[HN Gopher] Transitioning Away from Google Services
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Transitioning Away from Google Services
Author : jboogie77
Score : 20 points
Date : 2023-03-22 19:43 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (oppositeinvictus.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (oppositeinvictus.com)
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Almost none of those are viable alternatives. They're either not
| free when Google is, a lot more expensive, or have a lot less
| features.
|
| And recommending Microsoft products or apps owned by the CCP as
| an alternative to Google products is simply ridiculous.
|
| I would understand going from Google to open source products,
| even though I am not an open source fanatic, but going from
| Google to another privately owned for-profit company makes no
| sense. Is this written by a guy bitter to have been laid of by
| Google or something like this?
| warner25 wrote:
| I too am laughing at the suggestions to swap Google for
| Microsoft stuff.
| jrockway wrote:
| I am probably too far gone to be taken seriously, but my
| startup got acquired and we had to switch from Google to
| Microsoft and I actually kind of like the Microsoft stuff. It
| has dark mode! If you're going to be Last Name, First Name at
| an 80k employee company, at least your calendar can be
| visually pleasant to look at.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I think it's totally fine if your reason for wanting to
| move away from Google is not ideological or privacy-
| related.
|
| "It's better" is a good reason to switch. But this is
| clearly not the case in the original article.
| warner25 wrote:
| Sure, I don't think Microsoft's stuff is necessarily
| terrible. At work I've always been fully immersed in
| Windows and Office, as both a regular user and IT guy, and
| it's fine for that. I was even using Windows and Edge on my
| personal laptop as recently as 2021. But if you're trying
| to get away from Google as a soulless mega-cap corporation
| that wants to trick you into giving up more of your data,
| switching Microsoft doesn't seem like much of a switch.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > They're either not free when Google is, a lot more expensive,
| or have a lot less features.
|
| I'm perfectly willing to pay for a decent service, especially
| if it appears to actually incentivize the company to care about
| my my interests.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I fully agree with that, my only point is that they should
| not be presented are equivalent alternatives
| jboogie77 wrote:
| who said they are equivalent?
| [deleted]
| binaryanomaly wrote:
| All easy except:
|
| - Youtube --> can't get around it
|
| - Maps --> in few cases where apple maps is just not good enough
| (depends on where you live)
|
| Don't miss anything else 1sec!
| jboogie77 wrote:
| yea theres no way to get around youtube. I think theres stuff
| like peertube but its not the same
| pedalpete wrote:
| - Docs/Slides -> Canva - Sites -> Canva - Photos -> potentially
| in the future... Canva
|
| - Browser -> Brave or Firefox
|
| I'm curious if people think it is suggested to move away from
| Chromium completely, or just Google's Chrome?
| berdon wrote:
| A few opinionated differences:
|
| - Mail -> Fastmail
|
| - Search -> Kagi
|
| - Photos -> Google Photos (sorry, but...it's fantastic)
|
| - Docs/Sheets/Slides -> Native/Non-Web Microsoft Office
|
| - Keep/Notes -> Logseq
|
| - Chrome -> Firefox or Orion
|
| - News -> Hackernews
|
| - Sites -> Ghost + Digital Ocean
|
| - Authenticator -> Authy
| thefounder wrote:
| Google apps/workspace -> zoho
| AlphaCerium wrote:
| What exactly do you mean by "Sites -> VS Code"? Do you mean
| create the webpage from scratch yourself, because a big part of
| Google Sites is that the site is also hosted for you, and I
| don't think asking a user of Google Sites to create a webpage
| and host it themselves is the best idea.
| berdon wrote:
| I've updated my comment with what I use for hosting my site.
| But my intent was what you gleaned.
|
| Edit: Fastmail even offers website/hosting as a part of your
| email service. I'm just biased being a developer and cry at
| the thought of sites or wordpress - knowing all too well that
| those products bring real value to many, many people.
| jboogie77 wrote:
| agree with authy. would switch if i wasnt lazy
| 4d66ba06 wrote:
| A reminder for everyone that Authy allows multi device and
| backups in case you lose your phone. From my understanding
| Google Authenticator doesn't offer either of these.
| warner25 wrote:
| There's no mention of Google Voice. I've been hooked on it for 12
| years, with my primary phone number being a Google Voice number
| for the last 10 years.
|
| I've started using a lot of the suggested applications and
| services - Firefox, DuckDuckGo, Flickr - instead of Google's in
| recent years. I'm still using Gmail because changing my primary
| email seems like it would be a pain, but at least I can see that
| there are some strong competitors for email. Voice, on the other
| hand, seems like a pretty unique offering.
| berdon wrote:
| Fwiw, I switched from gmail two years ago and it was relatively
| painless. It took a couple hours and there were a handful of
| websites that didn't allow changing emails (as usernames) but
| otherwise it was fine. And worth it to no longer get spam.
| esnowrackley wrote:
| Voice was a mainstay for me for a long time. The closest
| replacement I could find was a service called OpenPhone[1].
| It's designed as a VoIP service for small business teams, but
| I'm finding it works great as a solo voice/text option. I was
| able to port the Voice number over.
|
| [1] https://www.openphone.com/
| alexwennerberg wrote:
| Any ideas for Calender alternatives?
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(page generated 2023-03-22 23:01 UTC)