> Out of curiosity, what's the benefit of replacing Google Docs with Dropbox? [...] the same drive that would have me ditch Google would also make me ditch Dropbox

They're both for-profit US companies saving your data overseas, so yes, for your last point it doesn't matter much. However, there are two advantages:

1) You're giving your data to a company aiming to sell you storage space vs a company which tries to make money of selling your (meta-)data, where selling storage space is only a minor accounting item. This also gives clear priorities: Dropbox loosing or being caught selling your data is a big reputation hit to them [0], while for Google it would neither change their reputation nor their total revenue by much.

2) You're not putting your eggs in one basket. If you're all in on Google, loosing your account does kill your calendar, contacts, mail, storage (possibly with the backups you need right now) ... . Also, that one company has basically full access to your life. If you're using diversified services you're far less likely to suddenly loose access to multiple services [1] and those services only own a part of your data vs your whole life [2].

Concluding this, selfhosting surely is the superior solution. But if you must use external storage providers (i.e. as worst-case backup or due to lack of money/space for own servers), choosing Dropbox over Google has its advantages.

[0] Yes, I'm aware it has happened.

[1] Assuming 2FA and a reasonably secure mail service, of course.

[2] One could argue that Google is going to guard your data with world-class engineers while the other services are probably less well equipped and therefore you have an increased risk of (at least!) parts of your data being leaked. That's personal risk management, though, and the consensus seems to be diversification.

> selfhosting surely is the superior solution.

You go on to partly refute this, but not strongly enough. Self-hosting is clearly inferior in major objective measures: availability, durability, and security. Unless you spend all of your time managing your personal storage solution, self-hosting will be far inferior in these respects, and probably also in cost if a true accounting of time is included.

> Self-hosting is clearly inferior in major objective measures: availability, durability, and security.

I'd not go as far. You can have your setup behind a VPN on a high port, go for distributed storage (for example at your home and at your parents) and be rather secure with a stable, auto-updated distribution. Cold backups could be an encrypted blob in a cloud or a tape somewhere.

Now, of course this needs quite some upfront investment in time and money; without a solid setup, I fully agree that the cloud is superior (unless your prefer your data lost over read by the NSA).

Other than that, it mostly boils down to risk management: A third-party hacker might have an easier time with your network than Google or Dropbox, but being script-kiddie save is not that hard [0], so it needs to be someone with time and skill. TLAs can't simply subpoena your data, so it might be harder for them - unless your home network is setup badly [1] or they're willing to possibly burn a zero-day. Your day-to-day ad agency is not going to lay hands on your data. It really boils down to what aspect you optimize for; given the grandparent, I assumed it to be privacy and therefore selfhosting to be probably better. But I should've been clearer on that :)

[0] Yes, mistakes happen, but big corporations have also been hacked with trivial exploits, so let's call it even.

[1] This also poses a danger to your login data, though, so the Cloud security team does not help either.

Not so.

Availability: Raspberry Pi plus USB battery pack is more available than the Internet, since when my home power's down my Internet connection goes.

Durability: Have you ever heard of a Raspberry Pi dying?

Security:

  sudo apt install unattended-upgrades
  echo "0 4 * * * reboot" | sudo tee -a /etc/crontab

And all the functionality's available through Nextcloud. It's easier to set up than a Facebook account, and easier to maintain than a Google account.

This is assuming you don’t leave home. If you travel a lot, self-hosting on your residential internet connection is not going to be a very good experience.

When your house burns down?

Your house is less likely to burn down than Google is to cancel a service you use.

For my use case, I choose to be mostly serverless -- I use Resilio Sync. It's not a perfect solution as they still host the tracker and if one device cannot find another then it routes via their servers, but otherwise all my documents are stored on my devices.

Another feature lacking is sharing with a non-resilio user is not possible with Resilio Sync.

You can also try SyncThing, which works in a similar manner, but it's FOSS and you can host your own tracker.

While I like Syncthing and used it for a couple of years, my experience is that Resilio is way faster for syncing large numbers of files (e.g. Git repos or large photo collections). Resilio also appears to be more easily reachable behind routers and corporate firewalls that for some reason block Syncthing. For those with an iPhone, that platform is also supported by Resilio but not Syncthing.

This is my experience as well.

Conceptually, using what the SEO community feels google does every time google does an algorithm change that muddles SEM / organic after a revenue drop (source: mozcom 2019), you would have to assume they would keep marginally pushing incremental borders to ameliorate any drop or “lower than wall street expected growth” in ad revenue. So the OPs approach to fully migrate is consistent with that world view.

Texasbigdata -> texasbigsentence? ;) I think I even agree w you, but whoa cowboy, is that some stream-of-consciousness you've laid down there!

Haha...dammit. You win! :)

I loathe Google Docs for the horrible UX. Dropbox was great (modulo security/privacy) but they are increasingly moving away from what made it great (a simple file system abstraction). My absolute favorite today is Keybase (it includes cloud file storage too) which is the only of my options that I actually trust to be private.

Keybase recently sold itself to Zoom in what looks like an acqui-hire:

https://blog.zoom.us/zoom-acquires-keybase-and-announces-goa...

The blog post only talks about integrating Keybase's team - no mention of their product.

That was what I was referring to. They sent an update and wrote a blog post when it happened: https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-joins-zoom

"Ultimately Keybase's future is in Zoom's hands, and we'll see where that takes us. Of course, if anything changes about Keybase’s availability, our users will get plenty of notice."

No update since. Keybase still works (and I use it constantly), but will it be around in two years?

My first impulse was to move away from everything google. I don‘t know much about any wrong-doings of Dropbox. Maybe I need to do some research.

There appears to be a Wikipedia page dedicated to this topic:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Dropbox

This did it for me: https://www.drop-dropbox.com/

But if it hadn't, then probably this: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/...

Dropbox was such a great and conceptually simple tool, having a kernel extension for smarter syncing feels like a step into Enterprise lala land.

Interesting, thanks for the link!

Of particular interest, if you're someone who's ditching Google services out of concern about privacy issues, is that Condoleezza Rice voiced support for warrantless wiretaps during Bush Jr's administration, and was also involved (to what degree is debatable) with the authorization to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" (aka torture). Whatever you personally think about these issues, if you're concerned about privacy, that she is in Dropbox's board of directors should be a big red flag.

Agreed, 100%.

I also wondered why she dropped out of public for a while, for current events.

Their board list probably has some good hints.

Nextcloud is indicated here.

I've run a nextcloud instance as a dropbox (+contacts/calendar sync) alternative for years. But recently I was looking through their collection of apps, and there's actually so much more you can do with it. It has a webmail interface, video conferencing, collaborative document editing, a Google maps replacement, feed reader, etc etc.. I haven't used most of these yet so I can't say how well they all work. And a decent number of them are basically just iframes to embed other services (eg, etherpad or BigBlueButton). But, as a whole, it pulls together a ton of the things you might think of as "internet utilities". It's a shame about the brand, because the idea of it being your Own [personal] Cloud fits really well. I could totally see running an instance for less tech-literate family members or friends. Particularly my grandma, whose collection of bookmarks in her toolbar basically comprise "her internet".

I ditched both for similar reasons.

I didn’t have a really strong need for either though and I do use iCloud to sync among my apple devices.

I also use iCloud for all my iDevices. It‘s not fast or as flexible as Dropbox but privacy wise I prefer them over any other cloud sync solution.

iCloud is the only one with servers in China, so it is objectively the worst privacy-wise.

You misunderstand the situation. Chinese users, in China, connect to iCloud servers in China.

They are not used for anyone outside China.

You misunderstand. Chinese users in China connect to Dropbox and Google Drive servers outside of China, where nothing is available to the Chinese government. Non-Chinese users in China connect to Chinese iCloud proxies in China, which handle data that has already been decrypted using the storage key, which remains outside of China, so anything the user accesses is available to the Chinese government. Chinese users in China have their iCloud data stored in China, where it is all accessible to the Chinese government at any time. Aside from that, there is no meaningful difference in privacy among the services.