nu/)

~~~
superboum
Thanks, the version 3 looks really promising !

I'm testing Open Xchange for a few weeks now, and I really like it. There are
lot of small cool features: remind an email in x minute, meeting organization,
OX Guard (a PGP module), the integration with Sieve, etc.

And that's not a secret, such solutions are not easy to deploy. I've spend a
certain amount of time writing my ansible script for Open Xchange - that's why
I'm not really motivated to try it on my server now.

If I find something in OX which prevents me from switching, SOGO will be the
next candidate.

------
y0ghur7_xxx
I have left all google services apart from search.

email: I run my own server. After the initial "reputation building" for my
domain, it now works reliably well.

calendar/files/photos/contacts: nextcloud on my home server. It's not really
on par with the google offerings, but it works well enough for me. And when I
need more storage I just get a 2TB usb disk off amazon.

play store: f-droid. It has everything I need. I understand that not everyone
might be happy with just the apps on f-droid, but I was bored with downloading
crappy games and uninstalling them after 2 minutes anyway. f-droid apps are
all well done, and I trust them not to invade my privacy.

------
prohor
Take a look on [https://www.privacytools.io/](https://www.privacytools.io/) ,
which lists alternatives in various categories. It doesn't include photos from
your list though.

------
apeace
Google gives you the option to download all your data stored on their servers,
across all Google products [1]. Unfortunately they do not give you an option
to _delete_ all your data, but most services have facilities for bulk-deleting
[2].

Every few months, I download a backup and then delete everything I can. This
is a good tradeoff for me: I get to use all the great Google products, but
they don't get to keep a permanent archive of all my data.

One more note: lots of people react to this with, "But what if you desperately
need an email from X years/months ago?". Two answers: 1) I've been doing this
for a couple years, and I've never needed an old email, and 2) I have the
local backup if it's something really important.

[1]
[https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout](https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout)

[2] [http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/clear-data-google-attempt-
regai...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/clear-data-google-attempt-regain-
privacy/)

EDIT: Formatting

~~~
jstayton
This is an interesting/creative idea. I've heard about people doing something
similar with Twitter and Facebook. While they want you to keep everything
forever, it's actually pretty easy to use them more ephemerally.

------
edlucas
I've recently been looking at Fastmail and Kolab
([https://kolabnow.com/](https://kolabnow.com/)) to replace Gmail and Google
Calendar. Kolab adds limited notebook and file storage functionality, but I
haven't found any decent reviews of the service.

Is anyone using Kolab who'd like to comment on how it's working for them?

------
ivan_gammel
I've left Google mostly for usability reasons. There's no reason to trust any
3rd party solution more than another one, so until I'll have my own hardware
in some secure data center in EU (I do not trust US hosting and networks now),
I'll choose what's more comfortable and reasonably secure.

Gmail -> moved my custom domains to Yandex Mail (personal), Outlook.com
(corporate), because usability of Gmail to me becomes worse and worse.

Storage + documents (never used Google services) -> OneDrive + MS Office 365
paid subscription

Music -> VK.com (finally they are making it legal by signing agreements with
labels)

Social Networks -> VK, Facebook (because friends are there)

Messaging -> Facebook, Telegram (because friends are there)

I'm still using Google search, but not 100% of time. Bing is quite good too.

------
jlksdjflkds
Search: [https://www.startpage.com](https://www.startpage.com) (free)

Mail: [https://www.posteo.de](https://www.posteo.de) (12 EUR/yr)

Contacts: posteo does CardDAV (included)

Calendar: posteo does CalDAV (included)

Chat: Signal (though not decentralised, the only service that seems robust,
trustworthy and usable by the not-so-technical (=friends)); (free)

Drive: Dropbox w/ partly encrypted content (currently GPG, but should move to
cryptomator or similar for convenience/scaling; Spideroak is not open-source
despite promising to become that for years now, don't see why to trust them);
(free plan)

Youtube: :( - impossible to replace, i guess

Maps: [https://www.openstreetmap.org](https://www.openstreetmap.org) on
occasion, mostly still G. Maps :(

also:

Desktop OS: Ubuntu (I don't see significant privacy concerns currently; also,
this is the only OS i would recommend to either browse-and-mail users or
interested and motivated friends)

Mobile: Still on OEM-Android; would switch to CyanogenMod if i could root
safely, see below (in future: CopperheadOS); using it with most G. Apps
disabled, NetGuard blocks all but G. Services (required for Play & Signal)

Browser: Firefox w/ uBlock, NoScript, Request Policy, HTTPS Everywhere,
Decentraleyes (hasn't been mentioned here?!), Random Agend Spoofer (disable in
reverse order if this seems excessive/redundant)

looking for:

Skype: good SIP client and especially server - anyone? :) (also non-SIP
alternatives...)

Mobile hw: good hardware (Nexus seems paradoxically logical to either get
serious updates or compatibility to projects like Copperhead/Cyanogen; maybe
also S. Galaxy?)

Mobile sw: open-source scripts to root above "good hardware"; open-source su
apps (phhusson's seems to be the only one outside CyanogenMod? and still in
rough beta)

------
siquick
One thing that really helped me stop relying on Google for search was when I
realised that I could precede any search on DuckDuckGo with `!g` if I didn't
find what I wanted on DDG and it would switch to encrypted.google.com

"!g my search term"

~~~
xeniak
Prefixing with _!sp_ will redirect your query to Startpage, which is
essentially an anonymous proxy for Google.

So Google will still get to log and analyse your search terms, but they will
be aggregated with all other users of Startpage - lots of noise.

~~~
siquick
good stuff, thank you

------
brudgers
To me, there are several classes of privacy concerns: those specific to a
particular company, those specific to third party data storage, those specific
to the internet as a whole. A good solution for an actual individual person
will be based on the weight assigned to each area and the convenience
tradeoffs. I mean Richard Stallman's approach works for him it seems, but I'm
not ready to unplug from the internet to that degree.

1\. Concerns over the company: Google, Microsoft and Apple are largely
fungible in terms of services and variation among their policies and other
business practices may make one better than another for a particular person.
For _me_ , I place more trust on Microsoft because I give more weight to the
alignment between a company's business model and _my_ interests and believe
Microsoft provides the best alignment with _my_ interests among the big three.
Someone else could easily and reasonably come to a different conclusion.

2\. The cloud in general: I like having important data on a 'disk' I
physically control. I'm all for the cloud as backup, but I don't want to be
locked in. I suppose I'm willing to trade a little continuous pain for
reducing the risk of great pain all at once. Anyway, the cloud as primary
storage often seems just like more work which is just like the work of
managing local resources again.

3\. The internet in general: Most of what I do is pretend I am beating big
data. But I silo logins: HN, Facebook, Linkedin, Gmail, all have their own
browser instance to reduce information leakage. The result is not so much
strict privacy as preventing my information from being the low hanging fruit.
Raising the cost of cross referencing my activity seems to reduce
'personalization' and a bit more 'anonymity' when surfing the web is the sort
thing I am interested in.

4\. As my data has accumulated, I've been less concerned over keeping it...I
really don't enjoy filing and record keeping and moving data from one store to
another. So I'm much more willing to delete old emails and documents...and new
emails and documents. In the past, I've had a tendency to over-estimate the
value of saving things.

Good luck.

------
greenspot
I use Dropbox instead of Drive and Photos.

Gmail is hard to replace because it's well integrated with other Google
services, in particular Google Apps with its own ecosystem.

Google Search is hard to replace because of the quality. Bing is ok but not
close in quality.

~~~
jstayton
> I use Dropbox instead of Drive and Photos.

For the privacy-conscious, Dropbox is saddled with the same pitfalls as Google
and Facebook, unfortunately.

> Google Search is hard to replace because of the quality. Bing is ok but not
> close in quality.

[https://disconnect.me/search](https://disconnect.me/search) used to show
Google search results, but it looks like Google has blocked it for the time
being.

I personally use [https://duckduckgo.com/](https://duckduckgo.com/). The
quality of results is definitely below Google, but I believe that'll only
improve as more people switch to them.

~~~
Socketubs
I agree that Dropbox is nearly same than Google for privacy but it can be a
first step to split your data between multiple companies instead of giving all
your data to Google.

I know it's totally not perfect, but is it logical?

~~~
jstayton
Yeah, I think that's a fair point, and can certainly be a logical step toward
increased privacy.

------
thinkxl
I have deleted most of my gmails, now I only have one because is the main
email where I have a lot of accounts signed up that I don't remember, when I
get an email from those services I change my email immediately.

Now I use [http://posteo.de](http://posteo.de) as my main email, any new
contact or new service I use this email. The only con is that I can't use my
own domain on this, but I don't really care.

The only thing that keeps me from closing all my google accouns is google
maps, for a person that sucks memorizing street names and locations this is
very useful for me.

------
rabboRubble
I went through the Google service manager:

Bookmarks -> Firefox sync plus manual downloads back ups Photos -> For online
albums, Microsoft OneDrive Reader -> Digg Reader Drive -> Dropbox and OneDrive
YouTube -> OneDrive and Vimeo

I'm still using Calendar, Gmail, Maps. I could migrate Gmail to Outlook, but I
haven't committed to that change. Not sure how I can replace Calendar and
Maps.

------
CaptSpify
Gmail: My own domain/mailserver, using dovecot and postfix.

photos: Piwigo

search: ddg

music: mpd and ampache

drive: I use svn/git repos that are hosted on my server

------
meira
My Gmail accounts became useless, and everything else killed gtalk (at least
for me). Only thing I still use a lot is search, which often lead me to two
places: stackoverflow or Wikipedia. I guess it won't take much time until I
stop google.

------
simplehuman
I have pretty much moved all my services to cloudron.io. It's not free but you
can pick and choose whatever apps you want. They are quiet responsive about
packaging any new apps.

------
theparanoid
For email, Yandex Mail is excellent. For search, DuckDuckGo is okay.

~~~
LeoPanthera
I'm not sure I like the idea of my email being hosted in Russia.

~~~
soyiuz
You are protected somewhat by their extra level of ineptitude and reluctance
to collaborate with North American / European authorities.

------
steaminghacker
I'm locked out of gmail, so i don't use it anymore. It's what happens when
they can't track you. "suspicious activity" they call it.

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MikeTV
Switched everything over to Microsoft, because Google is evil now and
Microsoft isn't. Will switch back in a few years when they trade places again.

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a_lifters_life
This is probably the 5th posting I've seen in a month or so. I struggle with
this problem as well. Looking forward to hearing peoples experiences.

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AdamN
People talk about DuckDuckGo as great ... but it returns the same garbage
results as Google.

I want results for a search where I can exclude those with a number of
cookies/js links that would have been blocked by uBlock (or similar) above
some threshold.

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hifumi
I use StartPage for search. Openmailbox for email.

