this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Privacy

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And since you won't be able to modify web pages, it will also mean the end of customization, either for looks (ie. DarkReader, Stylus), conveniance (ie. Tampermonkey) or accessibility.

The community feedback is... interesting to say the least.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (8 children)

You don't have to look at reducing your Google use as a monumental effort. You can slowly transfer, minimise the number of services you use.

Simple - Switch your default search provider to Duck Duck Go.

Easy - Switch to Firefox

Mid - export your documents from Google Drive

Complex - Transfer your primary email to another provider.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I never understood why anyone left Firefox...it's great

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago

Back when RAM wasn't in the gigabytes for everyone, it just started bloating tabs and usage like crazy. Chrome handled it better and faster

Things have flipped, where Chromium is super bloated

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I loved it around 20 years ago, but somewhere towards the mid-to-late 00’s it got bloated and slow. It was like that probably until recently if i’m being honest. I heard it’s maybe better now but i’m not sure.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

They really started trying to catch up to chrome several years ago and have succeeded recently.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

It got better years ago. I stopped using it around the late 00's myself because it was consuming all of my RAM. But I started using it again about 5 years ago and it's better than chrome now.

Edited typos

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I may have to give it another try then!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I bailed from Firefox for about a year after they added the godawful Firefox button (4.0 maybe?); then I got fed up with Chrome and by that point there was an extension to remove the Firefox button

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's the Firefox button? I don't use any extension to remove it, but I also don't see any button tied to FF itself that I need to remove.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh it's long dead now; this is what it looked like back then though

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the explanation

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I used it up to the early 2000's and it just seemed to slow down. I recently did a series of synthetic benchmarks on all the browsers and Firefox was the slowest of the batch. It's still the only browser left not built on chromium I think. Opera GX was the fastest in terms of benchmarking.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Ahh that’s unfortunate. I remember sometime within the past couple years or so, people were talking about some “big new update” for FF that supposedly made it better. I tried it, and it was very slow, offputtingly so. So i take everything with a grain of salt now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I never switched away and can say it's even better now, especially with Unlock origins.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Because it never used to update plugins, and left my PC open to infection one time. Probably due to Java or one of the Macromedia ones.

Plus if one tab died, the who browser exploded with it. Chrome didn't do that.

Plugins are dead now, so I came back.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (7 children)

I actually think switch email wasn't too bad (just take it slow!). It's Google Drive I actually don't have a good replacement for.

That and Google Photos.

Suggestions welcome.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

You don't need to take it slow. I moved from Gmail to a private email that I manage about 5 years ago. I just put email auto reply on my Gmail saying that I've changed my email due to an onslaught of corporate spam. Spammers won't get the new one because they're using auto responders, but actual people will get the auto reply and start using your new email address. You can change your email associated with accounts as you log in, or you can just keep those on Google so that the accounts don't start spamming you on your new email too. The only drawback is that your account won't be in some big data database and some sign up processes that use services like Informatica might reject your email as invalid since they don't have a record of it. When that happens just use your Gmail and then update it later.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

Nextcloud can be self hosted very cheaply, or you can find some hosted instances. There are applications that can encrypt cloud storage for some services. I would recommend just getting a NAS or a VPS and running nextcloud on it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Pretty much any other cloud, OneDrive can do all that docs stuff if you need it.

Pro solution: buy a NAS, many of them do have online office suites (like, for example, Synology), and stop depending on the cloud in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

There's proton drive...which i hasn't actually used. It looks like google drive, and there's a photo option, but so far I've only used the proton mail part.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I switched to Onedrive recently and it went pretty smoothly for me. Feels like trading ones evil for another, though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Proton all the way. E-mail, calendar, contacts, Proton Drive, and VPN if you want it. You can use a custom domain for your e-mail address, as well. Photos are another story, though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Impossible: get a smartphone that is neither Google nor useless.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

What's a good Gmail alternative that has a relatively professional name? I have a hotmail account from way back still, but the name "hotmail.com" has always sounded silly to me. I guess there's Outlook but idk if they're the best option.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If you're really worried about the domain, getting your own is only like 10 bucks a year.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I have about 4 bucks to my name atm.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Get your own domain. You'll actually have to pay for mail by then, but considering it's one of the services many people rely on a shitton it's not that bad to pay $10 towards it. It will also mean you can switch providers at any time without much hassle.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

That's really not an option for me right now financially since I need to keep costs down as much as possible. But I'll keep that in mind for the future.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

for good privacy-focused email services, Tutanota and Proton Mail are the more popular ones.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Thanks, I'll check those ones out!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Tutanota or ProtonMail are popular options in the privacy community.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Good suggestions. I just set Firefox to use DDG as my default search... something I've been slowly working my way through also, is replacing all the default-google apps on my phone with FOSS alternatives. It's involving a bit of trial and error, as of course free software that doesn't monetize the user often doesn't provide the polished experience you get from a google app. Many of them are perfectly fine though.

I'd recommend also that everyone installs DuckDuckGo browser app on their phone, as it blocks trackers in all your other apps even when you're not browsing. Pixel 7a has a truly disturbing amount of tracking requests, not sure if other phones are as bad.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So what email providers are good alternatives?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Proton Mail and Tutanota always rank high on lists of privacy friendly email providers.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

DuckDuckGo results still suck and are not even remotely comparable to Google‘s. The best alternative imo is Qwant, which uses bing and I think also it’s own index.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If the DuckDuckGo result for your search doesn't yield anything then just append it with g! and it'll take you straight to the Google results.

It's a useful trick but very rarely do I find I need it. Only really when researching a very specific error.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I only wish I could default DDG to not show results from certain sites I simply don't care about. Maybe it's possible and I just haven't found how to do it, but that's the one thing that would really elevate my experience