How to live without Google (2017)

Swapping out a select few of Google&#x27;s products isn&#x27;t the same as &quot;living without Google&quot;. Until you&#x27;ve blacklisted their entire netblock range from your usage[1], you don&#x27;t realize just how many tendrils they have in every aspect of your Internet experience. And good luck getting around the other tech giants&#x27; oligopoly of the web as well[2]. The Internet isn&#x27;t a fun &quot;wild-west frontier&quot; anymore, it&#x27;s now completely commercialized into a handful of super large silos, with mostly no way around them.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-up-everything-1830565500" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-u...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;life-without-the-tech-giants-1830258056" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;life-without-the-tech-giants-1830258056</a>

For a couple of month I have set duckduckgo as my standard search engine, but I often do not get satisfactory results. Is this because I am used to the Google results or does duckduckgo indeed not prioritize in a good way?

For me where I live (Northern Europe) apple maps and open street maps or any other maps for that matter suck big time. Google maps is the only app which can search for places in a meanfingul way. I search for an ATM nearby but I get results which are 400kms away in apple maps.

Still early for a release (work in progress&#x2F;use at your own risk) but I&#x27;m having real fun working on dnsadblock.com. Within days it made me switch from Chrome to Firefox. As soon as I changed my DNS server Chrome tried to contact it&#x27;s mothership roughly 146,000 times in just 24 hours. Being able to see the actual numbers is something scary.

Not using Google is just the tip of the iceberg!<p>There’s so much information you leave out there just by browsing the internet ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;everysiteknows.ferrucc.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;everysiteknows.ferrucc.io</a> ) or clicking on things.<p>I also don’t see any alternatives to Google Analytics, Google Adsense, Google Fonts and Google DNS. All these services are something most users don’t opt-in for and are the kind of side businesses that feed the data that makes google the best search engine out there

Gmail is the main problem. I use it as a backup email and as an ID for registering about everywhere.<p>Thing is, what is a reliable email alternative that is certain to be around long term, that I can use to register? Google can afford to keep gmail up for my foreseeable life time, what other email services (free or paid) can I trust with that?<p>Edit: I do have my own domain, but I don&#x27;t consider that as reliable as something maintained by a large organization.

It does not matter if you do not use GMail, google&#x2F;microsoft&#x2F;&lt;insert any other popular email provider here&gt; has all your emails anyways, since everybody sends you emails from those domains.

I find startpage.com to give a lot better results than DDG. I never seem to hear about others using it. Is it just not well known?

About Google Drive, the article says: &quot;This also means your files are never stored on a single server in the cloud&quot;<p>The assumption that all the files in Google Drive is in a single server is false.<p>You can sync Google Drive on one or more computers and have local backup copies too. That is also not mentioned.

and DeepL instead of translate, at least if your language is supported. the translations are really good.

I&#x27;m making micro steps forth and back.<p>Ditched Chrome, using Brave.<p>Tried DuckDuckGo but - very subjective - it has results that don&#x27;t work for me, so I&#x27;m mostly back to Google.<p>Removed Google Maps, mostly use Maps.me now.<p>Remove Google mobile Mails app, now using Nine.

More like a piece of advertisement for DDG.<p>Avoiding google is tricky.Not impressed.

Previous discussion: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15246716" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15246716</a>

I&#x27;m surprised they neglected to mention invidio.us as an alternative way to access YouTube, it&#x27;s a step above using DuckDuckGo for YouTube imo.

I&#x27;ve tried with DuckDuckGo for 2&#x2F;3 months, and the images search, something that I use quite a lot, was pretty unsatisfactory.

You will find out the answer if you live in China

Has anyone used tor regularly for a long time for news consumption and as a social interaction with like minded people ?

I think it’s funny that people try to cut FAANG out of their lives and still use Linux, which is primarily contributed to by FAANG and other corporations like Intel and IBM.<p>Also DuckDuckGo is so slow. I mean how are they supposed to compete with Google’s edge network? Then they have innacurate results, the first result is usually a deceiving looking ad, and you have to take them at their word that they aren’t also selling your data.

Soes anyone know if the Vivaldi browser supports multiple users &#x2F; instances the way Chrome does?

Does anyone have a good alternative to Google Voice?

For Maps -<p>Well, I don&#x27;t trust Apple either.<p>Waze was good, but now Google has it.

Yeah, we have a plenty alternative services, but only two dominated mobile OS (and three desktop). Isn&#x27;t you are looking for a problem in a wrong direction?

is it even possible?