

How I Learned to Live Google-free - ssn
http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/how-i-learned-to-live-google-free/

======
simonsarris
I think this is a little silly because a lot of the fruits from the google-
tree have already been reaped by the author.

Its not particularly hard to live google-free _now_ , now that you know all of
the places you want to go on the internet and have many good Google-
alternatives.

Because you're already aware of wikipedia, and allrecipes, and reddit, and BBC
news, etc, etc.

All of the fine websites you enjoy however were almost all once learned about
from Google Search or else someone who used search.

Had you not had any contact with Google Search or the people who used it in
the first place from 2001-2011, you'd probably still think the internet is a
trite place where there's not much to learn.

And presumably if you stopped using Google Search now and there were no good
search alternatives, you'd miss out on a lot of good sites that will be
developed between 2011 and 2020.

Luckily for the author, search is a booming field today. It's true that Google
isn't any better than the other options available _today_ , but when you were
doing most of your fledgling searching for good content sites back in (say)
'02-'06, it was there and you benefited massively.

In this way I kind of think the article is essentially saying "It is easy to
live without parents once you're already an adult." Trivially true, but
greatly mis-understanding of the importance that his search-parents had on
him.

~~~
protomyth
"Because you're already aware of wikipedia, and allrecipes, and reddit, and
BBC news, etc, etc. All of the fine websites you enjoy however were almost all
once learned about from Google Search or else someone who used search."

That's going a tad bit far. Many of these sites have promotions outside
search. I am pretty sure the BBC didn't need Google to help people find their
website. There was a time before Google and the web existed.

~~~
siphr
I agree, if you hadn't said it I would've. Other search engines existed before
google. There were other ways to walk the net be it not that fast or somewhat
accurate.

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JCB_K
For me it goes like this:

-I don't like the fact that my services are so scattered out among different companies.

-I start moving stuff to 1 service.

-I get intensely excited about the integration.

-I get paranoid about Mogul Company X having all my data.

-I move parts of it away.

-Repeat.

[slight exaggeration]

~~~
__rkaup__
I think there needs to be some sort of common API among all these web apps
that lets us store our data wherever we like. The way they just assume we want
to keep our data on _their_ server, I think, is ridiculous.

~~~
Stwerner
I don't think we can expect all the different service providers to agree on a
standardized API, but that doesn't mean it wouldnt make sense for someone or
group of someones to take up the cause of creating a standardized API for a
category of services and maintaining the connections to all of the different
providers.

------
yaix
Why would I want to live "Google free"?

Compared to other companies who collect similar amounts of data, G has (as of
yet) behaved quite well.

If I don't want AdWords or Analytics tracking, I can redirect their domains to
127.0.0.1 (which I do for Analytics).

~~~
phlux
Can you post a list of your /hosts/

~~~
dspace
Here's the ultimate hosts file.

<http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/>

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lyudmil
Unpaginated link:

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/how-i-learned-
to-l...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/how-i-learned-to-live-
google-free/0)

~~~
mhb
Or:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2636894>

------
eddieplan9
It's amazing how things have changed about Google. I still remember the day
when Google released GMail, and the /. crowd were talking about how Google
wanted and needed to make its product(s) more sticky since switching search
engine was considered to be painless and that would put Google in a very
vulnerable position. Now Google has grown to be so sticky that people start
writing about how to live without it.

I am not fond of many things Google is doing, but have to admit it has come a
long way in the past 7 years.

~~~
joebadmo
I think it's relatedly interesting that Google is still the canonical search
engine, too, despite the non-stickiness of search engines, to the point of
simply being synonymous with search.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Search is sticky because the cost of trying another service is high while the
benefits are (seemingly) quite low. For another search engine to supplant the
notion that google = search they need to not only beat google in search
quality, but do so significantly enough that others will _immediately_ notice.

~~~
joebadmo
Can you explain how the cost of trying another service is high? If you hear
about another search engine that's supposed to be better, it seems easy enough
to try it for a few searches or compare results. Seems like plenty of people
tried Duck Duck Go and others, but they simply weren't better.

The other way to beat google at search is to disrupt/obviate the search market
the way that the social networks are purportedly trying to do. Which I'm
entirely skeptical about.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
The cost is the feeling you get when you bring up a Bing search that doesn't
have what you're looking for and thinking that Google probably had _exactly_
what you wanted. It's the unknown factor: what am I missing by not using
Google?

To overcome this psychological disadvantage a search engine has to do a
significantly better job. Here's how they could succeed: if you search for
"Italian restaurant" and the first result becomes your favorite restaurant.
Then your search for "indie music" introduces you to a new site that you visit
daily. If you can provide the user with 3 or 4 of those types of wow
experiences it can have the effect of changing the psychology of "yeah, but
what does Google return?".

Here's the wrong approach: Blekko. Blekko's basically saying "we give up, we
can't interpret your query so we're going to ask you to do the heavy lifting
for us. We'll index and rank your opinions". You're not going to convert
people by making it harder to do searches.

------
benbarber
Instead of replacing Google services with other online services, I would
prefer an approach that replaces them with free (as in speech) software I can
install on my web own server.

I don't think Google is evil. But I would like more control over the
information they currently caretake for me.

~~~
andrewcooke
well, you can do this with email to some extent. i was concerned about my
reliance on google, but didn't find any other search engine as good (i use
google a lot for debugging and related technical work). so what i did was:

\- use the "disconnect" app to make my google searches more anonymous
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jeoacafpbcihiomhla...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jeoacafpbcihiomhlakheieifhpjdfeo)

\- install my own web server. i use procmail for filtering, with all email
stored in imap directories. then i use mairix for searching
<http://www.rpcurnow.force9.co.uk/mairix/> . finally, i read email with the
mutt client.

that works surprisingly well. mairix is awesome once you get used to it (you
call it from the command line - or by pressing "!" in mutt - and it populates
a maildir directory, so you can see the result in the mail client; it's also
fast - uses an index database for speed). and i can read mail remotely over
ssh (i use a free aws instance with an ssh tunnel to provide external access -
my isp's modem does not accept incoming connections).

configuring email in linux has gotten much easier over the years - yast in
opensuse pretty much does everything you need these days.

------
Legion
The work of the Data Liberation Front team is one of the big reasons I'm
willing to use Google services in the first place.

I appreciate not having my data held hostage. Google isn't perfect but the DLF
team represents an effort to continue to improve, and they appear to make good
progress.

------
BlazingFrog
Anybody else tempted to operate their own "cloud"?

I'm waiting for OS X Lion Server to be released to install it on my home
server (really just a mac Mini running 24/7 next to my router). Since most of
my sharing (calendar, docs...) is between my wife and myself, it seems doable.

I'm just not sure that iCal, Mail and the file sharing features will be
adequate enough to replace Gmail, Google Calendar and Docs.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
Does anything like Exchange (but free and preferably open source) actually
exist?

~~~
switch007
Check out Zimbra.

~~~
BlazingFrog
Do you have any personal experience with Zimbra? Isn't it too feature-rich,
and thus overly complicated, for home use?

~~~
patrickgzill
You will want to run it in a VM to separate the service from the rest of your
system, if possible.

It needs very little CPU but, should have about 2GB of RAM due to a big Java
component, and because it periodically kicks off programs to clean things up
every few minutes.

A bit of a pain to set up, but once set up it works quite well. It might have
too many features - if you want something a lot simpler, look for "qmail
toaster" or a good guide to setting up Postfix.

------
mhd
I could probably switch to DuckDuckGo without much trouble. I could definitely
switch to a newsreader, although I'd miss syncing. Still, might be some other
service that does it or it's even possible to hack something together myself.

But Gmail? That's the tough one, I really like the interface and it seems
_every_ competitor tries to look like a desktop client.

Having a hosted Emacs might be an option (RSS reader/highly customized GNUS).
My paranoia/principle level isn't high enough for that right now, though.

~~~
jamesteow
Re: E-mail

That's the thing that annoys me the most about Yahoo.

I don't want a sluggish, UI heavy e-mail client. I want minimalism without in-
browser tabbing.

~~~
mhd
For me it's the conversation views, the shortcuts and the labels -- and
search, of course. You're right, neither yahoo nor gmx.com seem to get it,
never mind how "polished" they got their HTML outlook clones.

------
pessimizer
It's become more and more important for me personally to be google free over
the last couple years, and I largely am, but DuckDuckGo only gets me about 80%
on getting free of relying on their search, which is my main paranoiac worry.

The problem with getting off of Google search is that it is such an
_excellent_ product. When I want to dig hard, I can't help but go back.

------
pyre
All Pages version: [http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/how-i-learned-
to-l...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/how-i-learned-to-live-
google-free/0)

------
pbreit
More interesting for me is now living Microsoft-free.

~~~
city41
Why is this more interesting for you? I have found living MS free nowadays to
be extremely easy. It's not even a conscious effort for me, I simply haven't
found an MS product that is the best in its class (or at the very least, best
for me). With the exception of the Xbox 360, I do still use that regularly.

~~~
zem
ie/windows-plugin-only websites, for one

~~~
Tichy
Which ones? Work related, I assume?

~~~
zem
no, mostly government sites that no one has bothered making cross-platform

------
wazoox
I'm using several different google user accounts for different services. This
feels safer, and allow easier separation of work and personal stuff.

About search engine replacement: DuckDuckGo is nice, but unfortunately works
only in a strict english-speaking setup. For any search in a non-english
languages, its performance lacks dramatically compared to google.

~~~
Tichy
Then again my main issue with Google search is that it forces me into a search
specific to my country (Germany). I know, I know, if I would just accept their
cookie, I would be able top change that. Without the cookie, not much luck.

~~~
warp
Does <http://google.com/ncr> not work in germany? (Or does that also require
the cookie?)

~~~
Tichy
I think it also requires the cookie. Also, to be honest I was too stupid to
get that configured in the Firefox search bar so far (couldn't figure out how
to do it I mean).

------
pieter
The only thing i still use my google account for is GoogleReader. I have
looked around a bit but never found a good replacement for it

~~~
Stuk
I enjoy Newsblur, <http://www.newsblur.com/> , and paid for it to support
Samuel

------
Tichy
Exporting Tasks might be easier now, as Google has recently announced an API
for Google Tasks. I haven't looked into it, though.

Would there be a market for a Tasks exporter? I'd enjoy throwing one together,
but I suppose there isn't real demand... :-/ (If you need one, you could pay
me in BitCoin).

------
djd
I really dont get why OP is so scared about eliminating the presence of all
google services? Some services might be bad agreed,but why ditch everything?
sounds paranoid to me. Replace chrome with firefox. whats the point?

~~~
swaits
Because he wanted to?

~~~
djd
But the reason behind it?thats what iam not getting.

~~~
protomyth
He made a personal choice. He explained it in the first 5 paragraphs.

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lurchpop
TL;DR table of alternate services: <http://min.us/lG4uE>

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zalew
what this story actually proves is that it's not hard to migrate your data
from google any time.

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jpr
tl;dr anyone?

~~~
jlind
page 3 has a short table about what services he switched to, how easy the
switch was, and how the new service compares.

------
lurchpop
gmail is a big ask. would be so rad if it was open-sourced and i could just
host myself with pop.

