Ask HN: How do you escape Google?

20 points by goferito 10 years ago | 24 comments

Appreciated HN Community,

I, naively, really had hope on the Don't be Evil motto. But the Google's trend of invading our privacy a bit more every day without asking at all for our permission, tracking absolutely everything, I think it's getting too far. Their open support to TTP has felt like a slap in the face of awakening reality. Their presumed support Hillary also concerns me quite a bit.

As a techie, I admire a lot of their work (I may be easy audience, but Google Maps really flips me out), but I think we should worry about limits in the name of progress. I wouldn't mind to give some personal data away to enjoy some of their services, but I want to know and decide which data I give away. I have recently checked myactivity.google.com and what I saw there was quite terrifying.

I'm aware how highly I depend on their services. I have an Android phone, Gmail as my main email account, organise myself with Google Calendar, I browse the web with Chrome, solve every question with Google Search, and get directions with Google Maps.

Since my unconditional love for the company has clearly been damaged I think it's time to start looking for alternative services.

I have replaced Google Search with Duckduckgo. That was easy. It feels a bit slower, and I still miss how google suggestions know what I want before I type it, but it could work. Fully replacing Gmail is going to take a while, but I think Protonmail is a nice alternative. I don't mind paying the yearly subscription if I'm still happy with it when the space limit becomes a problem. I have come back to Firefox even though some things feel smoother on Chrome, which I haven't totally abandoned. A work in progress.

The thing is, what about Android, is there any solution you would recommend? (Apple products are not an option) And to Google Maps? How do you guys manage the balance privacy/usability/comfort?

paradite 9 years ago |

It's all too late.

If you are already depending on Google for email, contacts, map services, identification services(Google Plus login, Google Identity platform), then it is very hard to change the status quo. One problem is the compatibility/migration, another is lack of quality open-source/private solutions. Google gives you everything free so you wouldn't want to migrate to a paid service.

As an experiment, I tried de-activating my Facebook account, and I was surprised to realize that I am also losing half of my contacts (on Facebook Messager) and half of my music collection (on Spotify, with Facebook sign-in, which cannot be transferred to an email-only account).

I wrote a blog post on this issue and how to avoid being dependent, but the alternatives would not be applicable to Google products:

https://paradite.com/2016/02/18/stay-independent-problems-wi...

runjake 9 years ago | |

> on Spotify, with Facebook sign-in, which cannot be transferred to an email-only account

I did it.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Accounts-and-Subscript...

paradite 9 years ago | | |

You cannot even login to Spotify without Facebook account being active, so your steps 3 and 5 would not work. Those steps require you to sign in with Facebook to the old account.

goferito 9 years ago | |

I agree that it's very hard at this point to completely remove Google from our lives. But we shouldn't do nothing and give up. The best solution is almost always something in the middle. That's what I aim for. Maybe I can't get rid of Android at this point, but maybe there are some configurations that might be an improvement, and have a bit more privacy on my Android phone. For example, I had to manually deactivate the location history (active by default), and all this tracking stuff you can see on the myactivity page that for me it's more intrusive than the benefit Google may give me from that data.

Zelmor 9 years ago | |

Funny how you tell people to become independent from services, then go ahead and advise techies to set up their own cloud on VPS.

detaro 9 years ago | | |

You have to read it as "independent from specific services". The scripts configuring my VPS don't care what provider provides the VM below it. Keep a current backup in independent places and you can get your full set of services back up quickly. But of course it is overall more work, not always the same feature set (good and bad), ...

paradite 9 years ago | | |

Yes. You have a point. What alternatives to VPS do you suggest for a poor student like me?

nibs 9 years ago |

I use no Google products personally. I use them for work sometimes but I am okay with that. Here goes:

- Browser: Firefox

- Search: DDG

- Email: Outlook

- Phone: Blackberry Q10

- Maps: OpenStreetMap

- Reviews: Yelp

- Calendar: Blackberry Cal

Most "techies" would consider this stack unacceptable. I like physical keyboards and Windows, so it works for me. YMMV, but I do not miss Google.

miguelrochefort 9 years ago | |

Why do you hate Google?

Spooky23 9 years ago | | |

I have a colleague whose anger over Google Reader is so strong that he hasn't used any Google service since, and blocks goog ip ranges to prevent accidental usage.

yuhong 9 years ago |

> But the Google's trend of invading our privacy a bit more every day without asking at all for our permission, tracking absolutely everything

Explain more.

groundzero 9 years ago |

One thing worked for me is compartmentalizing Yes google services are too good to be replaceable . Have multiple profiles (one hardened privacy aware other is your existing profile )for browsers,OS,Computers , phones ,mails,messenger apps.Each profile disconnected from other (use different internet pipes)so that ads will target you make a profile of you but both are not interlinked . Its a bit of taxing for initial setup once its there then things will be smooth . I have what I call "privacy traps" like sharing random emails/phone number to a service and see how/where it follows you.This will help you to profile what are the query terms,PII info for these services to build a profile of yours etc ..

twoquestions 9 years ago |

Looks like there's a market for Google-provided products with an emphasis on privacy...

I too switched to DDG several months ago for similar reasons, but I can't get away from Chrome's dev tools. Any privacy/performance conscious browsers out there that can compete with Chrome? FF wasn't great the last time I tried it.

thiago_fm 9 years ago |

Use Tor Browser, Protonmail(or host it yourself), DDG(you can also search in google anonymized), buy a Blackphone(https://www.kickmobiles.com/blackphone-2-eu)... calendar and so on you can import it to something self hosted.

Also use tor in your phone.

You can still use google maps and so on, unless your location REALLY MATTERS to you.

Google isn't the only problem.

Also get more people to use Tor. AFAIK, Tor now has less than 2mi people using it, if more people used it, it would be harder to find out who you are based on your location. Tell your mates, get everyone in your area to use it or live in a hip city.

It's not that impossible. If you try hard enough, you will have something that will work for 99.999% of the cases. We need more people doing that.

alexmingoia 9 years ago |

To escape Google (and what Google now represents) we have to replace the WWW and arguably the Internet with something like I2P. Encryption and anonimity need to be baked into the protocol. You can't just run to another website to escape the panopticon.

livatlantis 9 years ago |

This is possible. For email, I now use Fastmail[0]; they've only been getting better these past few years and now even have native mobile apps. The web interface is effecient and very usable! The only things I really miss are (i) undo send and (i) the forgot-your-attachment reminder.

I use Fastmail also for calendar; it supports WebDAV and works very nicely for me on iOS.

For search, yeah, I use DDG as well but find I use !g quite often. Especially for non-English searches. I've heard StartPage[1] is also nice.

I still use Chrome as my main browser, but am looking for alternatives. Besides Safari, I've toyed with Links[2] and Min[3].

For directions, it's still mostly Google Maps although I sometimes use Apple Maps on iOS. I've been explorer Here Maps[4] and have been quite happy with them (especially because you can download entire cities, or even regions, for offline use, including search). For biking, Bike Citizens[5] and Citymapper[6] are also nice (if your city is supported).

I'm sure there are lots of OpenStreetMaps-based services I'm missing.

Edit: If you want to migrate your mail, you can use Google's data download tool[7] to first download everything and then import it into Fastmail or use Fastmail's import tool[8].

0: https://www.fastmail.com/ 1: https://www.startpage.com/ 2: https://links.twibright.com/ 3: https://minbrowser.github.io/min/ 4: https://maps.here.com/ 5: http://www.bikecitizens.net/ 6: https://citymapper.com/ 7: https://www.google.com/settings/takeout 8: https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/migratemail.html

analogmind 9 years ago |

I recently got an analog paper agenda and deleted all my google calendar items. It's a weird but nice kind of relief...

Zelmor 9 years ago |

Not too long ago, I thought like you:

"Let's host my own physical server. Virtualize different servers for different services: web, mail, owncloud storage, torrentbox, flac streaming service to mobile and web client. Let's run Cyanogenmod without Google services on my old 2012 Nexus 7! Surely K-9 can do the job just as well as Gmail! What else would I need a tablet for? OpenStreetMap wooo! My own Calendar instance! Stuff like that."

Spent days architecting the bloody server thing.. Looking into security, virtualization, database isolation, shit like that.

However, I am 30, making a career change, sick and tired of pushing someone else's agenda 8 hours a day. I want to build my own ideas and share it with people. Maybe make a living off of what I make. Build a farm. When not working or studying, I'd rather strike the earth and take care of my vegetable garden, play with the cat, hike with the wife. This helps me to have a more full experience.

Your time is precious. That is the only thing you will never get back. Read the book Walden instead. The only thing the writer truly treasured was his time. Throw in some taoist and buddhist literature as well, might help. Those will teach you not to care for other people's games (big data, small implication). Be more aware of the psychology of manipulation, triggers and getting you to sign up/pay/subscribe. Mastering your own mind is more important than keeping your mail from automated google scripts. Do you eat well? Do you sit all day? Do you know what's in your food, water, air? How are your bad habits, smoking, procrastination, drinking or onania problems going to be solved?

Not by not using Google service, I tell you. When you die, your privacy will be of no concern to you. How you live hold greater value.

My current proposal is as follows:

1. Care less. Not about security and privacy, but about Google following you. Pay more attention to what is keeping you from living A Better Life, however you define that. Do you have financial planning for retirement? Do you have a goal in life?

2. Have a trusted person or lawyer to follow set instructions on deleting all your online presence when you die. Have them burn your diaries if you keep any. Keep in mind, many literary people asked loved ones to do this, who then proceeded to publish their letters and unfinished work anyway. Maybe have two people for this, unknowing of each other's responsibilities.

3. Keep separate Google and Gmail accounts for your work life and your personal life. Employers should not be able to find you based on your work-related email address. Sometimes it's a hassle, but I manage them.

4. Disable what data tracking you can, and avoid using services for which there is a feasible alternative. For me, Drive, Maps and Keep are just way too comfy, and the alternatives are either poor, take time to set up properly or are another SaaS solution. Consider proper backups, not simply using external drives that fail or can be stolen along with your PC or laptop. Secure, off-site, automated, possibly offline solutions. Can you do that? Should you? What do you win? What is the return on investment here?

5. Also, if you wish, move to a country where data privacy laws are firm and governments to a large degree respect their citizens (Switzerland comes to mind).

sharemywin 9 years ago |

open map alternative:

https://www.openstreetmap.org

mtmail 9 years ago | |

On mobile I switched to http://maps.me/en/home (based on OpenStreetMap data). Vector maps you can rotate, supports offline, free for Android and iOS.

selmat 9 years ago |

tl-dr; Google provide out-of-the-box solutions and mostly are free of charge. If you (general you) don't have time/effort/willingness/knowledge to create own secured solutions then they own you. It's something like a deal with the devil (hereinafter only "the deal"). He (devil) will give you everything...you give him your soul = privacy/life. Sadly, I also sold my soul (to Google and Microsoft) and several times, but i am trying to rescue myself.

Long story short: Few years ago I had same intentions. Get rid of every "collecting personal information in an effort to provide better user experience". I performed online test what is visible about my PC from outside.[1] After test I disabled browser cookies, installed firewall, disabled all ports except of https, installed software IDS etc, used text-base web-browser - lynx [2]

Usage of internet was terrible. I wasn't able read or use almost anything from web. (I those time I didn't know HN nor Github). I spent hours and hours researching and configuring own infrastructure - mailbox, calendar. But i gave up since it wasn't sustainable in hours of normal working man with other hobbies than sit front of computer. After all of this struggles I used (and still am using) out-of-box solutions from Google. Microsoft and Google are on the same boat. They know everything about you (general you).

Sad is that you can use alternatives but it's pain in the butt and they know it. And they build on it. Sometimes I need to have things done and don't wanna tweak how to the simple things. And this is exactly time where they are offer "the deal". Last few weeks I am also thinking how to get rid of all collecting of sensitive data. You can create fake profile, but it doesn't matter. In days of machine learning they can create personality profile about you. And this scare me the most of all. Maybe 3rd party dont know your name, but they know you live there and there, you have 3 kids, blond wife, migraines, mid-class car - 1.6 tdi, you are xy politically oriented, love rock music, voted for abc.

So what is conclusion? - my favorite phrase - "It's not so easy my friend".

My Corp. services: Windows, Office 365, Linkedin, Google search, Gmail, Translate.google, Maps.google, Youtube, Android

My alternatives in (parallel) use: Firefox/Opera, Elementary OS, DDG, small business mailbox at local domain registrator, Open-office

Mostly thinking about getting rid of: Android, Gmail

My lessons learnt:

1. Nowadays Internet usage of services from corps. like Google, Microsoft, Amazon is deal with the devil. Out of box solution mostly for free in exchange for your privacy.

2. Usage of alternative is pain in butt, on the other hand it worth, at least if you wanna save your soul and don't let it be subject of 3rd parties business.

3. Privacy is always questionable. Event they claim don't collect any sensitive data we can't be 100 % sure.

4. Usage of alternative solution require open-mind and persistence

5. Think what you really need and what is only crowd psychosis (everybody use it , i have to be the same). This require totally different mindset.

Resources:

[1] http://ip-check.info/

[2] http://lynx.browser.org