Too bad google can't just change back to how they were in the beginning. At least just actually hold their old motto above greed and money every now and then.
Well, I don't use Chrome or Google search (for most part). Had moved to iOS from Android last year..
I'm finding Gmail to be most difficult to transition off of. I do have personal domain and use Zoho with it, but I think there is this mental block.. It will happen..
I migrated my mails from Gmail to fastmail.com two years ago and never looked back. Imported all my google mail, so I did not loose anything. What I love about fastmail is their pure focus on mailing. It’s a beautiful product with many useful features. For instance you can create as many alias names as you like (although I heard there is a limit, but I haven’t hit that yet). I create an alias for any new website I sign up. I also have aliasses that serve as a base-name (for instance mypurchases@fastmail.com) and can be used multiple times like so for instance: amazon@mypurchases.fastmail.com.
Edit:
I am also using my personal domain instead of @fastmail.com You never know when / if you need to leave a service provider again, and you don‘t want to change your email address again.
FastMail is also one of the last providers with a push notification certificate for Mail.app, last I checked - which makes it feel right at home on iOS.
I'm sold. If I pay $3/month can I migrate all of my dozen Google accounts? I have an email for each product in my portfolio and switching back and forth.
I would gladly pay a subscription fee if it means Google isn't reading my emails to sell me ads.
I had four gmail addresses. Imported a ton of emails from these accounts into my fastmail account. The alias feature is something I haven’t seen anywhere else, at least not so polished. Previously I hated signing up with my personal email address on sites I‘d use only once to shop for bicycle parts or whatnot.
can you explain more about the alias feature? what makes it special? Because I think this could be a killer feature as I have that exact same problem when signing up to websites
Very easy: After signup you go to Settings > Users and Aliases. There you see a list of your alias names. And you can create a new one with a click. Underneath the alias name you select which email address to forward to (I manage several email addresses for my family). That‘s it. You can even setup aliasses in a way that you can send messages from them, so they do not serve for receiving emails alone.
Their service is excellent. You get answers from real human beings within 24 hours (unlike trying to get help for Gmail; won‘t work).
I'm most impressed by people who can quit Google maps. If I'm on the highway driving, or if I have to get somewhere in a hurry or it's an urgent situation, I just cannot trust another platform.
One time my friend was driving and he asked me to navigate. The exit was coming up, meanwhile I'm stuck trying to get OSM+ to understand what rounte we are on. That was an unpleasant few minutes. Despite trying to stick with it, such moments kept coming up again and again. It made me realise that Maps is mission critical to me.
By contrast, Gmail was easy. Fastmail ftw, forward all google mail to it, and the fact that most of my email use is work email, which is on its own domain anyway.
See I find driving to be about as good with Apple Maps and Garmin maps as Google Maps. (And they don’t have ads like Google Maps.) The stickiest point of any Google product for me are the Google Maps reviews. Yelp isn’t really a thing in Canada, so since the death of Urbanspoon, if you want restaurant reviews, Google Maps is it.
I think things might be better across the Atlantic than here in Europe wrt Apple Maps. I can't confirm since I don't have Apple Maps on Android. I agree, though, that the reviews and the opening hours are very useful.
I wholeheartedly agree. When I had 25+ minutes added to a trip while I needed to use the bathroom because OSMand told me to drive off a bridge, I just gave in :/
I've been a long time fan of Android but I still cannot be forced to swap it for the Apple ecosystem which really is no better than Android.
What I would like is a hardened, privacy focused distro of Android that is guaranteed to be independent from Google. Sounds like a tall order but here's hoping Samsung will come up with their own mobile OS although how unlikely this will be.
I’ve got a bunch of older Android devices (mainly Samsung s3, S4 and s6s) that run lineageOS. Some of them are completely degoogled, but it makes life really difficult to use them as “regular phones” without access to google play store. Way too many apps most people want to use are not available any other way.
Samsung have not demonstrated being any more user friendly than google in my opinion. My S6Edge ran out of OS updates about 3 years after if was released. I have iPhones several years older that are still getting updated to the latest iOS. And there’s a whole bunch of crap undeletable Samsung software on their devices that I trust even less that Google’s apps.
I tried this for 2 years. Eventually I ended up with 2 phones - the google store one (with a burner number) and the non google store one. Things like being able to order uber (you used to be able to order on the mobile browser) made life difficult. Eventually I gave up.
Current strategy is to only have a burner google account on the phone and rotate gmail accounts every year (on phone refresh). Keep personal google accounts off the phone (using linux desktop) with a vpn and in firefox with privacy settings.
Use containers on the browser - never mix google, whatsapp facebook and other activities.
Use a phone registered in EU for privacy settings. Use a paid burner gmail account (again I figure it is better for privacy).
Annoyingly I also need an iphone for i-message with family members.
I would never trust Samsung for this. You'd still end up using a closed OS, just one published by a different company. And in this case the company you're substituting has an appalling privacy record. Vastly worse than Google
I was presently surprised at how easy the transition from Chrome onto Brave was. Multiple profile support with a great import tool. Switched to from GMail to ProtonMail as well.
The only thing I can't figure out is how to get off google calendar.
> I was presently surprised at how easy the transition from Chrome onto Brave was
Mine was the move from Chrome/Firefox back to Opera.
I'm still puzzled what happened to Firefox. I was using the Developer Edition and the last two years the performance is really suspect. I don't have a million tabs open, don't have a ton of add-ons running and it still lags horribly, crashes and new tabs take forever to open
I thought at first it was either my network connection or maybe a system issue. Switched to Opera and was like, "Nah man, it was definitely the browser."
I'm in the same book with my calendar. I have multiple calendars several family members share. I tried using outlook.com calendars and although I prefer their UI, it wouldn't import Google calendars.
If you have any recommendations, I'm all ears. Its the last thing I need to rid myself of Google.
Funny enough, as i've been looking to move away from G, i thought calendar element would be easy...but its not. (Well, its not s tough, just not a direct nor free transition.) The default android claendar app doesn't connect to a calendar via, say, nextcloud (calDav if i recall correctly)...One has to actually get/use a different app. I think the one that most folks recommmend for nextcloud is not free. (It is not expensive, so that is not the challenge.) Its fine for me since i am moving away from G apps...but my partner, she is meh-ok with some of their default apps...like the default android calendar app, though she would like to connect that app to our nextcloud cal...Again, nothing major, but just all these little annoyances that exhibit the super tight integration that was built into android with G services. Anyway, yeah calendar is annoying to ween off from G. Yuck!
If you install fDroid via the APK on their site you can install DAVx for free, which is likely the for-pay app you talked about for bringing your calendars in from a CalDAV server. Still not as easy or native as installing a Google Calendar account, but it does work and generally works quite well.
Ok, DAVx must be the name - i see to recall the mobile app having "dav" in its name. Thanks!
Actually I'm quite ok paying for this app...I like to support developers, especially if an app is open source. But, my annoyance is less about paying for an app, and more about google's calendar - which is forced upon an android user - not playing nice with caldav...And forces a person to sidestep things.
I was a really big fan when android first came out, thinking i would have plenty of freedom (or at least a reasonable amount of freedom) of bending my phone's OS - at least when compared to Apple's ios very restrictive approach...Wow, how things have changed! I feel like android is too locked down. Ok, some might think that ios is still more restrictive...But, to me, both ios and android are tech prisons just different colors of paint on the wall. I say that last statement with my fingers crossed and praying for pinePhone and other linux-y type phones to really make it mainstream!
That sounds tough.
Too bad google can't just change back to how they were in the beginning. At least just actually hold their old motto above greed and money every now and then.