Alternatives to Google

Its a fork of owncloud. It can be self hosted on a raspberry pi/nas

Most importantly, it’s open source

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I’ve had my own domain for over twenty years. (I have a LOT of domains, but the one I use for personal email was the first one I registered.) During that time, I’ve used a number of different email providers. As has been mentioned above, having your own domain name means that you are free to switch providers without having to give anyone new contact details or update hundreds of websites :+1:t2:

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You folks are all well above my league and punching weight. I don’t know anyone personally who has their own domains, just like I don’t know anyone who deals in crypto or who does half the things some of you guys get up to, and I say that in a nice way!

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That’s a good point to bring up. Your email you might want with you for a long time, decades. You cannot guarantee an email provider will definitely be around or that the price will stay affordable

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I think people just aren’t aware of it. I recon if people know they could have their own personal email address and it wasn’t hard to use a lot more people would have them

And on PC you can use

Freetube https://freetubeapp.io/

I like to consider myself a crypto dealer, as in I give out my profit and then always make a loss

I’m here all night

I still see small businesses with @hotmail.com or even @aol.com addresses on their vans. It makes me cringe…

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My Wife still uses a hotmail.co.uk email address as her only email address. I’ve tried to convince her to find another email provider, but she just can’t be bothered. I pointed her to ‘have I been pwned’ and her account has been compromised at some point over the years.

Do any of the various email providers that are being mentioned use labels in the same way as gmail? That’s what I really like about gmail and prevented me switching over to outlook.com when I considered it a year or two ago.

As a user of both Google Maps & Gmail, I read this with interest - iPhone and Windows.

Whilst I’m fascinated by the array of non-Google applications, should I be that concerned about my setup?

Is Google the safety concern that’s implied?

How much of the concerns about Google are a big brother thing?

Because I’m all for improving my setup, but it needs to be worth it.

(I’m hoping this remains within the remit of this thread. I’ll move it, if not).

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I don’t see Google as a security concern, more as a privacy concern. I’ve also been pissed off by their attitude to products and services – they develop something that people love, then decide to axe it overnight. Trips, Inbox, and the straw that broke the camel’s back, Photos. I was perfectly happy allowing them to train AI or whatever in exchange for the free photo storage. But to be exploited then discarded when they got what they need is too much for me

I also hate Microsoft but I’d rather use Bing at this point (and I get some rewards for using their search)

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I’ve just started using Startpage as a search engine. Primarily, I just got peed off that everytime I accessed Google through my VPN, I’d get the pics pop up to see if I was a bot. I haven’t used it long enough yet to make my mind up whether I want to keep using it as yet.

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I am using duck duck go as a search engine and using email with a me address from apple.

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As @anon47616136 said, it’s more a privacy issue. I don’t have any security concerns with Google. To be fair, they no longer scan emails in order to serve you ads, so that was a big improvement a few years ago. They do, however, use all the other data collected on you to serve to serve ads, not only around the web, but in your inbox. For me, the nudge to move away from Gmail was when I’d had enough of seeing ads at the top of my email list that looked like just another message.

Google does provide tools to control various privacy settings and, if you set them correctly, they are still a decent option. I still use Google Photos, simply because I have every photo and video I’ve ever taken stored there and the search facility is unbeatable. I’m a bit annoyed at the removal of the unlimited free storage, though you still get 15GB for free and upgrading is very cheap - prices start at £1.59/month, or £15.99/year for 100GB.

The big tech companies know far too much about us these days. For me, Facebook is at the top of the pile and I use Facebook Container in Firefox to ensure I’m not tracked around the web. (Note, you don’t need a Facebook account for them to track you!)

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If you want to use Google still, there’s a plug-in called AdNauseum which literally just in the background clicks all ads and renders them in a non-visible window, then closes them

There’s also a feature within it that makes Google searches from a set list of random things (either that or it’s a separate plug-in, can’t remember) to obsfucate your browsing data

Pair these together and suddenly Google thinks you like everything, so 1) companies paying for these type of ads with invasive companies are paying for nothing, at clicked rate rather than shown rate and 2) Google is becoming less relevant as an advertiser because clicks aren’t meaning sign ups at the same rate

It’s a really good thing to the point Google nuked it from the Chrome store, but of course you can still load it in :slight_smile:

Outlook.com has come a long way recently. The browser access now has ‘Categories’ which act like Gmail labels. So you can organise using the usual ‘Folders’ (an email goes into one folder) or organise by ‘Categories’ (multiple categories can be assigned to an email) - or - you can do both, which is what I do.

Searches pull up the categories too.

The one annoying thing for me is that the Outlook mobile client (Android anyway) doesn’t yet support categories.

Categories were available when I last tried Outlook but I think I found them clunky in relation to gmail labels. I may take another look though.

As to other Google stuff - in addition to Gmail, I heavily use Google Maps/navigation, Photos, and Search.

Some comments

  • I tried Waze and Apple Maps for navigation but didn’t really get on with either.
  • I really like the search in Google Photos so currently sticking with it. Would switch to Apple Photos or OneDrive Photos if I decided to change.
  • I’ve tried Bing instead of Google Search but don’t find it effective. The non-biased/non-tailored aspect of DuckDuckGo is appealing so might give it a go.

I’ve previously used or tried, but no longer use:

  • Android - mainly because of poor tablet support/options. I wanted same OS on both phone and tablet so settled on iOS.
  • Chrome - mainly because they removed certain settings. I now use Edge.
  • Messaging/Video calling - It’s no point using Google solutions for this. Their strategy is so confusing and they keep changing.
  • Google Docs - I just find it easier to use MS Office to collaborate with others. I guess this depends on who you work with.
  • Chromecast - When I was considering this a few years ago I decided Sonos was a more reliable and simple solution for music, and for tv/movie streaming preferred having a hardware remote and on-TV interface so went with Roku.
  • Play Music/YouTube Music - Have always preferred Spotify

YouTube Music is just so cheap I feel like it’s worth whatever meagre bits about my life they find out

£1 a month incl YouTube Premium and I get access to every labelled song on YouTube? Here’s my info Google

Would be £10/month for me