I’ll mention my personal usage as a contrast. It doesn’t contradict what the author says, but since I’m also degoogling myself it offers another PoV.
Search
I actually like DDG better, for the same reason as the author listed as a con: I don’t want the search system to assume what I want, I want it to interpret my search terms literally, if I wanted something else I’d be using different search terms.
And yes, the bang feature is amazing. Specially when you know in which site the info should be, but you don’t quite know which page. This is specially great for gaming wikis, like !factorio, !oni (Oxygen not Included), !rimwiki (Rimworld), !dfw (Dwarf Fortress); but it also works for other stuff, like !tvtropes or even !tw (Twitter).
Email
My main e-mail from Yahoo. Why? Not because it would be good (it’s garbage), but because it’s extremely old, and I’m not redirecting all my contacts (regardless of being personal, professional, or from my student times) to the new one, I’ll inevitably lose contact with some people.
For a lot of people, GMail is like this. They don’t like Google, they’re trying to de-Google, but they still keep it because changing it would be a bother. With that in mind Protonmail is good enough.
Photos, drive - call me a weirdo but I don’t see the point on using online services for that. I simply backup my pics and sensitive files into a USB flash drive. And if I need someone to access those files, I simply make a .zip tarball out of them and send by e-mail or WhatsApp. (I fucking hate WA but it’s what people here use. ¬¬)
Calendar, contacts - my case regarding that is fairly atypical. I use pen and paper.
Phone - I wish that I could switch the OS. I seriously do. However, the “app” of the bank that I use “happens” to refuse to run on anything but Android.
Maps - same solution as him, OpenStreetMap
Video - same issue as him. The closest to degoogling it that I’ve been doing is to use front-ends like piped.video.
[A] For me the point of de-googling is not to literally stop using every single Google service but to disengage enough that your entire online identity isn’t tied to Google such that losing your account would be catastrophic. […] I don’t understand why you would want to “ditch every Google product and service”. Some of them are objectively pretty great, or inherently have low switching costs (like Google Maps).
[B] Simple. Google is in the business of collecting and monetizing my data and removing my privacy. I want them to have as little access to my life as possible.
[A] Day to day what does “monetizing my data and removing my privacy” actually mean to you? Are advertisers following you around town? Bothering you at work? Hounding you in the loo? Personally it seems like my data has been stolen from just about every company I’ve ever given it to EXCEPT for Google.
This is the top comment there, and yet it stinks irrationality from a distance.
Mincing definitions through subjectivisation, to move goalposts: “for me”.
“I don’t understand”. Typically not something said by people genuinely not understanding something, but by people sealioning propositions contrariwise.
Mincing definitions AGAIN. “Ackshyusally wut privacy meewns 4u? I am so confusion…” tier.
Daily reminder that “redditors LARPing as h4x0rz” is worth the posts but not the comments.
lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 year ago
I’ll mention my personal usage as a contrast. It doesn’t contradict what the author says, but since I’m also degoogling myself it offers another PoV.
I actually like DDG better, for the same reason as the author listed as a con: I don’t want the search system to assume what I want, I want it to interpret my search terms literally, if I wanted something else I’d be using different search terms.
And yes, the bang feature is amazing. Specially when you know in which site the info should be, but you don’t quite know which page. This is specially great for gaming wikis, like !factorio, !oni (Oxygen not Included), !rimwiki (Rimworld), !dfw (Dwarf Fortress); but it also works for other stuff, like !tvtropes or even !tw (Twitter).
My main e-mail from Yahoo. Why? Not because it would be good (it’s garbage), but because it’s extremely old, and I’m not redirecting all my contacts (regardless of being personal, professional, or from my student times) to the new one, I’ll inevitably lose contact with some people.
For a lot of people, GMail is like this. They don’t like Google, they’re trying to de-Google, but they still keep it because changing it would be a bother. With that in mind Protonmail is good enough.
lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 year ago
Shaming the HN comments as usual.
This is the top comment there, and yet it stinks irrationality from a distance.
Daily reminder that “redditors LARPing as h4x0rz” is worth the posts but not the comments.