Google is tracking you everywhere...
What do you think about Google now?
It is collecting so much of data from different sources that you don't even know about it.
Before watching this video, I have already transitioned from Google Search to DuckDuckGo, but the journey doesn't end here, there are lot more Google products I am currently using, some of them can be stopped or I can move to other service.
Not all products are worth leaving, for example: Youtube is Awesome.
What do you think about their alternatives. Any suggestions?
- Search -> DuckDuckGo
- YouTube -> ?
- G-Mail -> ?
- Mobile (Android) -> ?
- Calendar -> ?
- Photos -> ?
- Notes -> ?
- Drive -> ?
- Maps -> ?
- Google Pay -> ?
- Google Duo -> Discord
- Google Plus -> Twitter
- Youtube live stream -> Twitch
- Chrome browser -> Firefox
Top comments (40)
I don't think there's a competitor to YouTube.
No More Google can help choosing for the rest, unfortunately there's no info about alternatives to Google Calendar.
People have tendencies to see things only black & white. Not everything in Google ecosystem is necessarily bad, exactly opposite - some thing are really good, secure, with good UX and other aspects. Of course you'll loose some of your privacy but in case your threat model is more than average, I would always choose security in the first place.
Sure, not everything is bad but if a customer wants to migrate because of a lack of trust, let them migrate :-)
Yes, having everything integrated is an advantage, but having different paid services is also an advantage.
I haven't migrated from Gmail because I've had it since the beta and it's a drag to have to change your email addresses, but I don't particularly like Google's privacy policy on it.
I choose privacy with reasonable security
Yep, to be clear - I'm a big fan of paying for your services with money instead of your privacy!
Still Google does have bunch of really superior products (Chrome, Cloud services), and I'm personally ok to pay for them with my privacy. If there will be choice to pay with money instead, I would choose it.
At the same time, some of their products/services (e.g. Firebase) really sucks.
The whole Google thing is very fragmented.
That's normal with big companies that have hundreds of products.
After all a company is made by people :)
Yes, standard corp. is usually made by a whole lot of sane and intelligent developers and few greedy dicks who rule it.
When I switched from Gmail to Fastmail, a calendar service was also included in the account. It uses CalDAV. That means I just kept using my Desktop Calendar app from Apple and the default Calendar app on Android (after installing OpenSync for CalDAV support).
Thank you!
If you have Microsoft account like outlook/live, you'll also have calendar service, similar to google calendar.
I'm personally fine with it. You're also able to turn off location services anyway if you are really that inclined to.
Google collects data, but they don't sell it. They keep it all in-house and it's used to improve their own services.
But I do understand those who value privacy a lot more than I do, though. Just know that just about any alternative that doesn't market themselves as a privacy-centered company (like Mozilla does) is also going to be tracking you, maybe even more than Google (who actually do value privacy).
You can turn off location services but Google still tracks you. Do a web search and you'll see.
I'd guess they use IP based tracking which isn't always super accurate, and is avoidable with VPNs which are built-in to Android. I'm at work so don't want to look into how they do it quite yet.
But android is fully open source, so I'd be a bit surprised if it's possible to get GPS data while location services are off.
i cant believe thats true. i really think that google still tracks you, if you turn this features off you simply will not be tagged.
dev.to/deanveloper/comment/7jbm
If you're talking about full on tracking (rather than just location) then no you cannot stop it, at least if you use Google's services. But note that Android is open source, so any phone running stock Android and doesn't use Google services should be safe from Google's tracking.
First of all I think you are over reacting. It would be nice if you can elaborate what exactly concerns you so much that suddenly you want to stop using all of their services. I am just curious to know and it would help everyone to answer your question in a more useful manner.
As alternative services, you will sooner or later be in a situation that you need to use some of their services again or you will miss something you want to have access to. In addition sooner or later you will end up using alternative services who will collect and analyse your data (i.e. Twitter) and share this data with other 3rd parties (maybe even Google)...
At the end why stop just with Google?! Why not Apple (iPhone and MACs), Amazon (buying anything), Microsoft (using Windows, Skype, LinkedIn, GitHub) ?!?
Alternative services to save your privacy are the best if you self host and maintain those (which can be huge overhead and time consumer). Still for Calendar, Photos, Notes, Mail and Drive I can recommend you using NAS which support all of these functions via add-ons. There are few popular NAS brands and I am currently using one of Synology models for functions listed above.
Mobile alternative ⇢ use dummy phone: you will reduce your online presence, mindless surfing and you will reduce phone usage for 99% (the rest will be occasional SMS or urgent calls)
This is the best you can do today and future will not bring anything better. I wonder how many people are ready to really make these steps. Let us know what you think about it 👍
YouTube -> Vimeo? Not really a competitor, though. I’d stick with YouTube
G-Mail -> There are thousands of alternatives: Outlook, iCloud, Yandex, Yahoo...
Mobile (Android) -> iOS is probably the only real alternative here
Photos -> If you have an Apple device you have iCloud photos
Notes -> Evernote or Notion, depends on the complexity you’re looking for
Drive -> OneDrive or iCloud
Maps -> I don’t think there’s any real competitor to Google Maps
Google Pay -> Apple Pay or Samsung Pay if you stick with Android
The important thing is to find an alternative to your usage of the tool, not to the complete tool i think :)
For example if you don't use the sharing capabilities of Google Calendar you don't need an "alternative", you just need a calendar app (Nextcloud is good to sync it) :D
In the same manner if you just need a map (on a website for example) OSM does a good job.
Thinking about this matter this way helped me a lot to find real new tools that fit my needs :)
AFAIK iCloud is on top of Google Cloud Platform so you wouldn't be really avoiding Google.
That's true, however Apple said that: “The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as [Amazon] S3 and Google Cloud Platform.”
So I mean yeah, you're going to be using a service provided by Google, but the main complaint about their services is privacy, which in this case does not apply.
wow, I didn't even know that... Anyways last time I check it (few weeks ago friend have it on his PC by default) results were incomparable with other search engines. I would definitely recommend you duckduckgo . Give it a try, results are very similar to google, but no tracking and much better that sponsored bing 👍
I switched to fastmail, I prefer to pay a small fee to have some privacy. Proton mail is a more secure free alternative, but it lacks some good features.
I use Dropbox and backblaze.com
I don't know anyone that uses these :))
Is going to be shutdown, and again, noone uses it, see [facebook]
Firefox Quantum is actually faster than Chrome.
Authy is 1000% better because it allows you to switch the accounts to other devices.
Maybe faster but even in case of average threat modelling less secure.
I am yet to understand why people still believe that they can use an online service that does not track them or mine some form of data or metadata. I guess Google receives most of the flak because they are more open about it.
There are plenty of open source alternatives to these services where you can verify that they aren't tracking you without your knowledge. For many services, self-hosting is also viable.
Why do you think that undue tracking and data mining is inevitable and unavoidable?
Sorry, I stop reading at Bing 😂
Search -> DuckDuckGo
YouTube -> YouTube
G-Mail -> ProtonMail
Mobile (Android) -> iOS
Calendar -> fantastical + iCal
Photos ->
Notes -> notion + bear
Drive -> dropbox
Maps -> Waze
Google Pay -> Apple Pay + cash app
Google Duo -> Discord
Google Plus -> Twitter
Youtube live stream -> Twitch
Chrome browser -> Firefox
I can add
Maps -> Yandex Navigation
I don't know much about its availability around the globe. But in a metropol like Istanbul, its traffic pathfinding finds better paths then Google Maps and get you home faster.
Check out this post for a list of Google alternatives.
Some (like YouTube) don't have a good alternative, but you can use DuckDuckGo as a wrapper so you don't get tracked directly.
It's worth noting that even if you don't use a single Google product, Google still tracks you through the web using Google Analytics which are installed on most websites.
I removed Google analytics from my own website and replaced it with some rudimentary DIY stuff. I really wish more people would do that.
Maps -> openstreetmap.org/
Drive -> OwnCloud
I honestly prefer self hosted apps compared to cloud services. Recently I have learned that Google's Gmail API isn't open, it is subjected to Google's permissible use, Google team wants to know how the API will be used and wants to know full video demo of product. So being a Gmail business user, you can't use another business app without exposing it to Google. We switched to IMAP.
In some cases there are no alternative choices providing the same quality, so I'll not ones, that could be used with minimal lost.
Search -> Startpage. I believe it is basically Google search with proxy & trackers removed. DDG search algos suck if you are searching for something more obscure.
Gmail -> *** Do use GMail. It is the most secure e-mail service that you can get. But, avoid sending sensitive info via e-mail, use Signal instead ***
Android -> iOS, but do not expect that Apple will not track you. Though iOS is nowadays one of the most secure operating system.
5, 6, 7 -> Maybe native (i.e. not cloud-based) alternatives for your OS?
GMaps -> You can use OpenStreetMaps but do not expect same degree of quality / easy integration as in case of GMaps API.
Google+ -> notice - it is deprecated because of related security incident
Chrome -> I would strongly suggest to stay with Chrome. Firefox ESR is not the best choice from security POV (see my other posts regarding this issue).
Brave Browser looks very promising but it does not have very large use base (i.e. it has not been attacked enough to know the real score).
There is this important thing - Privacy != Security. You can sometimes get a nice secure setup, but your privacy will be exploited for advertisement etc. Sometimes one has to make decision between these two aspects.
Until I completely switch from Google, I have turned off Ad personalization.
I've considered this but what does it really do? Is it going to stop/reduce the absorbing of your data trail or just not use that wealth of data to provide "better" ads?
They still track, they just don't personalize ads for you. It's less 'terrifying' but in the end it's the same.