What exactly do you mean by "Sites -> VS Code"? Do you mean create the webpage from scratch yourself, because a big part of Google Sites is that the site is also hosted for you, and I don't think asking a user of Google Sites to create a webpage and host it themselves is the best idea.
I've updated my comment with what I use for hosting my site. But my intent was what you gleaned.
Edit: Fastmail even offers website/hosting as a part of your email service. I'm just biased being a developer and cry at the thought of sites or wordpress - knowing all too well that those products bring real value to many, many people.
A reminder for everyone that Authy allows multi device and backups in case you lose your phone. From my understanding Google Authenticator doesn't offer either of these.
Please keep in mind that by using Authy you're implicitly supporting the use of SMS 2FA everywhere. We need to push companies to get off of SMS 2FA and giving Twilio another user to put on their quarterly report isn't going to help.
Some of my YouTube subscriptions moved over to Nebula so that helps, somewhat, reduce the amount of time I spend on YouTube. But yeah, there needs to be a larger movement to move channels from YouTube to have serious alternatives to YouTube as a user.
I think it is a good idea for more people to move away from Chromium completely. We're starting to see too many websites written "Only Works in Chrome" and I lived through one "Only Works in One Browser or Reskins of It" epoch already (IE6).
Almost none of those are viable alternatives. They're either not free when Google is, a lot more expensive, or have a lot less features.
And recommending Microsoft products or apps owned by the CCP as an alternative to Google products is simply ridiculous.
I would understand going from Google to open source products, even though I am not an open source fanatic, but going from Google to another privately owned for-profit company makes no sense. Is this written by a guy bitter to have been laid of by Google or something like this?
I am probably too far gone to be taken seriously, but my startup got acquired and we had to switch from Google to Microsoft and I actually kind of like the Microsoft stuff. It has dark mode! If you're going to be Last Name, First Name at an 80k employee company, at least your calendar can be visually pleasant to look at.
Sure, I don't think Microsoft's stuff is necessarily terrible. At work I've always been fully immersed in Windows and Office, as both a regular user and IT guy, and it's fine for that. I was even using Windows and Edge on my personal laptop as recently as 2021. But if you're trying to get away from Google as a soulless mega-cap corporation that wants to trick you into giving up more of your data, switching to Microsoft doesn't seem like much of a switch.
That being said, I'd be strongly inclined to believe all your stuff [from Personal Accounts] -- even if only its metadata -- will be fed to OpenAI/Bing's Sidney sooner or later.
Same with Google with regards to Bard.
There's no mention of Google Voice. I've been hooked on it for 12 years, with my primary phone number being a Google Voice number for the last 10 years.
I've started using a lot of the suggested applications and services - Firefox, DuckDuckGo, Flickr - instead of Google's in recent years. I'm still using Gmail because changing my primary email seems like it would be a pain, but at least I can see that there are some strong competitors for email. Voice, on the other hand, seems like a pretty unique offering.
Fwiw, I switched from gmail two years ago and it was relatively painless. It took a couple hours and there were a handful of websites that didn’t allow changing emails (as usernames) but otherwise it was fine. And worth it to no longer get spam.
Voice was a mainstay for me for a long time. The closest replacement I could find was a service called OpenPhone[1]. It's designed as a VoIP service for small business teams, but I'm finding it works great as a solo voice/text option. I was able to port the Voice number over.
I actually don't even use a lot of the features of Voice. I mostly just like having my phone number decoupled from any carrier or handset, so changing them is seamless, or they aren't even necessary. I do a lot of my phone calls and SMS/MMS messaging from the web application on my laptop.
Me too. The only thing it is missing is an auto attendant that can keep track of a whitelist based on my contacts and numbers that have navigated the auto attendant before to get through to me.
Why do you need to stop using something you like? Certainly use Firefox instead of Chrome so you can keep using an adblocker, and lie about not using any Google stuff on HN so you aren't burned at the stake. But there's no bonus points in real life for making yours more difficult.
Personally, I became slightly uncomfortable with having 100% of my online identity and data under one account with one company that can use my data however it wants, and offers little or no customer support (because I'm not really the customer). Like I said, I'm still using Gmail and Voice. Also Drive, Contacts, Calendar, Maps, an Android phone... but just listing it all makes me a little squeamish again.
Maps is the only Google service I am hooked on. I use it to get around (both on foot and via public transport) but also to find places to eat and drink when I am in a new area. I love OSM as a project and have contributed to it but it just doesn't compare.
Other than that, for me it's mailbox.org for Gmail and Nextcloud hosted on a VPS for Drive and Calendar.
Look into Transit app for public transit. The UI for transit wayfinding and exploring nearby stops/lines is way better the Maps in my opinion. For agencies that don't have realtime arrivals, Transit also supports opt-in crowdsourced time estimates.
I've been hooked on some Google services since 2010 when I got a Nexus One phone. I liked the calendar and contacts because they were accessible from my other devices. I ported a few of my phone numbers to Google Voice shortly afterward and I liked being able to access voicemail and SMS from my other devices.
Sometime last year I noticed that Google Calendar was acting up with Thunderbird so I decided to migrate my calendar and contacts to Owncloud (https://owncloud.com/). That migration went very smoothly and I've had no trouble accessing my contacts/calendar from desktop, Android, and iOS. Everything works great, and Thunderbird no longer has problems.
To get completely off of Google's tit, I need to migrate my Google Voice to something else. I can migrate them to NumberBarn, but that doesn't take care of the spam filtering. Maybe I can use NoMoRobo...
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] thread- Mail -> Fastmail
- Search -> Kagi
- Photos -> Google Photos (sorry, but...it's fantastic)
- Docs/Sheets/Slides -> Native/Non-Web Microsoft Office
- Keep/Notes -> Logseq
- Chrome -> Firefox or Orion
- News -> Hackernews
- Sites -> Ghost + Digital Ocean
- Authenticator -> Authy
Edit: Fastmail even offers website/hosting as a part of your email service. I'm just biased being a developer and cry at the thought of sites or wordpress - knowing all too well that those products bring real value to many, many people.
I had to check that this was true and lo' it is:
https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000280141-Ho...
- Youtube —> can’t get around it
- Maps —> in few cases where apple maps is just not good enough (depends on where you live)
Don’t miss anything else 1sec!
- Browser -> Brave or Firefox
I'm curious if people think it is suggested to move away from Chromium completely, or just Google's Chrome?
And recommending Microsoft products or apps owned by the CCP as an alternative to Google products is simply ridiculous.
I would understand going from Google to open source products, even though I am not an open source fanatic, but going from Google to another privately owned for-profit company makes no sense. Is this written by a guy bitter to have been laid of by Google or something like this?
"It's better" is a good reason to switch. But this is clearly not the case in the original article.
That being said, I'd be strongly inclined to believe all your stuff [from Personal Accounts] -- even if only its metadata -- will be fed to OpenAI/Bing's Sidney sooner or later. Same with Google with regards to Bard.
I'm perfectly willing to pay for a decent service, especially if it appears to actually incentivize the company to care about my my interests.
I've started using a lot of the suggested applications and services - Firefox, DuckDuckGo, Flickr - instead of Google's in recent years. I'm still using Gmail because changing my primary email seems like it would be a pain, but at least I can see that there are some strong competitors for email. Voice, on the other hand, seems like a pretty unique offering.
[1] https://www.openphone.com/
I actually don't even use a lot of the features of Voice. I mostly just like having my phone number decoupled from any carrier or handset, so changing them is seamless, or they aren't even necessary. I do a lot of my phone calls and SMS/MMS messaging from the web application on my laptop.
https://www.dialpad.com/
https://plausible.io/
Other than that, for me it's mailbox.org for Gmail and Nextcloud hosted on a VPS for Drive and Calendar.
I for one love the integration in Google stuff. It's under-appreciated.
The author likely had some privacy concerns too
Sometime last year I noticed that Google Calendar was acting up with Thunderbird so I decided to migrate my calendar and contacts to Owncloud (https://owncloud.com/). That migration went very smoothly and I've had no trouble accessing my contacts/calendar from desktop, Android, and iOS. Everything works great, and Thunderbird no longer has problems.
To get completely off of Google's tit, I need to migrate my Google Voice to something else. I can migrate them to NumberBarn, but that doesn't take care of the spam filtering. Maybe I can use NoMoRobo...
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/03/16/introducing-micr...