Leaving google?

July 12, 2009 4:54 PM

HELP ME get off of google I am addicted to google services: from gmail to igoogle, from google bookmarks to google reader to documents i am increasingly of the opinion that big brother is upon us and he has googly eyes i like the ease of use, and I am not terribly sophisticated at computer use, but can someone suggest step by step ways to rid myself of google?
posted by dougiedd to technology (15 comments total)

1. Stop using Google services.
2. Delete Google cookies. Firefox and IE both make it pretty easy.
3. Use something like AdBlock or a proxy to block Google domains entirely (google.com, googleadservices.com, googleapis.com, etc.). The bad news is that this will break or limit some sites' functionality.
posted by box at 5:01 PM on July 12

Some ideas:

1) get your own domain name/hosting for email and such. That'll set you back, say 20 bucks a year for a cheap package.

2) use mozilla weave for bookmarks, and set it up so that your bookmarks are stored on your own server (see #1)

3) There are alternatives to google docs, but they're all going to involve keeping your stuff in somebody's cloud. Maybe you could buy a keychain USB drive and run portable open-office. Be sure to encrypt it with something like TrueCrypt.

4) Use a local feed reader. Sage is one, IIRC. I have no idea what the kids are using these days. If you want to access it from multiple computers, find one that will let you install/run from a USB drive.
posted by chrisamiller at 5:03 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]

It depends on how much you want to limit rid yourself of them. Gmail is easy to get rid of - use a different mail. Either get your own domain and hosting services, or use hushmail (if paranoid) or any other webmail.

Google bookmarks use (I think maybe) del.icio.us, or any other bookmarking site. Documents, go old-school with word or any other editor: added bonus that fully-featured editors are better than google docs. For sharing use drop.io. Google reader use NetnewsWire or any other reader.

To be quite honest, I wouldn't delete the cookies. Or rather, delete them once, stop using all the services (kill the account altogether if you can), and just use the google search. If you use gchat, use it through adium or another chat client.
posted by Lemurrhea at 5:07 PM on July 12

FYI, have you read Google's privacy policies? Not that you should or shouldn't stop using their services but what they do with your data is spelled out in their privacy policies.
posted by GuyZero at 5:17 PM on July 12

If you're using Firefox you can safely synch your bookmarks, passwords and tabs in an encrypted manner with Mozilla Labs' Weave.
posted by furtive at 5:18 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]

For bookmarks I use the FF Delicious plugin. If you're using Firefox, you can also install Customize Google, which blocks the Google Analytics cookies, anonymizes your userid, and a host of other good stuff. These are definitely not things that require sophisticated computer knowledge to use. For documents, if you don't have Office, you can download Open Office for free. It's a wonderful suite of programs.
posted by Roman Graves at 5:25 PM on July 12

Oh, and for feeds, I've recently dropped Netvibes in favor of Feedly, but either one is better than iGoogle.
posted by Roman Graves at 5:31 PM on July 12

as for replacing the search, scroogle scrapes google anonymously and works well.
posted by namewithoutwords at 5:37 PM on July 12

zoho is a good alternative to google spreadsheets/documents/calendar etc . Some of their offering are even better. 2nding netvibes for startpage, i use it everyday.

As for syncing, try lastpass( secure password manager) that you can use on any browser/even online.

Evernote is a much better option that google notebook

bing maps in my opinion is much more realistic and helpful than google maps for eg( for directions, it will give you landmarks you need to lookout for before a turn. For your end destination it gives the street if you have gone too far.

Bing search is actually competitive to google, however google does dominate in this space.

Gmail unfortunately/fortunately is the best i have seen in terms of an online mail client. The other alternative is to get one of the thousand emails with a POP support and move to thunderbird.

Hope those help.
posted by radsqd at 5:49 PM on July 12

I use Google services a lot. But I'm not so fond of the idea of my Google accounts being associated with things other than my mail, calendars and documents. So I use different browsers for different things. I use Chrome for my Google stuff, and Firefox or IE for other stuff. The latest versions of both Firefox and IE have a "private" mode, which doesn't use the same cookies, etc.
posted by me & my monkey at 6:03 PM on July 12

Yeah, Bing Maps is really great for directions. It also has a nice little page you can email to people for general directions from any...um, direction, to an address; like this.
posted by Roman Graves at 6:23 PM on July 12

"Bing, the Imitator, Often Goes Google One Better"
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:23 PM on July 12

For e-mail: I switched to www.tuffmail.com + Thunderbird or Evolution e-mail client. It's a paid service, but you can trim down your quota and mailbox size to get it cheaper. It's known for having excellent uptime, and it's a one man show. Failing that, fastmail.fm is popular and free. The best option is to get a static IP address and host your own mail server from home if you have the means to do that.

For RSS: I wrote my own script to fetch my feeds, but I can also vouch for the Sage Firefox addon.

For search: I tried switching to www.cuil.com, then www.ixquick.com. Neither of them matched Google, or perhaps I am just too trained at bending Google's arm to get the results I need. In any case, I just use Google search and set my browser to delete all cookies when I close it down.
posted by anon_for_this at 7:54 PM on July 12

Stop reading metafilter;). Or, at least disable javascript with something like NoScript.

Metafilter, like many other web sites uses google (googleapis, google analytics) for stuff that could be done in a different way. You lose features like favorites, which is a pity, but these features collect data for google as well as the sites that host them.

If you are really paranoid - stop using safebrowsing in Firefox. This checks _every_ URL you access. Guess who provides that service?
posted by w.fugawe at 10:23 PM on July 12

What they do with your data NOW is spelled out in their privacy policies, but just because their corporate motto is "don't be evil" doesn't mean that that can't change in the future, and by then, it'll be pretty woven into people's lifestyles.

Not only that, but privacy policies only cover what Google says they'll do; if their systems are compromised or an employee with high level access to a lot of different systems decides to break the rules, it's quite possible that someone could find out information they're not supposed to. The good news is that given the sheer scale of information Google has, doing so would probably be difficult or impossible in a lot of cases.

Keep in mind that Google Analytics has a very wide footprint, so whether or not it's allowed to combine this data with other data they have under their current policies, Google has the potential to get a very disturbingly complete picture of you.

I don't use Google mail (well I have it, but I don't send / receive much personal mail on it), but I do use Google docs, Google Calendar, Google Maps and Google Reader. In regards to the person who suggested a local feed reader -- that has some *major* drawbacks if you read your RSS feeds on multiple machines. Would definitely be interested in hearing about news aggregators that can sync over multiple machines (not at the filesystem level).
posted by PandaMcBoof at 7:02 PM on July 13