The complete list of alternatives to all Google products

[dangh]

Qwant is as well indexing pages by itself, not using metasearch.

DuckDuckGo - I'd be very cautious with it as it is based in US and therefore any US law have to be implemented there so you never know which country will be banned, or what backdoor implemented.

 

[Alexmx]

I object less to the tracking and ads than I do to the ideologically manipulated nature of the search results. I welcome alternate viewpoints.

This goes also for me. With how tailor made are my results, I know that sooner or later I would end in an echo chamber that wouldn't allow me to be open to other viewpoints.

Also, since google decided that they would remove adblockers from Chrome, I switched to another broswer along with search engine.

 

[Yynxs]

So why am I trying to avoid Google again? I enjoy my free Google services and understand what there using my data for and it doesn't bother me.

Oddly, the same things are said by real slaves today as well as, pre-Civil War. Some people just prefer eating to freedom. Some don't, hence, New Hampshire's motto.

 

[Yynxs]

Yeah, good luck with the whole securing your privacy on the internet thing. After you "get rid of" Google (lol), you'll need to do the same with MS, Apple, Facebook, Instagram, your cell provider, your ISP, your government, and several hundred others.

I have. My family and the techs I know feel it is ridiculous too. However: I don't get updates unless I look. **** doesn't break at random. I like random adverts because there's stuff out there that is just interesting. VMalware may get in but it can't get out again. The list of positive activity when all the web is blocked far exceeds the limitations.

 

[Yynxs]

A person who has a condition on the schizophrenia spectrum may experience delusions and what is commonly known as paranoia.
These delusions may give rise to fears that others are plotting against the individual. Everyone can have a paranoid thought from time to time. On a rough day, we may find ourselves saying "Oh boy, the whole world is out to get me!" But we recognize that this is not the case.

People with paranoia often have an extensive network of paranoid thoughts and ideas.

This can result in a disproportionate amount of time spent thinking up ways for the individual to protect themselves from their perceived persecutors. It can lead to problems in relationships and at work.

It can also get you hired to prevent network intrusions if you're savvy enough. The psychological view you espouse is based only on the presumption that there is no reason to be paranoid. Tell that to the company director selling space to ICE to house wannabe refugees from central america and China and Africa, who was threatened, along with his wife and children, by a young protestor with a megaphone. Combine that with leaked memos from Google developers saying what they can do to 'target' the other side. After you tell him, you can explain the "...extensive network of paranoid thoughts..." concept.

 

[Yynxs]

Yeah, or most people can just accept that they aren't nearly as important as they think they are.

It isn't the 'importance' that I care about. It's the fact that it is MY privacy being invaded. I didn't authorize it. I don't buy products from them or anyone who uses their hosting. I actively avoid (actively being a critical term) anything Google.

NSA and the government alphabets are less intrusive and have laws and oversights on them. Google, et al. do not.

The freedom to associate is built in to the Constitution for a reason. BY IT'S NATURE, Google violates that. I'm not asking permission for them to not track me. They shouldn't be doing it in the first place without my express in writing on a piece of paper permission. In any decent country, they would be regulated and inspected by the government or kicked out of the country. Europe learned this and is doing something. I'm looking to make the same things happen in the US.

 

[hk2000]

It isn't the 'importance' that I care about. It's the fact that it is MY privacy being invaded. I didn't authorize it. I don't buy products from them or anyone who uses their hosting. I actively avoid (actively being a critical term) anything Google.

NSA and the government alphabets are less intrusive and have laws and oversights on them. Google, et al. do not.

The freedom to associate is built in to the Constitution for a reason. BY IT'S NATURE, Google violates that. I'm not asking permission for them to not track me. They shouldn't be doing it in the first place without my express in writing on a piece of paper permission. In any decent country, they would be regulated and inspected by the government or kicked out of the country. Europe learned this and is doing something. I'm looking to make the same things happen in the US.

I mean, in a way, I agree, but Google provides a service that is absolutely free to the consumer and the consumer certainly has a right not to use it, but cosidering what most normal people do on the internet, it's really a small price to pay, with them being upfront about it and giving the person a chance to request they don't do it. Let me ask you this: If a product maker gave it for free only asking in return that people submit their basic personal information, would people take it? Don't you think the majority of people would jump on it? Where do you think the idea of sweepstakes came from? I bet you 90% of the population would take part in a sweepstakes if they're absolutely guaranteed to win, and they'll submit their personal information willingly in the process!!!

 

[Yynxs]

I mean, in a way, I agree, but Google provides a service that is absolutely free to the consumer and the consumer certainly has a right not to use it, but cosidering what most normal people do on the internet, it's really a small price to pay, with them being upfront about it and giving the person a chance to request they don't do it. Let me ask you this: If a product maker gave it for free only asking in return that people submit their basic personal information, would people take it? Don't you think the majority of people would jump on it? Where do you think the idea of sweepstakes came from? I bet you 90% of the population would take part in a sweepstakes if they're absolutely guaranteed to win, and they'll submit their personal information willingly in the process!!!

Then you would bet wrongly and lose. What Google offers is not a sweepstakes with a large cash prize and thus a large privacy sacrifice required (you might look into Lottery winning for people struggling with that situation and why they're advised to get a financial advisor before collecting the winnings). What Google offers is small computing processes for an irrecoverable resource. Once collected, like virginity, you can never get your privacy back. Google, et al, and their henchmen are selling it and passing it back and forth. Your privacy is a capitalized value of the company and every company they sold it to. Google got wise to this a while back and now only directly sells the advertisement access to the audience, but the damage was done when the data was and is collected. And Google didn't limit itself to collecting from it's own agreeable crowd, they also collected and shared from people their Google-Aid drinkers knew. Ripping off the neighbors and family used to be a pyramid or ponzi scheme methodology before Google.

Most of the population of the US did not understand the privacy they enjoyed because case law long since settled law enforcement getting access to the US mails. Federal law affected government activity with the telephone and standard law enforcement has procedures in place to spy on you if they thought it was required but still had to prove the need.

None of those protections applies to tech and Google, et al, ensure no major anti-tech decisions by including third-party decisions about conflicts being under arbiter instead of jury trial in their deliberately obtuse EULAs.

Google grew because no one wanted to look at them and lose the little 'luxury' items provided and never really understood what 'forever' meant. At least one full generation and a good start of another have been conditioned to expect everything to be free (take a look back at music hacking and artists being ripped off in the 90's and 00's as an example). Google also took a page from the Bible in providing 'free software and free training' (Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.) for web development and insuring familiarity so the largest proportion of web developers would be familiar with and their tools and fonts and analytics and scripts on their pages. (because who wants to go back to school to learn something entirely new while trying to make a living?)

No. I don't think anyone old enough to have half an understanding of the loss would give up their privacy for Google apps. This is aside from the current issues of people being attacked and losing their jobs for stupid crap they said as teenagers (you know when they weren't paranoid about the world). See also China's social credit system to see what's coming to you if they (the big 'they') are not stopped.

 

[NightAntilli]

This is a great article. I already use a couple of the alternatives, but I'm willing to expand on this. I even use certain things that are not listed on here.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

There’s another big drawback to Authy. It’s owned by Twilio and is now a service based tool, meaning you’re always connected to AWS. An example of this is Amazon-owned Twitch, which provides app-based 2FA but only through the Authy app because it only implements notification based 2FA requiring you to sign up for an Authy account. Read more about their privacy policy here.

So Twilio is definitely getting into anti-competitive practices by leveraging their 2FA app Authy’s leading position, and along with that they are publicly listed on the stock market meaning they’re incentivized to show a profit to shareholders. They also basically have a monopoly on automated telecommunications, such as text messaging as a service.

In short, if you’re interested in a 2FA app for privacy purposes then Authy is not the one for you. If you just want something more private than Google, well almost anything is better.

 

[MaestroIT]

Are you really suggesting Aptoide as an alternative to Play Store ??
that store contains mostly pirated and infected versions of android apps....

 

[BadThad]

Great article! Thanks

 

[Avro Arrow]

This is a great article. It reminds me of why I've only really ever used Firefox for the last 20 years or so on my home PC. My work computers default to Internet Exploder but I've figured out a way to hack them and use Chrome instead. I don't think that they care about their privacy.

 

[terzaerian]

People aren't going to pay for a personal email account.

Also, Gmail gives you 15 GB, way more storage space than the alternatives listed here.

I am and just helped my family sign up for their own ProtonMail accounts. Try again.

 

[terzaerian]

Also want to make a bigly endorsement of F-Droid, mentioned in the article:

https://f-droid.org/

This is the place to go for functional apps (e.g. things like flashlights, pedometers, media players, etc.); 99% of what you find on the Play Store for those kind of apps is going to be spyware or malware. F-Droid delivers the goods, to the point it is the first place I ever fish for an app.

 

[terzaerian]

Oddly, the same things are said by real slaves today as well as, pre-Civil War. Some people just prefer eating to freedom. Some don't, hence, New Hampshire's motto.

Basically the past decade in mainstream tech has entirely been about conditioning people to think like slaves. It's gross.

 

[terzaerian]

There’s another big drawback to Authy. It’s owned by Twilio and is now a service based tool, meaning you’re always connected to AWS. An example of this is Amazon-owned Twitch, which provides app-based 2FA but only through the Authy app because it only implements notification based 2FA requiring you to sign up for an Authy account. Read more about their privacy policy here.

So Twilio is definitely getting into anti-competitive practices by leveraging their 2FA app Authy’s leading position, and along with that they are publicly listed on the stock market meaning they’re incentivized to show a profit to shareholders. They also basically have a monopoly on automated telecommunications, such as text messaging as a service.

In short, if you’re interested in a 2FA app for privacy purposes then Authy is not the one for you. If you just want something more private than Google, well almost anything is better.

I personally use Aegis:

Aegis Authenticator | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

Free, secure and open source 2FA app to manage tokens for your online services

f-droid.org

It doesn't sync but does automatically back itself up, so you can combine that with another app like SyncThing to automatically send it to another PC for backup.

 

[Nestea]

@Julio Franco
YouTube alternatives
odysee / lbry

 

[punctualturn]

Some of those are easy to replace, but others are not.

Example, with a home NAS (Synology in my case), you can replace a bunch of them,like Drive and Photos.

But then, you have to deal with proper firewall so you dont get hacked.

Then with offsite backup, which cost a good chunk of money, if you have a lot of data.

And the labor of maintaining all the devices.

So then you ask, which way should I go, no privacy with lots of convenience or hard work and with some of your privacy.

Either way, it seems that we lose.

 

[Inthenstus]

No mention of Spideroak for alternative to Google Drive? It’s a great piece of software.

 

[terzaerian]

No mention of Spideroak for alternative to Google Drive? It’s a great piece of software.

It has the Snowden endorsement, which is good, but I think any cloud storage service is going to be inferior to using SyncThing and doing dedicated offsite backups

 

[mattferg]

The opening para that is missing from the article :

Google has been losing its Neutral image at an incredible rate.
Google News is confirmed to cater to a certain political affiliation and is proven by neutral researchers to be promoting a certain political side more over the other.
Youtube is also mired in controversies after controversies by stifling certain voices and demonetizing creators of a certain side.
It doesn't matter what our political ideology are or if we don't care at all about politics, but when a corporation size of Google starts to indulge in such questionable practices and policing of its consumers, we need to take notice and do our part to end the monopoly of Google.

It’s not “picking a side” buddy, it’s censoring those consistently sharing provable, demonstrably false information and promoting violence.

It’s not “we only censor the right” it’s “we censor the right more because they lie way more (and poorly) and their lies hurt people more”

 

[mattferg]

I couldn't care less about them tracking my buying habits, it's the censorship that is concerning.

Stopping people sharing demonstrably provable lies and promoting actions which led to the death of a cop isn’t “concerning censorship”

 

[Mr Majestyk]

No mention of Startpage for search? Serious oversight.

 

[cliffordcooley]

It’s not “we only censor the right” it’s “we censor the right more because they lie way more (and poorly) and their lies hurt people more”

I'm calling BS.