
My divorce from Google - One year later - angusgr
http://www.itworld.com/software/350485/my-divorce-google-one-year-later
======
notatoad
So you've traded one big company for a bunch of other big companies? I trust
google with my data more than I trust Facebook or LinkedIn or Microsoft.

Google runs their own ad network (and it's generally an honest and upstanding
ad network, unlike some others). All that data they collect on you is for
their own internal consumption. If they ever sell their data, they are giving
their competitive advantage to their competitors - not going to happen. Other
companies are also logging and collecting every scrap of data that they can,
but they aren't consumers of that data. It just gets sold to the highest
bidder. I'd much rather have google tracking me and know where that data is
going, than have somebody else tracking me and never knowing where that data
is going to end up.

~~~
malloc2x
_generally an honest and upstanding ad network_

Unless you happen to be a small guy and fall on the wrong side of their
political beliefs: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5438797>

~~~
notatoad
That's not their political beliefs, that's their lawyers making a risk vs
reward decision. Why is everybody so quick to attribute things to malice when
they can be explained by simple pragmatism?

~~~
malloc2x
s/politics/<reason_of_the_day>/

To me the point is that when you start arbitrarily enforcing rules against
some people (small guys) and not others (big guys) it smacks of hypocrisy.
Maybe you can explain how it was just blind process -- it still stinks.

------
fpgeek
Reading his service-by-service comments paints a much less favorable picture
of his Google "divorce":

Search: Push (possible win with DuckDuckGo booleans, possible loss with
Craigslist search)

Mail: Push (mainly using own server, Yahoo vs Gmail not an issue).

Maps: Acceptable, but significant loss. ("Mapquest is ok. Yahoo! Maps are my
go-to" and "Yahoo! Maps UI isn't very good, but the maps are quite usable").

Music and Videos: Loss. Spotify covers music, Vimeo and DuckDuckGo search
covers some (most?) videos, but the overall process described is pretty
painful. Many alternative video sites are likely tracking him as well (despite
attempted countermeasures).

Images: Push. Happy using private Flickr and Shutterfly, no noted advantages.

Social Networking: Push. Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter (occasional) cover most
things. No indication of whether or not he reasonably matched his 3000 Google+
relationships.

GPS: Not used.

Google Translation: Loss. "Babelfish is ok. Others do well, too. None are as
good as I would like."

Apps: Not used / push.

So... depending on whether you break out Music and Videos and whether you
count Apps, that's three clear losses out of 7-9 services, with no obvious win
(other than the divorce itself). To me that doesn't look very good.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
I find Here.com to be better than Google Maps FWIW. Outlook.com to be better
than Gmail.

It's weird because product-for-product, Google has great web services but
their issue is that so much of the UI is dedicated to advertising that it
makes the overall experience worse. Here.com is owned by Nokia but there is no
indication of that apart from a tiny copyright notice in the bottom left of
the page.

~~~
gavinlynch
I've love to try Here.com, however their home page isn't even rendering
properly right now. They are serving a completely unstyled page that has
totally broken their maps component. I can't even see a map on the page..
There is no style, and apparently no behavior attached to a white page with
black text.

Is the internet trying to teach us a timely lesson with this broken site? :p
(semi-tongue-in-cheek)

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Hilarious, I was just using it before my previous post, continuous deployment
fail?

~~~
gavinlynch
looks to be back up :)

------
zimbatm
Seems pointless. Trading one hosted service with another doesn't really give
your privacy back. You might be able to split your profile in different silos
but what's the guarantee that the personal information won't be shared between
the different service providers ?

What we need is a way to be able to sell server "apps" in a way where they can
be monetized. Right now it's really hard to sell the application without
providing the service as well because they're too hard to install.

------
205guy
I find the number of Google "so-what" apologists rather striking in this
thread. Not saying the OP did it right or did the right thing, but as a life
experiment, it seems honorable. Personally, I find Google's omni-presence a
bit scary as well. I never adopted gmail (except as a throw-away address to
sign up with HN and other websites :-). The other service OP didn't mention is
Google Analytics: so I tell Google everything about my site, then I expect it
to broker ads for me honestly?

In addition to the personal tracking, I really agree with the following quote
from the OP:

"I find that Google and SEO and tracking have soiled the web in unbelievable
ways. Google has imposed a constraint on content through its ad business that
I can't get away from, because content is trying to adapt to Google so it can
be found, but especially because content becomes monetized in doing so-- to
the detriment of us all."

------
lazyBilly
I don't really see the benefit of jumping from Google just to submit your
privacy to the tender mercies of Facebook, Amazon, et. al, other than to say
you did it.

And punting on GPS with a simple "Oh, I prefer paper maps" is a trifle
disingenuous.

------
joebadmo
It's hard for me to take "Google divorce" seriously from someone who still
uses Facebook.

~~~
gcr
It sounds like it was a "google divorce" and not necessarily a "facebook
divorce." Are you advocating for a more broad "social networking divorce"?

~~~
pyre
I'm thinking that leaving Google due to privacy concerns, while keeping
Facebook seems... odd.

~~~
niggler
I suspect the author may not have read the Facebook terms of service

------
gavinlynch
Don't really see many items in the "Observations and Lessons Learned"
categories, as he titles them, it seems mostly focused on how quitting Google
makes him feel..

------
coolsunglasses
My additional recommendations:

Gmail -> business hushmail

Google Maps -> Bing Maps

GPS -> Use an actual GPS device or one of the iOS/Android maps that download
to your phone.

GChat -> This one is tricky due to being subject to network effects. Without
getting into hyper nerdy jabber or private IRC nonsense, I'd say just use OTR
and be done with it if the point is privacy.

Google+ -> meet people for lunch

Docs -> Zoho/Microsoft Office/Open Office.org/LibreOffice

Google Drive -> Dropbox, add encryption if you want. There are libre
alternatives if you want to set up your own fileserver with automagic sync.
I'm trying not to get too far out into left-field on this list.

~~~
pseut
I'd replace gmail and gchat with fastmail.fm (owned by Opera, although if
Facebook ever buys Opera...). You can run XMPP through fastmail's servers,
which lets you IM all of your gchat friends (for now at least). As has been
pointed out elsewhere, GChat's OTR is not the OTR protocol, so I wouldn't
count on it giving you any extra privacy.

And it should go without saying that you get your own domain name for the
accounts so that you can switch providers easily.

~~~
tdec
Is there any indication that FB plans to buy Opera in the (near) future?

~~~
MatthewPhillips
There were rumors last year that never materialized, I assume that's what the
parent is referring to.

------
glitchdout
And just in that webpage Ghostery blocked 16 scripts...

------
kyle_t
Thinking about how reliant I am on Google's services and how difficult it
would be to find comparable alternatives makes me very nervous. Gmail, maps,
drive, translate, search, youtube are all daily activities for me.

Sure I could replace drive with Dropbox but it is twice as expensive. I could
replace GMail with Outlook or Yahoo but so many of my colleagues, contacts and
friends get in touch with me through google talk. Plus none really compare to
GMail in terms of ease of use (although I've really started to dislike the new
compose feature).

The point is the individual pieces are probably replaceable, but no one even
comes close to having such a cohesive, integrated set of products. At this
point the best I can do is make sure I have an offline copy of as much as
possible and hope for the best.

------
Justonius
Personally, I just don't like to use Google because I think they are gaining
way too much power to circumvent fair competition in the market, and even too
much power over the lives of individuals. When I see google hardware devices
running google operating systems with google web browsers and an increasing
majority of people using them to almost exclusively access google web services
and run google software... I'm sorry, but it's just bad news.

No matter how ahead-of-the-curve google innovation can be, I just don't think
it's worth it to sell our souls to one company for the sake of convenience.

------
callahad
I've been pleasantly surprised with Fastmail.fm's new webmail interface, and
am currently in the process of switching away from Google. The one thing I
can't seem to find is a good replacement for Google Contacts or Google
Calendar. I'm currently set up with an account at fruux.com, which does hosted
carddav + caldav, but finding good clients for Linux has been more challenging
than I expected.

~~~
pyre

      | finding good clients for Linux has been
      | more challenging than I expected
    

What are you looking for a potential client to do? Like a Linux version of
Apple's iCal.app / AddressBook.app (i.e. standalone, more or less single-
purpose apps)?

~~~
callahad
More or less. It looks like my only options are Evolution or Thunderbird with
a pair of extensions (Lightning + SOGo Connector).

------
davidbanham
Given his reference to downloading apps from the Play store and Amazon
store... it sure sounds like he's still using an Android device.

~~~
nilved
So what?

~~~
Karunamon
Play is a Google service. It kind of smacks of something beginning with "h"
and ending with "ypocrisy" when you still use a Google service after going
through the requisite self-flagellation to go out of your way to _not_ use
them, and then write a tone-deaf article on how awesome it is to do so.

It doesn't make much sense that someone would go through all this effort to
ditch a company and still use one of their flagship products. That would be
like me swearing off Apple and still carrying an iPhone.

~~~
nilved
Android and Play aren't synonymous. You can use Android without any trace of
Google on your system; and, since Android is open source, it can be verified
none of your information is being leaked.

------
craigc
I don't understand why everyone is so big on switching away from Google these
days. Some of my coworkers have been doing this as well.

Instead of giving away your personal information to one place, why not give it
away to 10 or 20 places?

I think it makes sense to use the best tool for the job. At least when it
comes to email, maps, and search I would argue that Gmail, Google Maps, and
Google are the best services by a long shot.

Not to knock Duck Duck Go, but it would drive me crazy to have to do multiple
searches or go through more results just to find something I could find on
Google in the first half of the first page of results.

Sure I would get used to it eventually, but it's not worth losing my own
time/productivity over.

------
adamors
I thought he switched to self hosted, open source alternatives. What a silly
article.

~~~
frozenport
There is more kinds of crazy than RMS. Also mail server seems self hosted.

~~~
niggler
RMS may seem crazy but there's a method to the madness. No one accuses him of
hypocrisy or internal inconsistency. The author, on the other hand, is
hilariously inconsistent (esp given his comfort with Facebook and the
"settlement" copout)

------
flavorcountry
Honestly, if they are going to get your information, who cares. Out of
millions and billions of the information they get, why would they be
interested about specifically _yours_. That's a big problem I have when people
bring up privacy issues. There are certain lines, but Google's not crossing
them. Sifting through your email to give you relevant advertising is harmless
- in fact, some of it is how they get information for a very powerful Google
Now.

------
cryptolect
For moving away from Gmail, I'd be interested in solutions that help you data-
mine ahead of time how many mailing lists/services/etc you have linked to your
address.

It might be easy to just "switch" one day away from Gmail, but it could easily
be weeks and months of manually unsubscribing/notifying/etc providers of the
new address to use.

~~~
pseut
Vacation autoresponder and automatic forwarding are godsends for that. Gmail
also has the sense to not autorespond to mailing lists.

------
ibudiallo
So the other services handle your data better ? Or is the just your
resolution?

------
hiddentaco
Ironically he is able to compare products/services......

------
nwh
I'm more curious what the author uses for his self-hosted email. None of the
IMAP servers I've seen so far are particularly stellar.

~~~
X-Istence
Third comment, but it bears repeating. Dovecot.

I use it with Postfix, using Dovecot's virtual domain support to host various
domains/mailboxes. Dovecot with sieve sorts mail server side. It's fast and
works incredibly well.

~~~
nwh
I like sieve. A lot.

------
ladzoppelin
Interesting how he did not list any Bing services as possible substitutes even
for things like images, email and translation.

~~~
runn1ng
I am not sure, but I think babelfish uses bing translation.

------
geekymartian
Email, Google search, I understand but Youtube, seriously? what can be so bad
about it? Google knowing that you're one of the 5 million ppl that viewed psy
video clip? Suggestions to what to watch next based on whay you've seen
recently?, yes that can be so annoying, I like to browse the entire video
library watching 500 videos I don't want to watch to find the right one. IMHO
That is just being too paranoid ...

------
joonix
I love Google. Its services are quite influential in my life and improve it in
many ways.

------
puma
What this person is trying to get away from requires not using the internet in
any way.

~~~
geekymartian
Agree, choose another profession dude.

------
yanw
That post is devoid of insight and full of inaccuracies such that it could
easily be mistaken for shameless attention seeking or just astroturf.

------
shadowrunner
I got sick of seeing everything Google all the time, so for a change of
scenery I went everything Microsoft. I even switched from Dropbox to SkyDrive
because of it's tight integration with the new Microsoft Office web suite,
OneNote and outlook.com.

Admittedly, I'm only changing one taskmaster for another, but overall the
change has been good, like an upgrade.

------
mani04
Maybe he can stop using computers and go back to stone age.

~~~
frossie
Maybe you don't agree with his motivations, but explain to me how using
DuckDuckGo (a startup with a fresh approach to search that only hired its
first employee in 2011) as opposed to Google (which has been around since the
previous millennium) is analogous to giving up one's computer and going back
to the stone age?

