[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How to move away from Google
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Ask HN: How to move away from Google
A big chunk of my personal software suite comes from Google, mostly
Gmail, Gdrive and Android. I want to eventually move away,
especially gmail and drive. What are the alternatives that can be
used with expectation that they will remain active for at least a
decade ?
Author : rocode2
Score : 123 points
Date : 2022-03-30 19:21 UTC (3 hours ago)
| 4kelly wrote:
| Fastmail for email.
|
| I used to use syncthing to maintain backups and syncing, but
| eventually just gave into iCloud as a compromise. Setting up and
| maintaining syncthing on wife and kids devices became a pain.
|
| DuckDuckGo for search. Dropping down to google when I'm stuck.
| Honestly I've found google worse for technical topics due to all
| the junk websites that recycle content.
|
| You'll be fighting against the current trying to ditch google
| with an android phone! I'm sure it's possible though.
|
| A great benefit of de googling (and also dropping most social
| media) is that I am barely exposed to ads at all! It's is
| shocking using other peoples devices now ahah.
| throwaway67743 wrote:
| I really want to like ddg but it's just awful - not only are
| the results completely irrelevant but now it's started showing
| me russian language results, I'm in a country that uses the
| Latin alphabet.
| throwaway67743 wrote:
| I think though, the irrelevancy of results is worse as
| sometimes the Cyrillic results make sense once translated
| jppope wrote:
| try brave search
| victor22 wrote:
| Just use !g on your query whenever you wanna go to actually
| use google. Don't trade slightly better search for censorship
| and privacy invasion.
| Macha wrote:
| Google is catching them on the way down in my experience
| these days. I'm doing less and less !g, not because I like
| the DDG results, but because I'm just not confident in Google
| showing me anything useful either.
|
| This might be just a consequence of cutting the feed of data
| into Google to personalise from other sources, though.
| Perhaps people who've thought they've been equivalent for a
| longer period were ahead of me on that one.
| greendude29 wrote:
| How strange, I've been using DDG for a few years now and only
| rarely do I need to go to Google. Do you have examples of
| searches where Google is definitely superior (just out of
| curiosity, not challenging the notion)?
| Macha wrote:
| Recent one from me: "Hibernate window function"
|
| Google showed results that explain Hibernate's expression
| language isn't sufficient to express them and explainers on
| how to drop down to native queries.
|
| DDG showed me how to hibernate my windows PC.
| 4kelly wrote:
| Fair enough! That's rough. Apologies I assumed English :)
| throwaway67743 wrote:
| Well I am a native English speaker but in a Slavic country
| so I'd expect some results, but they're not they seem to
| assume russian which means Cyrillic which I cannot read
| nerdponx wrote:
| I use Fastmail for email, contacts, calendar, reminders, and
| notes. I have been an extremely happy customer for several
| years and I am happy to promote them. I don't think I've ever
| used another web-based service that has such a high
| "usefulness/power : annoyance : money spent" ratio.
|
| I use paid Seafile hosting for file sync. I haven't tried
| Syncthing, but the Seafile clients all seem to work very
| smoothly.
| uhtred wrote:
| You can install /e/os on a lot of android phones. I've been
| happy with it. https://e.foundation/
| denkmoon wrote:
| Fastmail to replace gmail/calendar/contacts and some file storage
| (drive). I also use Syncthing as a replacement for google drive.
| Android, well, you know what the only alternative is.
| hvmonk wrote:
| I have been off google (mostly) by: 1. Email: Zohomail 2. maps:
| apple maps (sometimes vet it with google maps to verify shortest
| path, etc) 3. drive: iCloud
|
| Has been working fine so far.
| eljimmy wrote:
| I run my own mail server and host all my websites on a cheap
| Linode instance ($5/mo) - it can be a pain in the ass to setup,
| but once it's up and running, there isn't much you need to do.
| Been running for 15 years now.
| triyambakam wrote:
| What suggestions does anyone have for phone providers? I've long
| wanted to move off of Google Fi
| gregoriol wrote:
| One question I've been asking myself about this migration, and
| didn't find all the solutions yet, is how to deal with
| services/websites/... I've logged into with a Google account.
| It's not always clear how, if even possible, to migrate from a
| Google SSO to a login/password.
|
| Does anyone has thoughts on this?
| jborichevskiy wrote:
| I've had some success requesting password resets on services I
| signed up with Oauth to get a chance to set an actual password.
| Sometimes this seems to expose the internal account management,
| but it really depends.
| rattray wrote:
| At least once I've been able to do this by reaching out to
| customer support.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I think the fast answer, unfortunately, is going to Microsoft or
| Apple. They aren't going anywhere.
| keraf wrote:
| I moved away from Google a few years ago. I'm using the following
| alternatives:
|
| - Email: ProtonMail
|
| - Contacts, Calendar, Online storage: NextCloud hosted by Hetzner
| (https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share)
|
| - Phone: LineageOS (Android)
|
| -- App stores: F-Droid for most apps and Aurora store for the
| occasional non F-Droid apps (like the ProtonMail client)
|
| -- Maps: MagicEarth (not open source but privacy friendly and
| very featureful)
|
| -- Messaging: Telegram FOSS
|
| -- Contact & Calendar sync: DAVx
|
| - Notes: Joplin (syncs with NextCloud and available on F-Droid as
| well)
|
| - Search: DuckDuckGo
|
| ProntonMail (with own domain) and the hosted NextCloud instance
| aren't free, but privacy comes with a price and I'm happy to pay
| for it. So far I'm very happy with the transition.
| butz wrote:
| If you are using ProtonMail, you might want to check out their
| Proton Calendar. Still waiting for Proton Drive (beta) apps to
| see if it might partially replace Google Drive or Dropbox.
| jeppester wrote:
| You must have learned a lot of things that might prove useful
| to other people who might want to do the same transition.
|
| I for sure would love to read a full length article about it.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| An alernative to Magic Earth would be Organic Maps.
| https://organicmaps.app/
|
| Though it's not as focused on driving, it seems. But may be
| good enough.
| brewdad wrote:
| I use both as I find the trails on Organic Maps easier to
| follow, while Magic Earth works better in cities. This is
| with the default map types. There might be a setting I could
| toggle to give me the best of both in one app.
| rattray wrote:
| I haven't seen much mention of Maps.Me, but it's another OSM-
| based android app I've heard good things about from Europeans
| and enjoyed while traveling in South America.
|
| I haven't tried it much in the US.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Organic Maps is a fork of maps.me that was started after
| maps.me got bought.
|
| The US should be pretty good for trails, reasonable for
| streets and highly variable for addresses and POIs.
| destitude wrote:
| ProtonMail has abysmally small storage space if you receive
| attachments in mail frequently.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Fastmail is much cheaper if you need many gigs of storage,
| but you don't get the encryption Proton offers.
| purplesnowflake wrote:
| https://app.skiff.org/ for E2EE Google Docs. Even has a direct
| integration to make the migration
| sam100 wrote:
| Just saw they raised their Series A. It seems like more and
| more players are entering the privacy space these days.
| amilich wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! Happy to answer any questions.
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| Looks great, congrats on the funding! What I couldn't make
| out from the website though is: can you export pages to pdf
| or other formats? Or share public links to them?
| [deleted]
| throwra620 wrote:
| Mondialisation wrote:
| Have a look at r/degoogle
| znpy wrote:
| Office365 is probably going to stay around for ten more years.
| sswaner wrote:
| If you are interested in moving off of the Google ecosystem
| then you probably won't be happy with the Microsoft version.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Sure, but if you're trying to get away from Google... out of
| the frying pan and into the fire, right?
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| Can we assume you're also trying to avoid iOS?
|
| Alternatives to Android:
|
| 1. Librem - https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
|
| 2. Pine - https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/
|
| [Disclaimer - I haven't used these devices.]
| throwaway67743 wrote:
| Self hosted email for 20 years so ignoring that:
|
| - nextcloud for photos/drive - bitwarden with vaultwarden backend
| for passwords - self hosted Firefox Sync for everything else -
| syncthing for outlying file sharing - jottacloud for high
| capacity storage dump (rclone is your friend)
|
| Probably forgot something
| 4kelly wrote:
| These are all great tools. But I wanted to gingerly hop on this
| thread to say that de google doesn't have to mean self hosted.
|
| I found it very rewarding to put my money towards companies
| that are aligned with my priorities (be it privacy or other)
| even if there were free alternatives.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Agreed. Fastmail is a great example. They are cheap, but
| their product is excellent and so is their support. I never
| have to worry about losing my account unless I stop paying. I
| got burned on that when I went to jail, but they offer a pre-
| pay option so you can now pay a decade worth of fees in
| advance :)
| zorrolovsky wrote:
| Not sure if you do it for privacy, ethical or practical reasons,
| but here's my journey: I removed my life from Big Tech (FB, TW,
| Gmail, YT, G Drive, MS, and other anti-user/spyware/malware
| companies). It was surprisingly easy to do and refreshing
| spiritually.
|
| First, philosophy: this article resonated so much with me that I
| made the brave step of deleting my big tech accounts and
| switching to Linux: https://medium.com/hackernoon/leaving-apple-
| and-google-my-ee...
|
| Then, execution. This site will help you to find user-friendly
| alternatives to your spyware apps/OSs/services:
| https://www.privacytools.io/
|
| I am now with a setup that maximizes privacy and giving money to
| ethical companies: Phone OS: LineageOS and /e/ Desktop/Laptop:
| Debian and Linux Mint Browser Mobile: Bromite Browser Desktop:
| LibreWolf (firefox fork oriented to privacy) Maps and GPS mobile:
| OsmAnd Mobile app store: F-Droid, Aurora Store Search Engine:
| DuckduckGo, SearX Email: Posteo (1EUR/month) VPN: Mullvad
| (5EUR/month) Online drive: NextCloud-based service ie /e/
| foundation
|
| Once I researched the above and checked the companies/projects
| are trustworthy, I started using them with surprisingly low bumps
| in the road. For mobile OS I went radical and didn't even install
| microG (a package to enable G services so some apps work well). I
| still can use my favorite apps, including banking (although if
| you root your phone you might have issues)
| rattray wrote:
| I was confused what /e/ was; it's https://e.foundation/
| ericfrazier wrote:
| Good for you for voting with your wallet and being conscious of
| which causes your money supports.
| walrus01 wrote:
| > I want to eventually move away, especially gmail
|
| register your own domain name, either for personal or
| professional purposes
|
| take some basic security precautions on your domain registrar
| account, use a long complex password that's not used for any
| other service anywhere else on the internet, and set up some form
| of 2FA for logins as well.
|
| control your own authoritative DNS zonefile and choose where to
| set your MX records
|
| choose a 3rd party email service such as the other recommendation
| here, fastmail, and set the MX records, SPF and DKIM
| appropriately
| hbn wrote:
| > register your own domain name, either for personal or
| professional purposes
|
| I have a question about domains, for whoever might be able to
| answer. I've had my own domain for a few years, a .se domain
| (only because it's .se and my middle name ends in that, so I
| was able to make the whole thing read like my name but with a
| dot in it)
|
| This is the Swedish TLD, which doesn't require you be a citizen
| to register. Is there any chance that the requirements for a
| TLD can change in the future and revoke my ability to own it?
| i.e. they start requiring you be a Swedish citizen to own a .se
| domain? Cause as it stands I just use the domain for my
| portfolio website which I could change whenever I want, but if
| I start tying my entire internet identity to that by
| registering it as my email everywhere, then it seems just as
| risky as using a gmail account that could get banned at any
| time.
| walrus01 wrote:
| If you're greatly concerned about that, choose a
| .net/.com/.org or similar, or a TLD belonging to your actual
| country of citizenship/residence.
|
| Yes it's theoretically possible the Swedish authorities who
| control .se could do something else policy wise in the
| future.
| hbn wrote:
| Good to know. I suppose my next question is: is there any
| known instances of this happening in the past?
|
| I suppose regardless, if it ever actually happened, it's
| not like you wake up one day and lose your domain. There
| would probably be time to buy a new domain and point all
| your accounts there before your next renewal.
| jackthetab wrote:
| I remember the sex, tech and sextech journalist had a
| domain, vb.ly, listed in Libya because of the .ly suffix,
| much like oreil.ly is today. When the PTPB found out she
| talked about <GASP!>sex</GASP!> they pulled her domain.
|
| So yes, The Swedish government could revoke your domain
| because they're the government.
| runxel wrote:
| I could think of the Brexit: Britons lost the access to
| the .eu tld. But there was a really long sunset phase.
| More than two years I think?
|
| I'd sayx it is not really probable that you'd would
| immediately be nuked off your tld. And I also can't see
| the Swedes pulling this move.
| blibble wrote:
| > Is there any chance that the requirements for a TLD can
| change in the future and revoke my ability to own it?
|
| yes, see the EU commission forcing new rules on the company
| running the .eu tld after brexit
| hbn wrote:
| Seems like this is the only case of this happening.
| [1]Wikipedia:
|
| > British citizens had their .eu domains suspended on
| January 1, 2021 for three months and then deleted on March
| 1, 2021 after a grace period to allow EU/EEA citizens to
| update the registration information to show their non-UK
| address. This is the first case of its kind where an
| institution managing an internet Top-level domain has
| withdrawn domains en masse for an entire country.
|
| However, this seems like it wasn't actually a change in
| domain registration requirements. It was the fact that the
| peoples' citizenship status was changed. The original
| requirements[2] of .eu domains from launch was it was only
| for EU citizens, so it was really just keeping in line with
| its original requirements.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.eu
|
| [2] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/I
| P_06_...
| blibble wrote:
| it's fair enough to prevent new registrations, or even
| renewals
|
| but they deleted domains people had legitimately
| purchased prior to usual expiry (in violation of existing
| contracts with the registrants)
|
| standard EU commission pettiness
|
| (meanwhile even the soviet union's .su is still usable)
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| Not to hijack the thread but in a similar vain: is anyone using
| an esolutions/murena degoogled phone as a daily driver? Thinking
| of getting their Fairphone version with /e/os but am unsure how
| it will handle common tasks (banking apps, navigation, camera,
| ...)?
|
| ie. https://esolutions.shop/shop/murena-fairphone-4-fr/
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/
| igordebatur wrote:
| I thought I'll be the last to move from Google because I'm
| alright with them using all my private data. But now I'm line to
| find an alternative: they've just locked our payment profile for
| an app with 25k+ positive ratings and their support does
| literally nothing to help us. I've just started a thread, maybe
| someone has the same experience and can share their experience
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30861147
| SamWhited wrote:
| I've been a big fan of Fastmail for email and calendars. I've
| also thought about joining May First Co-op
| (https://mayfirst.coop/) as they've been around for a bit and
| offer a suite of services which includes email, chat, nextcloud
| for documents and files, etc.
|
| I've also had good results with DDG for most things search. I
| know people say the results are worse, and on some occasions they
| are, but mostly it's perfectly serviceable in my experience.
|
| For video conferencing I've been using a mix of Jitsi Meet and
| meet.coop (a big blue button instance that I have access to
| through my membership in social.coop, which is good for social
| media).
|
| For chat (including phone calls and SMS through https://jmp.chat)
| I use https://conversations.im, the client costs money but the
| service just went free unless you want to use a custom domain.
|
| My phone is running Lineage OS using F-Droid for an app store. I
| don't like F-Droid very much for reasons that don't matter here
| (that might have been fixed since the last time I looked into it
| for all I know), but it is a perfectly good alternative so I
| recommend it in the absence of anything better.
|
| For maps I've been using Organic (https://organicmaps.app/). It
| uses Open Street map data so at first a lot of places I wanted to
| navigate to weren't there, but I added all the places I go
| regularly to the map and now it works pretty well.
| b3nji wrote:
| Start here. An app that helps you deploy your own server with
| various tools you need.
|
| Platform on user's hosting provider for deploying private
| services, managed via mobile application.
|
| https://selfprivacy.org/en/
| uoaei wrote:
| Is there anything similar for the self-hosted space?
| peepop6 wrote:
| I switched to Tutanota for email and calendar and it has been
| surprisingly flawless.
|
| To make the transition easier I started by forwarding all Gmail
| emails to Tutanota and I've been slowly updating my accounts to
| the new email. The plan is to eventually delete my Google
| accounts completely.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I got rid of my smartphone altogether 2 years ago and haven't
| missed it at all (we use my wife's phone in the car for Google
| Maps).
|
| Before that I tried de-Googled Android and the experience wasn't
| great. Many of the alternatives can ostensibly do what the Big
| Tech product does, but there are bizarre pitfalls that break the
| experience. Stuff like OSMAnd having no business names and taking
| literally 15 minutes to map a route across town.
| basisword wrote:
| Could you explain issues you have run into by ditching the
| smartphone and the solutions to those issues?
|
| A few things come to mind for me:
|
| - 2-factor auth (SMS or app based).
|
| - Banking (in the UK now a lot of online purchases must also be
| verified through the banks app).
|
| - Navigating in your city (public transport + just finding
| places by foot).
|
| - Anything else you've come across that assumes everyone has a
| smartphone.
|
| Also, what benefits have you found through ditching the
| smartphone?
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >- 2-factor auth (SMS or app based).
|
| I still have an old Blackberry for SMS 2FA.
|
| >- Banking (in the UK now a lot of online purchases must also
| be verified through the banks app).
|
| We have an Android tablet at home for Chromecast. I just use
| that. When we're out, I don't tend to make online purchases.
| When push comes to shove, PayPal is a plan C.
|
| >- Navigating in your city (public transport + just finding
| places by foot).
|
| I'm one of those people who always knows where North is, and
| which directions main roads run in. I guess I'm just doing
| whatever it is that people did 50 years ago?
|
| >- Anything else you've come across that assumes everyone has
| a smartphone.
|
| I usually just ignore the COVID check-ins if they are phone
| only. Only one person has stopped me and immediately didn't
| care when I showed them my dumbphone. Apart from that,
| literally nothing has caused an issue.
|
| >Also, what benefits have you found through ditching the
| smartphone?
|
| I am not constantly plugged into an online hate machine. I
| can look around and realise that, actually, people aren't all
| that shit after all.
| bovermyer wrote:
| I use Fastmail for email and Dropbox for cloud storage. They're
| not going anywhere any time soon.
| freshpots wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2014/4/11/5605734/dropbox-ceo-defen...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Searching around here would be a good start
|
| then things like this
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30528205
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| I'm still looking for an alternative e-mail provider that is more
| privacy-conscious than Google, still works with ordinary IMAP and
| is based in the EU so I get to actually benefit from EU data
| protection. Haven't found one that ticks all boxes yet, but going
| with a US company doesn't appear to change much as I'm not a US
| citizen and hence fair game once my data is on US servers and I
| guess it inevitably will end up there, and encryption schemes
| that won't work with IMAP are too cumbersome (I tried); ideally
| they also have contacts and calendar that work with the iOS/macOS
| apps. Would love to de-google at least email on the domain I own
| but it's not as easy as I'd expected.
| sswaner wrote:
| Did you consider ProtonMail?
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| I think they don't have IMAP, only some kind of bridge
| application that won't work on mobile. I'm not willing two
| have two different email apps in parallel, so I guess they
| are out.
| uhtred wrote:
| I know you said based in the EU and Fastmail are based in
| Australia I think, but they are great. Integrates easily with
| email, calendar, and contacts clients using
| imap/caldav/carddav.
|
| What makes you consider google to be privacy conscious? Aren't
| they just scanning your emails 24/7 to profile you for
| advertising?
| dankwizard wrote:
| I'd recommend against Australian based - There are laws that
| state companies must be able to decrypt encrypted user data
| if required, and for a backdoor to be in place if they
| require access.
|
| A "Data Disruption Warrant" allows them to add, copy, delete
| or modify your data. "Account Takeover Warrant" will remove
| your access to an account but still allow them full access
| mjochim wrote:
| Don't know which providers you have considered, but one that
| many around me use is posteo.de. Or gandi.net (based in
| France).
| [deleted]
| salzig wrote:
| What about https://mailbox.org/? I
| Tmpod wrote:
| I'll add Migadu to the existing suggestions ;^)
| lizardactivist wrote:
| Try Posteo, privacy is at the center of their whole e-mail
| business.
| srhngpr wrote:
| I recently moved all emails on personal domains to Cloudflare
| Email Routing [1]. It works flawlessly and you can setup
| ProtonMail or whatever other email you want as your private
| address that everything gets forwarded to without having to
| reveal what the destination address is.
|
| For sending email, I setup an SMTP relay via Amazon SES. If you
| verify your domain, you can send an email from any alias.
|
| This combination works great!
|
| [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/email-routing-open-beta/
| xenonite wrote:
| https://posteo.de/en
| SamWhited wrote:
| I believe Disroot is out of the EU and offers free (donation
| based) email services: https://disroot.org
| metadat wrote:
| This has already been discussed extensively on HN in the past.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| ChrisLTD wrote:
| We get these posts every 60 days like clockwork.
| DougMellon wrote:
| I have been using Fastmail for roughly three years now and happy
| with it.
|
| https://www.fastmail.com/gmail-alternative/
| uhtred wrote:
| I really like the new Masked Email feature.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Been using them for, I think, 16 years.
| barbazoo wrote:
| You can have a support ticket with an actual human at Fastmail,
| imagine that :)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| +1 for Fastmail. They also championed the open JMAP standard
| [1] [2].
|
| [1] https://jmap.io/
|
| [2] https://fastmail.blog/open-technologies/jmap-new-email-
| open-...
| xfour wrote:
| The problem with the JMAP standard is that nothing seems to
| actually implement it. There is their proxy which was built
| in like a week and not updated and Cyrus. The latter which I
| couldn't (not for lack of effort) implement, and went back to
| dovecot which doesn't have an implementation.
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| Are you worried about Fastmail being Australian based in any
| way?
| DougMellon wrote:
| Maybe for some, but it's never been a thought that's crossed
| my mind.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I use gmail as my backup e-mail and Google drive as one of three
| cloud storage services. I pay for GCP and YouTube ad-free and
| YouTube Music.
|
| Great non-Google services I pay for are ProtonMail, Fastmail,
| iCloud, and Office-365.
|
| I have played around with self-hosting options, but decided to
| just use Cloud services, but don't rely on any single vendor.
| yumraj wrote:
| Curious why both Protonmail and Fastmail?
|
| How would you rate the two if one were to use just one of
| those?
|
| Any experience with Zoho, if so would love your thoughts on
| that too..
| delgaudm wrote:
| I'm a Zoho One user and have generally been very happy with
| them. They have a guide[0] on how to move off the Legacy
| GSuite if that applies to you.
|
| [0] https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/gsuite-to-zoho-mail-
| migration...
|
| Zoho Email has been very reliable, spam protection has been
| satisfactory. Some minor things have bitten me, thier Zoom
| competitor only records audio, not video, the spreadsheets
| are sometimes slow to recalculate I trigger with F9 more than
| I'd like. But the workdrive has been on parity with GDrive,
| and the word Processor is more fully featured.
|
| Zoho are very responsive for support and you do interact with
| a human. My "One" suite includes email, calendar, Gdocs
| competitor, Gdrive competitor, and also pretty much
| everything I need to run my small business (books, CRM,
| website, appointments, webinars, courses, etc..)
| DoctorOW wrote:
| "Pay for" current tense? Why are you using that many email
| services?
| dotcoma wrote:
| Tutanota for email.
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