I love that other companies have sustainable alternatives to Google services. But these articles looks more like hype train and doesn’t really add any new value for me.
You are not building something new switching from one big corp to another small company that want to become another big company next day.
Probably I’m getting old but I remember times when Google doesn’t exists. We had software for files, messages, calls, calendars etc. It was based on different protocols, may be less secure and more naive. But it was ok for these days.
There is life outside of Google, and always was. May be for “millenials” you need to be brave to leave this circle, but I don't getting it. What is so special in using other providers? Is it just... normal?
The point of this article is to switch from one Google for a lot of services to a disparate group of providers for same services... if one of the service providers goes away, or is no longer palatable, only the service they provide needs to be relocated.
Google can suspend your account and the 20-30 things you depend on them can go away (or, at least, be unavailable in a customized fashion based on your own data). That's less of a risk if you use different providers for different services.
This is often repeated, and I believe it... but on the other hand, I've been using google services pretty heavily for over a decade, including some paid services, and I've never wanted customer service from google over all that time. Precisely the thing I like about google services is that their shit works and I don't need help from them to use it.
I suppose there's a risk of account suspension as mentioned above, but I still feel that risk is very low for me, my perception of these incidents that make noise on social media/HN is there is at least semi-shady shenanigans involved that trip spam/fraud/etc. alarms. I don't push those kinds of buttons, and neither do the vast majority of people, so I think this is a non-factor for most.
That's precisely why they are getting away with it. But once you get targeted by them, there is no way out.
If you hire one bad person with a banned account, it can happen that all Google accounts of the entire company are being banned, including your company's apps on Google Play, etc.
On Youtube, even famous people like cgp grey got into issues with Google which claimed that cgp grey was impersonating himself.
The core issue is that you can't have online spaces be free of rule enforcement, but the same time, in most if not all places, rules are enforced quite unfarily and without due process. For individuals this can mean social isolation, but for companies it can mean the end. There were some stories about this here on hn.
You are right. The risk of an account termination is very low. On the other hand the penalty for failure is absurdly high.
So ultimately it all depends on your willingness to accept the odds, and understand that it can, and does, happen - balancing that with the possible need to start over on the Internet one day.
Until it doesn't. And then you're screwed. Yes, this didn't happen to you yet. It's like insurance - most people end up not using it. But if you need it and don't have it you're quite screwed. FOr some levels of dependency on Google it's ok - if I can't use Google Maps, I use other maps, no problem. But if I depend on Google for something critical, it may be dangerous.
Most people also don’t ever need customer service from PayPal, or any company really. The point is that when you do, you’re screwed. That’s not a worthwhile risk for important services like email. For other things perhaps it is.
And everybody thinks it won’t happen to them. Every time there is a PayPal horror story there are comments from people whose business relies on them saying that they don’t believe the risk is high and that it won’t happen to them.
I paid the NoScript guy $5 once with PayPal, many years ago. For some reason, that transaction caused my PP account to be frozen. I called PP and they told me "we can't tell you why your account was locked, because that would give people information to help avoid our fraud detection".
I had used this account to buy thousands of dollars worth of stuff on eBay, and they froze it for a $5 transaction.
Sounds like this was as a customer. PayPal are known to have good service for customers; most of the horror stories are as sellers (where getting bad customer service, having your funds frozen or account closed is also a LOT more painful than as a customer since it could sink your business).
Yes, it was as a customer. When I sell stuff online, its either cash, bank transfer, or Paypal "as friends", never Paypal "ware or service", because it's super easy for sellers to get scammed by customers.
I think that's a good thing. If you are selling stuff online using PayPal, you should be at least be big enough to afford a lawyer that helps you with PayPal.
As a customer, however, you are often way less protected.
That's an understatement. Google's customer service is legendary in the sense that everyone's heard of it but nobody has actually been able to "see" it.
But having bad customer service is just bad service, confiscating users' data really not unlike theft.
Google's customer service is definitely quirky. You have to write up your issue somewhere and then submit it to this strange orange 1990s-looking website. Then they prioritize tickets with input from random strangers on the internet before they can be seen by someone with enough authority to help you. But generally if you can get into the top 30 issues or so, someone will help you.
What "strange orange website" are you talking about? I thought Google customer service was a myth — would love to know where I can go if I have an issue in the future.
The feudalism analogy applies here too, im the old times the lord in the castle (or somebody working for him) can banish you from his area, taking your possessions and severing your contacts with the community, ruining your business, and so on. And they don't even need a valid reason, and when you ask "Why?!?" the soldiers would dragging you would just ignore you..
This just puts the focus on another problem then: Tiny companies get eaten by big players [0] until you don't have any choice or it is too much of an effort to you to switch to an alternative solution.
In my opinion it would be helpful to acquire knowledge how to provide services on your own or to connect with people to share services (like a NextCloud).
On the market you will not find a provider that can guarantee to be it's own master or exist at all in years to come. Also I have the bad feeling that a lot of providers try to prohibit data export to keep you caught in their eco-systems (e.g. see Apple deactivating the _basic_ function to export contacts to a SIM card).
So now it is early enough to find a way to own and protect your data but in a few years it may be much worse and some day probably impossible or at least impractical.
The upside to this is that no single service will just "go away" and as long as your NC-server is running you will have access to your services.
>May be for “millenials” you need to be brave to leave this circle, but I don't getting it.
I don't think anyone is considering themselves brave for decoupling themselves from the Google-sphere. Leaving social media is a far greater step with ramifications, real, imaginary or simply comparatively, that I would commend younger people for being brave should they take the step. It's something that's truly going against the grain.
I think the dearth of these type blog posts is to a) recognize that it's easy to encapsulate much of your digital reliance on Google and its services and therefore b) Real, or imaginary, it's quite difficult to take the step of decoupling from it and finally c) show that it is possible and less burdensome than people currently encapsulated believe it will be.
The authors slant on this is a little different from some others that we've seen on here - Google can shut down your entire online ecosystem with the click of a button should you infringe some arbitrary standards set in T&Cs riddled with legalese, designed for people to not read. A close call opened his eyes, and he made the steps to decouple from Google. I don't think he's looking for some to cry "Oh my, you are so brave!" for doing so.
> You are not building something new switching from one big corp to another small company that want to become another big company next day.
This. At some point you have to trust someone.
Even if you're off Google you're leaking data with your phone, credit card, smart TV, ISP, genetic testing, etc.
I know privacy isn't all or nothing but with Email the party I'm communicating with already has a copy of the communication that they could forward to anyone or save with any other provider.
I'd say ethics might be a larger reason to switch.
It is considered normal to share trivialities online.
You may cynically consider it "building an online presence", but more generously people like to share things... even obvious things... like this comment I'm writing.
> You are not building something new switching from one big corp to another small company that want to become another big company next day.
So what? The point is to have different services upon different companies, even if tomorrow DuckDuckGo becomes a giant (unlikely anyways) the idea is to use it only for search not for everything.
> May be for “millenials” you need to be brave to leave this circle, but I don't getting it.
The article clearly states is for pragmatical reasons, where do you came out with him needing to be "brave" to do it?
>What is so special in using other providers? Is it just... normal?
As special as not helping yet another monopoly that has vast control over most people's lives, yeah maybe thats not so special to you and thats fine but it still a reasonable cause to advocate for.
You ask why to things the article already started talking about. What do you think about what the article has already said about these things?
Also note most of the things they have moved to are self hosted. For instance Cloudron could close tomorrow and they would still own their email address. Seems quite different than moving from a big company to a small company that wants to be a big company.
Five of his switches were to nextcloud, which is self hosted and open source. One was to self hosted email. Many of the others were things like web search, browser, etc, where it’s hard to avoid a company.
> You are not building something new switching from one big corp to another small company that want to become another big company next day.
Switch to another small one when they start to get big. Try to keep them all balanced. If only one person doing that was enough to get a nice competitive market...
> What is so special in using other providers? Is it just... normal?
It's probably not normal. I've heard of Google, but not Fastmail, Matomo, Nextcloud, Collabra, Plex, Jellyfin, F-Droid, Aurora, Lineage, PinePhone, Simple Mobile Tools, Hover, Matrix, PocketCasts, AntennaPod, or "Ting".
Exactly what you imply with your nostalgia for PIMs: increased fragmentation. There is value in witholding information/data/usage from Google (or FB, or Amazon, or Palantir, etc.) -- particularly personal data that is most valuable in aggregate -- value that reflects a decreased ability to cause problems, worries, and/or concerns in users' lives.
> There is life outside of Google, and always was.
I had a collection of animations related to lambda calculus and alife on g+. Well, now is back online and moreover it is better, because I can add the option to remake these animations live, with js.
You are not building something new switching from one big corp to another small company that want to become another big company next day.
Probably I’m getting old but I remember times when Google doesn’t exists. We had software for files, messages, calls, calendars etc. It was based on different protocols, may be less secure and more naive. But it was ok for these days.
There is life outside of Google, and always was. May be for “millenials” you need to be brave to leave this circle, but I don't getting it. What is so special in using other providers? Is it just... normal?