Woah, that was a very different conclusion than I was expecting. The post builds up to how terribly dependent you are, but concludes with "so I'm very happy".
I see your reasoning and your point, but don't forget what kind of relation this is (where you pay very little to nothing for most services, money-wise...).
And I never used "I'm so very happy". This is where biases come in. My goal was to say that Google services are very useful (to me) and I am ok if in return I have to give them my data.
I wonder how many people are like you though outside the tech forums and especially in developing countries (where a lot of the users for US based tech companies come from).
Although I suppose there could be a certain exclusivity and elite aspect to such a network, similar to how Facebook differentiated itself with exclusivity by only being available at universities in the beginning. A network that markets itself as both for higher class people willing to pay monthly and free of ads/tracking.
Imagine if the likes of Equifax treated silos of data as a liability instead of an asset to be milked. Properly valued, a breach of hundreds of millions of people’s data would end a business, even as large as Equifax.
Yet, if too many people opt for the paid option, technically advertiser value would fall, since less users would be targetable. Moreover, $6.50 average per user means they probably make close to no money on some users, but a lot of money on others. If only their high-yielding users opt-in to an ad-less Facebook, this could mean big losses for them.
I guess this is why they haven't offered a paid version as an option ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's not about the ads, it's about the tracking, profiling, and sharing/selling our data.
If I could pay a few dollars a month (I guess Facebook would be worth $3-5/mo to me, and Google $5-10/mo) and get out of the whole tracking/voter-manipulation/profiling/sharing data/etc. thing, that'd be worth it. That would have to include that any non-essential data is not recorded or (if I previously was on the free tier and am now paying for a year or so) permanently deleted. Of course many personal things fall in the 'necessary for functionality' category, like chat history and which pages I liked, but part of the deal is not using that data for anything other than the service itself. And if I decide to go to a competitor, I don't want to be blackmailed into paying to keep it private, so I'd want to have an option to permanently take out and delete my data once I leave.
Sounds like a tough bargain, given all the restrictions I'm putting on it, but the alternative is the current state where I'm not making them any money at all. Not using it is worth it to me, despite missing out on a few things. And I don't think the requirements are unfair, I'm just asking them to provide service X for price Y without anything else, but apparently in 2018 we have to mention that we don't want anything else, like having our data misused or shadow profiles being recorded.
Agreed! So let's pay fair and square, rather than them shuffling data around in a manner that is not completely transparent to us.
Here Maps or OpenStreetMap
> No Search
I’ve switched to a mix of Qwant and DuckDuckGo, depending on question
> No GMail
I’ve been self-hosting all my mail for 4 years now, works fine thanks to simple solutions such as this tutorial https://workaround.org/ispmail
> No YouTube
This is the largest issue, but most of what I consume is either music or streams, and most of the streams are also on twitch, and the music is also available for sale on CD, or on Spotify.
> No Photos
I use seafile with automated upload and a custom-built photos UI frontend to provide a photo gallery for me, and to allow me to share photos. I use the tensorflow pre-trained example model for object classification to tag the images, it’s good enough.
For sharing other images, I’m building a custom imgur clone (GPLv3) https://git.kuschku.de/justJanne/imghost and https://git.kuschku.de/justJanne/imghost-frontend, example: https://i.k8r.eu/i/cXqmnQ
For most normal people, living without Google services may be complicated. But this is HN, we’re basically all software engineers capable of building our own solutions, and they don’t have to handle nearly as many edge cases. I don’t need to translate my image host into 108 languages, just english is fine (even if it’s not my native language). For people like us, it’s not that complicated to free ourselves of Google, and, in the long term, even self-host everything.
Possibly the most hacker_news.txt comment in this thread. "Why rely on [popular consumer service] when you could just build your own photos frontend and then set up a machine learning model attached to it? Easy!"
But yes, my setup is something I don’t expect most people to build for themselves – instead I’d hope that NAS vendors would include similar functionality, and people would start using those instead.
We can still use products built by companies. The OP has stated he's okay with "paying" using his data for the ease of use and benefits of a commercial service. It's cool you built your own! But there's a reason why GMail exists and is popular.
Similarly with Protonmail and GMail. How about email spam to start with? Or maybe email search? What about automatic filters? Or what about the fact the Protonmail is a subscription service if you want to use their advanced features.
I don't use any automatic filters, but I could use their "Bridge" tools and install Bat on my Laptop and setup filters this way. Way more advance features in Bat than in Gmail.
Protonmail is subscription service, true. But just like I can afford $5 per day for a good coffee, I can afford $1 per day for a secure, encrypted email; although I can believe for someone living in third world country, $30 seem a fortune, and I don't blame you for your country's economical situation.
And if you prefer gmail for free and be their product that they analyze, dissect it and categorize you based on the content of your email then that's fine with me; I really don't care. You are simply their product, but with your HN username, I doubt I had to tell you that :)
You seriously had the audacity here to compare GMail (a wonderful free product) with Protonmail (a $365/yr product) and ask me why I don't find it as a good replacement. At the very least, have some empathy man.
And if you don't believe me, Edward Snowden would like to have a word with you.
If Google goes down for one day, I am literally at a standstill. No Maps, no Search, no GMail, no YouTube, no Photos! I don't know how I will get through the day without these services :(
As such, with Google, I am more than ok them using my data to target me ads since it does feel a mutually beneficial relationship.