Ask HN: How dependent are you on Google products?
When assessing how dependent I am on Google products, I found out from banking to buying online, My complete online presence will be paralyzed this includes documents stored in Drive, contacts in phone to name a few. Not only I will lose access to Google but also to other platforms where I have used the email. I think all the sites should provide an option to have an alternate email that doesn't belong to Google. With the fear of google suspending my account anytime. This is a worst-case scenario. Fellow HN Users How are you dealing with this problem?
13 comments
Not at all, as in I don't even have a Google account. If Google were to disappear the loss of YouTube and search (for when DuckDuckGo fails) would be inconvenient but not a major problem.
E-mail used to be on Office 365 which is a paid product and doesn't seem (yet) to be contaminated by advertising, though I've now switched to FastMail as the Office UI became too bloated.
Cloud storage used to be on OneDrive but now switched to iCloud which is decent. I heard FastMail provides WebDAV access to their storage (sharing the quota from your mail account) so I might try that.
Phone-wise I use an iPhone so absolutely no impact of Google banning me (not that there's anything to ban to begin with, I don't even have an account!). For Maps I use Apple Maps which is good enough where I live, though I'd be curious to know about good, non-advertising-supported alternatives.
I feel like the biggest problem to getting away from Google is if you have your e-mail on there and don't have your own domain. If so I suggest getting a domain immediately and starting to use the new address (setting up an e-mail forward from your Gmail to your own domain). Assuming you're past that, the rest is easy. As a bonus, moving away from Google services and not using them day to day reduces the risk of your account being banned by accident so your e-mail forward keeps working forever.
E-mail used to be on Office 365 which is a paid product and doesn't seem (yet) to be contaminated by advertising, though I've now switched to FastMail as the Office UI became too bloated.
Cloud storage used to be on OneDrive but now switched to iCloud which is decent. I heard FastMail provides WebDAV access to their storage (sharing the quota from your mail account) so I might try that.
Phone-wise I use an iPhone so absolutely no impact of Google banning me (not that there's anything to ban to begin with, I don't even have an account!). For Maps I use Apple Maps which is good enough where I live, though I'd be curious to know about good, non-advertising-supported alternatives.
I feel like the biggest problem to getting away from Google is if you have your e-mail on there and don't have your own domain. If so I suggest getting a domain immediately and starting to use the new address (setting up an e-mail forward from your Gmail to your own domain). Assuming you're past that, the rest is easy. As a bonus, moving away from Google services and not using them day to day reduces the risk of your account being banned by accident so your e-mail forward keeps working forever.
I ditched Google completely a year ago:
- DuckDuckGo is not as good, but it gets the job done
- Exporting my contacts to a file was easy
- Converting all of my accounts over to use my new email address was a pain, but not as much as you might think. And Proton Mail offers a pretty good cross-platform user experience.
- Apple Maps, for all the flak it takes, is really quite good most of the time
- YouTube is the only Google app I keep on my phone, because there truly is no alternative, but I don't sign in to it
- DuckDuckGo is not as good, but it gets the job done
- Exporting my contacts to a file was easy
- Converting all of my accounts over to use my new email address was a pain, but not as much as you might think. And Proton Mail offers a pretty good cross-platform user experience.
- Apple Maps, for all the flak it takes, is really quite good most of the time
- YouTube is the only Google app I keep on my phone, because there truly is no alternative, but I don't sign in to it
There is a free alternative to the YouTube app:
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.schabi.newpipe/
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.schabi.newpipe/
I’m a paid Google One subscriber and use a legacy free GSuite for most mail. I own the domain used for GSuite.
I used to use Dropbox, but the constant up sell annoyed me enough that I switched.
I don’t worry at all, and I’m always puzzled by the navel gazing about Google that has become so common.
I used to use Dropbox, but the constant up sell annoyed me enough that I switched.
I don’t worry at all, and I’m always puzzled by the navel gazing about Google that has become so common.
I sometimes use Google for searching (although not always; I use more than one in order to find more) but that's all. I have no Google account and use no other Google services (although I do use some of Google's open source software, such as the V8 JavaScript engine). I have about:blank set as my home page and not Google. I use self-hosted email, with Heirloom-mailx as the mail user agent and Exim4 as the server (both running on the same computer).
I am quite dependent on Google. I would like to be less dependent, but it's hard to justify to myself the effort of switching.
- I use them for my personal email. I would like to switch, and I have devoted some minor research toward that goal. I use my email for archiving, so it is important. I do have backups. The greatest loss would be the many accounts tied to the @gmail.com address.
- YouTube is one of my favourite sources of entertainment.
- APIs I depend on for certain projects. Particularly the Google Maps APIs.
- I often use their search. I have used DuckDuckGo on and off, switching multiple times over the years, but I prefer Google's results in general. I could live without it, though.
- I use Google Maps for navigation and general POI searching. Is there a good alternative?
- I use an Android smartphone. I use FOSS apps from F-Droid as much as possible and disable most Google features, such as the "assistant". This phone is "obsolete" now, but I would probably buy the same one if it stopped working. It is good and cheap, and I am used to it.
- I use them for my personal email. I would like to switch, and I have devoted some minor research toward that goal. I use my email for archiving, so it is important. I do have backups. The greatest loss would be the many accounts tied to the @gmail.com address.
- YouTube is one of my favourite sources of entertainment.
- APIs I depend on for certain projects. Particularly the Google Maps APIs.
- I often use their search. I have used DuckDuckGo on and off, switching multiple times over the years, but I prefer Google's results in general. I could live without it, though.
- I use Google Maps for navigation and general POI searching. Is there a good alternative?
- I use an Android smartphone. I use FOSS apps from F-Droid as much as possible and disable most Google features, such as the "assistant". This phone is "obsolete" now, but I would probably buy the same one if it stopped working. It is good and cheap, and I am used to it.
I use Google's products because they're good (Search, Youtube, Maps, Docs, Chrome up until last week's update). If my account disappeared tomorrow, I would lose a few non-essential files on my google drive and that's about it. Not using Android makes things easier because it means that my contacts and payment methods aren't associated with my google account.
The whole movement of trying to completely de-google yourself and being in fear of account suspension seems absolutely paranoid. Use the services that you like, mix up your email/storage/etc. providers if you prefer - no need to completely silo yourself off one company.
The whole movement of trying to completely de-google yourself and being in fear of account suspension seems absolutely paranoid. Use the services that you like, mix up your email/storage/etc. providers if you prefer - no need to completely silo yourself off one company.
I have settings-adjusted Google account solely to buy games for the kids (family library).
Email with Migadu and self-hosted beyond that.
Calendar and contacts with EteSync.
Search with DuckDuckGo.
Browsing with FireFox. I keep Chromium around to overcome the odd poorly-written web site.
Documents moved to LibreOffice.
Maps via Google Maps, but of minimal importance.
Chromecast on its own firewalled SSID and VLAN for streaming Netflix to a TV.
Voice assistants via Amazon Echos.
https://takeout.google.com/ was useful for extracting data.
Unfortunately wife and kids use GMail, Contacts and Calendar.
Email with Migadu and self-hosted beyond that.
Calendar and contacts with EteSync.
Search with DuckDuckGo.
Browsing with FireFox. I keep Chromium around to overcome the odd poorly-written web site.
Documents moved to LibreOffice.
Maps via Google Maps, but of minimal importance.
Chromecast on its own firewalled SSID and VLAN for streaming Netflix to a TV.
Voice assistants via Amazon Echos.
https://takeout.google.com/ was useful for extracting data.
Unfortunately wife and kids use GMail, Contacts and Calendar.
Zero. I don’t have a Google account and only very rarely need to consult google.com when searching for something. On my iphone i have the disconnect app installed and configured it to block access to all web properties owned by Google. If I could block Google the same way on my Windows pc i would.
I do however depend on angular and grpc in some of the apps i have. Both made by Google.
Besides that i have little with Google to do and dont feel thst i am missing out in any way.
It is definitely possible, with little or no inconvenience, to eradicate Google from you life.
I do however depend on angular and grpc in some of the apps i have. Both made by Google.
Besides that i have little with Google to do and dont feel thst i am missing out in any way.
It is definitely possible, with little or no inconvenience, to eradicate Google from you life.
I've stopped using Google products for the most part. I still have a Gmail account, but I don't use it for much. I self-host email and "cloud" storage.
Definitely still use YouTube and Google Maps. Neither of which has a competent alternative. Nothing except Google Maps works in my country.
I have an Android phone, but I don't have much use for smartphones so I could live without it.
Definitely still use YouTube and Google Maps. Neither of which has a competent alternative. Nothing except Google Maps works in my country.
I have an Android phone, but I don't have much use for smartphones so I could live without it.
I guess I'm somewhat dependent on them. I don't use many Google products, but the two I do use (Gmail and YouTube) have a large enough effect on my life that I'd be in real trouble if I lost my account.
I use iCloud mail and gmail and google scholar. If google went away it would be annoying to transfer over banking info, but possible. Google maps is really good here though.
Android phone. Contacts. Gmail. Less so, calendar. And search.