Adventures in de-Googling
www.wavebeem.com
Trying to remove Google from my life

My problem switching off of gmail is that I’d really like to start moving to an alias-based approach (so, you know, lemmy@maya.land for Lemmy emails, etc.) but this then conflates two issues so I solve neither.

I wish Google Takeout were required to maintain consistent formats so people could develop tools against it. I could make a lot of progress by pulling out the decade of history I have with them and not maintaining more than a couple months of data inside their stuff at any given time.

  • soloninja
    6·
    4 years ago

    I do feel like it is hard to get off Google maps. I’ve tried all the other working as a pizza delivery driver years ago. Google just seems to be more accurate. Those other might have catches up. I have heard openmaps is a good platform by the way

    • nromdotcom
      91·
      4 years ago

      Doesn’t always* mean that. And I think that’s okay.

      Sure, in a perfect world there would be a really great FOSS replacement for every proprietary piece of software that’s super easy to switch to and use. But I’m also not recommending to anyone (computer enthusiast or otherwise) that they host their own email.

      I think getting 50% of people to use software that is 10% “better” (whether you measure by privacy, security, openness, etc) is just as important as getting 5% of people to use software that is 100% “better.”

  • airikr
    41·
    4 years ago

    “I strongly recommend Discord for most chat needs”

    But then you’re being controlled by another spyware, namely Discord. How about LINE? I use Telegram. Nuff’ said. And Google Calendar then? I use fruux.com.

    Microsoft bought SwiftKey years ago, so expect Microsoft tracking you from there. I use FlorisBoard instead.

    FastMail are based in Australia which are obayed to listen to the laws there. If a court demands FastMail to show them your email, they are forced to do that by law. I have used FastMail and loved them, but that forced me to choose Posteo instead.

    When it comes to Google Photos, I have had a hard time find a very good replacement. That service are too darn good! But luckily, I found Stingle Photos via F-Droid last month. Stingle Photos can be seen as a copy of Google Photos, but with end-to-end encryption + open source. Currently only to Android since the service are very new, but are currently in development for iOS as well. A desktop version are planned too.

    How about Google Maps then? I use OpenStreetMap and OsmAnd+ from F-Droid. But I occasionaly use Google Maps when OpenStreetMap can’t help me.

    Google Translate? I use nicetranslator.com. Unfortunately, not open source and it appears to get the translations from a third-party service. But it is still a good replacement for Google Translate.

    To view more, go to https://airikr.me/services/lang:en to see my replaced services.

    • clmbmb
      1·
      4 years ago

      Stingle Photos

      It looks nice, but I would like to host my own server, which at the moment is not supported, which is a shame.

      • airikr
        1·
        4 years ago

        Nice with open source, but that Japanese keyboard are Google’s own keyboard with Gboard. I wouldn’t surprised if they track you from within the app. If not, sweet!

        Will check out Dialect. Thank you for the suggestion.