The default Google experience is top notch. When it works, it works fantastically. But when you fall off that golden path for any reason, you have some of the worst experiences imaginable. I have moved everything I can off of Google except for my company's email service, and that is coming soon. You cannot trust them to provide even the smallest customer service for people who are paying hundreds of dollars per month or more. You are more likely to get better customer service from cable companies, an industry with customer service so universally reviled that South Park has an episode on it.

I have posted this list before, but it seems to be more and more relevant every day! We don't have to use Google. There are tons of great open source projects available! Here are some of the apps that I self-host and use pretty much daily:

* Drive/Calendar/Photos/Keep:

  - https://nextcloud.com/

* Docs/Sheets/Slides

  - https://www.onlyoffice.com/

* Mail

  - https://mailu.io/ (basically a Docker-based deployment of Postfix/Dovecot/etc)

* Hangouts

  - Server - https://matrix.org/

  - Client - https://element.io/

* G+/Twitter

  - https://joinmastodon.org/

* Youtube Music

  - https://funkwhale.audio/

At this point i feel like any startup whose pitch is « just like this gafa product, but i’m not a gafa » is going to be successful.

Those companies have reached such a huge discrepancy between the amount of cash they generate, while at the same time pissing on their very own consumer / producer base, all that with the most self-righteous attitude, that « not a gafa » is going to be an immensely attractive proposition.

What does gafa mean in this context?

Edit: words

I think it’s something like Google Amazon Facebook Apple

Definitely a better acronym than FAANG: one of those companies is nothing like the others. (Hint, it starts with N)

Honestly Nintendo would really fit better in there than Netflix, in terms of business practices.

Other discussion on this topic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26061935

For those considering the email migration: The best thing I ever did was limit Google to being my frontend. I fed it my SMTP credentials so I can send "as me" through google, and forward my mail to Gmail. If it explodes, I lose a mail client. I will have to setup another one to avoid the horror that is provider-provided Squirrelmail.

Is squirrelmail still in use anywhere? Brings up unpleasant memories.

Most assuredly so. I use Thunderbird in a pinch to access my inbox as the ISP-provided squirrelmail does not work at all for inboxes my size.

I think it is high time for us all to explore different services than Google. This includes search.

DuckDuckGo has been great for search for many years now. Yes, about once a year I have a really hard search where for some reason I very strongly suspect that Google might be better, so I google. But that's about it.

The only way Google makes money off of me is via YouTube ads. When you're not logged in and always appear as a new visitor due to browsing in private mode, ads are many and annoying.

I agree. I use DDG and Firefox.

I think the thing that pissed me off the most was realizing that searches done in incognito mode (which explicitly implies a level of privacy) are still tied to my Google account (the whole Gaia/ non-Gaia thing).

Is there a reason you aren't using an ad-blocker?

I use Privacy Badger, which is fairly good at filtering out most annoying ads, so I haven't really considered using an extra ad blocker. I guess I should consider one, if only for YouTube.

I think it’s been time for awhile. De-Googling is hard. I’m still trying. Email is the last one…

I don't get it, mate. Email is like the easiest. Get Fastmail, pre-pay for three years, go into settings, use import from Google, bam, Calendars, contacts, email is all sucked in from Google and also email and calendar sync configured.

That is the easy part. To truly degoogle I have to update 15 years worth of accounts and contacts that might send me mail on this address or use it for recovery.

Yeah, it's tedious. But worth doing. I didn't do it in one go, I kept an eye on my Gmail and slowly moved the email across that sent me messages or when logging into that service for the first time.

Is that because you are using an @gmail.com address as opposed to your own domain?

Just autoforward all the emails from Gmail?

This doesn't help when Google bans your account (the topic at hand).

It does a bit.

First, you get a backup of all the old emails (person in the case lost access to 15 years worth of emails). Second, the sync is configured, so you have a backup of freshly arriving emails. That's reduces your risk already but you don't stop, once all of the above is setup you setup a filter "to: [email protected]" and move those to a separate folder and then you just act on every email that you receive there. If it's from a robot, you go to that service and update your email. If it's from a person, you ask them to change your email in their contacts and so on. In fairly short amount of time, you have the issue resolved completely.

The funny thing is that once migration is done, you can configure Gmail as POP3 client to your email server and enjoy Google's UI while it lasts with zero risks. Yes, it'll be able to use SMTP server as well.

Good points. I was solely thinking of recovery emails, not the other things you mentioned. Thanks!

I found it helpful to set up automatic forwarding from gmail to the new email account.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10957?hl=en

This doesn't stop Google from having your emails obviously, but it allows you to move over your more important accounts now, while handling the other accounts as they inevitably send you emails over time.

This headline is... not great. The developer's main complaint was losing access to an account with 15 years' worth of email. And yes, also their own YouTube channel. But "YouTube account ban" is open to misinterpretation, as if it were "just" an account used for viewing/commenting.