[CosmicBagel]

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the side menu to refresh instead of just pulling the page down. It's all small stuff, but it adds up.

But despite this, and the lower quality search results of DDG, I'm still going to push forward with degooglifying my stuff. But I'm in deep. Drive, keep, Gmail, photos, hell I'm even typing this on a pixel 2. It's gonna take a while.

It's been surprisingly difficult finding a good replacement for keep. If anyone has suggestions I'm open. I'll probably make the shift to protonmail to replace Gmail. Not sure what do to about drive at this time.

The issue is that Google's stuff has always been very reliable and performance (well performant enough). For example I'll often ping Google.com for a network test. Google.com is never down, it's always my hardware, or my ISP, never Google.

Im just rambling at this point, but I think somewhere in there is a point about reliability, ease of use, and security that makes Google's products so compelling. Hence why they'll be able to get away with privacy issues like this.

[gustavmarwin]

To replace Google Keep, you definitely want to checkout https://standardnotes.org/ - Going back to Google Keep would make me feel like a second class citizen today...

As for the Pixel it's ok, just switch to LineageOS, but you'll want F-Droid + Yalp, or F-Droid + Aptoide if you feel adventurous (awesome project but they are just getting started.

Drive... I'd recommend Nextcloud, but then you need to choose a provider since it's decentralised. If you're in Europe I'd say woelkli.com, if you're in Asia or America sorry I don't know what to recommend but I'm sure there are good options. Nextcloud will do a lot more for you if you need (CalDAV, CardDAV, Password manager, Bookmarks manager, etc).

[luckman212]

I use (and pay for) Standard Notes. The philosophy of the project is amazing which is the main reason I support it. Currently it lacks some of the features I would need to commit 100% to it. But, it's slowly and steadily improving.

If we can get support for self-contained inline images/attachments, and inter-note linking then I'll be all-in.

[breakpointalpha]

Standard Notes looks interesting, but isn't the root issue that these services tend to drift over time into places we don't like? Evernote, Apple Notes, etc.

Would it be better to just use something like Emacs org mode and store the data in .git?

[ghostwreck]

Check out some of the principals of Standard Notes [1]. It's built to avoid this exact problem. I've been using it for over a year after migrating from OneNote and highly recommend it.

[1] https://standardnotes.org/longevity

[52-6F-62]

It looks like you can self host:

https://standardnotes.org/help/47/can-i-self-host-standard-n...

[52-6F-62]

I want to double up on everybody else's comment here— thanks for this. It looks great.

I use Apple Notes, Keep, and email myself stuff all the time.

I don't think I'll stop that, but I can at least keep a singular source now. I might even self host...

[Einstalbert]

Thank you for the recommendation for a Google Keep replacement, I've migrated over to standard notes.

[edpichler]

Wow, what a great tool!

[richjdsmith]

I spent Sunday afternoon researching alternatives for Keep after hitting my breaking point with DontBeEvilCorp a couple weeks ago.

The best I found by a mile is Notion.so. In fact, it is such a great app, it has promted me to consider migrating years of OneNote notebooks, along with trying it out as a replacement for Todoist.

Google photos I replaced with Amazon Prime Photos (from pan to fire, I know, but I'm still oddly happier).

Google Drive was the easiest - I use a combo of DropBox and Arq Backup Tool going to Backblaze B2.

Email has been hard. I have always maintained my own email domain, but had that forward to gmail for the convenience. Not sure what I'm going to do there.

Hope that helped.

[unstuckdev]

I use Dropbox Paper for notes. It has the minimalism of Keep, but you can use formatting, and you're not limited to HTML exports. You can export everything (or just a few things) as Markdown or .docx files.

[citrablue]

I'll second the recommendation for Notion.so. It's a neat piece of software developed by people who are unreasonably into making the killer note taking app.

I use it to replace Evernote, primarily, but also for building requirements docs, todo lists, or notes.

[softawre]

Woah, this is the killer note app. It's Onenote+Trello with /-commands and keyboard shortcuts.

[xte]

Me to, personally I drop GMail for a personal mail (20 euros per years, with a bunch of mailbox + unlimited aliases altogether with a personal domain. Benefit: alias to tell anyone a different mail so I know where the spam came from and I can easy drop anyone I dislike. Lightweight webmail (Roundcube) instead of monsters like actual GMail, login with user and password visible at the same time without the absurdity of Google that demand user-enter-password-enter cycle. A STANDARD IMAP so I can properly delete my mails from my local maildir without the need of moving to trash, sync back, delete from trash and sync back again.

For search IMVHO there is no point in switching between Google search and other equivalent search engine, simply because DDG, QWant etc are still company offering something from their own server. So I try to switch to YaCy (FOSS distributed search engine, a bit a java monster but not as monstrous as many Java crap we all know. I still use few time a day Google search mostly because it work far better...

On Keep I switch to Orgzly on mobile and sync my notes or to be more precise the sole parts of them I want on mobile, via org-mode+rsync. On Android sync without cloud is a pity due to limited fs access, however Termux work wall enough...

I have no need of Drive and I use personal calendar (via CardDav/Radicale) and contacts so I'm less bound.

However I'm still on Android seeing no real alternatives, SailFish was a substantial fail, Purism phone it's not there, OpenMoko, GreenPhone, ... are all old dead projects...

[sigi45]

Roundcube is everything but not a replacement for Gmail.

I have my Gmail account logged in on 3 PC's going back to IMAP and Thunderbird never.

[xte]

Well I say something similar in the past, now have seen the GMail evolution path I change my mind, beside that I do not generally use webmails except when I'm with a machine without my environment, my main MUA is notmuch-emacs.

I also agree about TB, classic MUA seems to be remained in the 90's however at leas for us not-basic-users notmuch-emacs, mutt&forks, pine&forks, mu4e etc are valuable options, long to setup-up, mostly because anyone have a personal recipe and no one offer a ready-to-use solution, but far more powerful than any webmails.

However mailpie can be consider a good GMail-inspired webmails and IMVHO for most of mail users Roundcube even if is really basic it's enough, clear, simple and effective. Contacs are a bit limited compared to Google's one but the rest work well.

[lgl]

While I agree that roundcube is really basic when compared with Gmail, I'd say that if you follow the convention that Gmail is nothing more than a webmail client (i.e.: a place you access through a browser to receive, read and send emails) then roundcube is exactly that. No bells or whistles though.

[PeterisP]

Gmail isn't just a webmail client - filtering out spam is a major part of any mail service; a mail server that doesn't reliably throw out the appropriate 80% of my incoming email messages simply is not usable.

I could run a mail server myself, but I don't believe that I can achieve comparable levels of spam filtering without excessive effort, so I would need someone else to provide this service.

[billylindeman]

That was also the breaking point for me. I've switched back to firefox, I bought a new iPhone XS (moving off the pixel), I'm in the process of getting my own email server up (though I may just switch to proton mail we'll see), and I'm waiting on a SIM to port my number off of Google Voice.

Maybe its all futile, but I'm committed to degoogling my life at least 50%. They've shown their hand and I don't like what I see.

[394549]

> That was also the breaking point for me. I've switched back to firefox, I bought a new iPhone XS (moving off the pixel), I'm in the process of getting my own email server up (though I may just switch to proton mail we'll see)

Fastmail's another option. Their 2FA authentication options are about as robust as Google's.

[michaelbrooks]

If you want Chrome-like features without Chrome then I would recommend the Brave browser. It's built on top of Chromium which is what Chrome is built on top of and it has built-in privacy protection by blocking all tracking and advertising code. Version 1 of the browser will be introducing Chrome extensions to the browser so the experience will be very similar.

[sys_64738]

Vivaldi is another candidate equally as good as Chrome.

[outworlder]

I have been trying (not entirely successfully) to move away from Google for a while now.

Gmail replaced by Fastmail. I used to think Fastmail's interface to be clunky - but no longer. It was never an issue, because you can very easily use any mail client, each with their own 'app password'.

Drawbacks: GMail's filtering it top notch, for both spam and their pre-defined categories (updates, social, etc). I never realized how many rules it saved me until I made the switch.

Browser changed to Firefox for the most part. Still not as battery efficient as I would like, and not as performant as Chrome in some sites (ironically, many of these belong to Google).

Google Cloud is nice, but I only use that at work.

Google maps is... difficult to replace. If I am in an Apple device, I can use that, but it's an inferior replacement.

The Google search engine is still second to none. I have made the switch to DuckDuckGo, but I find myself using !g VERY often.

Some things are just nice to have. The damn Google Cloud Print service works more reliably than trying to print from OSX over wifi. I have no idea why.

My 'breaking point' was not privacy or security. It's just that Google pulls the plug on projects surprisingly often. So I figured a gradual transition would be better. It's a very slow transition indeed...

[ukyrgf]

Ah! Google Cloud Print. I was looking forward to actually uninstalling Chrome on my main computer, but I'd forgotten how critical that is. Like you, I just can't get My MacBook to work with my network printer.

[samat]

Did you consider Safari? It’s super battery efficient.

[bilange]

> It's been surprisingly difficult finding a good replacement for keep. If anyone has suggestions I'm open.

I've been on the hunt for a good Keep replacement myself, but not exactly a replacement for the "Simple" Keep interface. In my perfect world I wanted something markdown based for taking notes, and syncable between mobile and web. Most (but not all) of my personal checkmarks has been checked with Joplin[1] which was not yet mentioned in this thread; at a glance:

- Synced via cloud accounts (Either it's Dropbox, OneNote, or even your own Nextcloud via WebDAV, if you wish to be public cloud free!)

- Notes are Markdown based

- Notes import done also via .md files, folder of .mds (including nesting), or even Evernote's ENEX format.

- Dedicated applications for PC/OSx/Linux and even Android & iOS native apps. No web interface available since it's used to sync to an external source. But with that much access with said applications, it's a tradeoff I can take.

(I just found out about this app this morning, so please excuse my enthusiasm :)

[1] https://joplin.cozic.net/

[stemc43]

there is a website for this:

https://prism-break.org/en/

^wow how quickly people forgot about NSA spying, snowden etc.

[amelius]

> but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast.

Isn't this mostly because you don't know yet how the same features work in FF and DDG?

[romseb]

For me it's a long list of missing features (using Mac OS).

* No Chromecast support

* Missing pinch to zoom support (smooth as butter in Chrome). Possible via Add-on "Multi-touch zoom" [1] in Fx but it's very sluggish.

* Youtube is much slower, also some features don't work there, like being able to scroll down when having a fullscreen video open. Can be fixed by installing "Classic Youtube" [2]

* Fullscreen is broken for me, I was not able to hide the address bar and tab bar. I had to install "Fullscreen Plus"

* Some extensions don't work as good, like Dark Reader [3]

* No good alternatives for some Chrome extensions, like "The Great Suspender" [4] or "Vanilla Cookie Manager" (Cookie AutoDelete for Firefox)

* Pdfium performs much better than Firefox' solution. Unfortunately Mozilla abandoned Project Mortar [5].

I could go on with the list. Don't get me wrong, I will still stick to Firefox even though Google Chrome is the superior product performance- and feature-wise.

[1] https://github.com/haxiomic

[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-class...

[3] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-reader/eimadp...

[4] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende...

[5] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mortar_Project

[moogly]

Take for instance the LastPass plugin: You can't just copy the current site's user name/password* with just 4 mouse clicks like you can with Chrome's extension, you need to edit the site entry (4 clicks), click show password, select the password, Ctrl+C. If you need to do this for both your user name and password, it gets a lot worse than in Chrome (which remembers your position).

And don't get me started on the really bad font rendering. Firefox is still behind Edge and Chrome, hell, even IE (at least on Windows).

*: something you need to do more often in Firefox because the extension's autofill feature is even finicky than in the Chrome extension.

[Moribund]

Hihi,

So, pick your battles. SimpleNote is the solution to Keep. FireFox addon's are getting better now Chrome and Firefox agreed a common format so wait on that one. Protonmail is great, but simple so don't expect the bell's and whistles you're used to.

Photo's is still the best product around so personally I'd stick with it, same for Drive (although Dropbox does work and is solid).

[freekh]

Started the same project (-> FF + DDG), but i have to admit I'm super happy with it. Gmail is going to be hard though.

[ukyrgf]

I've had an email account with Namecheap (privateemail.com) that costs like $8/year for the past many years. It's never been my first choice when communicating with friends or signing up for stuff, but lately I find myself stopping and saying "but that's the only email I actually pay for...". My Google accounts are slowly just becoming unimportant spam boxes.

[sli]

My current hangup is migrating a bunch of accounts that use my GMail for 2FA over to another email address. I really just need to enumerate only the essential ones and divest from/delete the rest.

I had the good fortune of realizing that I was less tied to Google than I thought.

> For example I'll often ping Google.com for a network test. Google.com is never down, it's always my hardware, or my ISP, never Google.

I've stopped doing this recently when, during a string of nearly-statewide Frontier outages, Google services still worked while everything else was inaccessible (actually happened multiple times over the course of a week). It felt a little bizarre watching YouTube videos fine but being unable to connect to IRC. I've started pinging Cloudflare instead.

[nobody271]

What do you do about your phone though?

Too bad Canonical dropped Ubuntu Touch. There are other debian-based contenders but I think Tizen is currently the only practical choice. Unfortunately Tizen's code has a terrible reputation.

So... as I type this to you Google is probably watching me. Yay.

[4d66ba06]

Purism is working on a phone that plans to support Ubuntu Touch: https://puri.sm/posts/ubports-ubuntu-touch-on-librem5-collab...

[exadeci]

For Drive I've found Jumpshare to be awesome, for email I can't see my protonmail replacing gmail, I feel that there should be a better alternative.

One of the hard parts will be to leave behind the awesome google photo

[enobrev]

Replacing keep is annoying because there's no export and Google takeout dumps HTML files for each note, and not very good ones. That may have improved by now, but it was an issue for me about 6 months ago.

[nickflood]

I feel you about Keep, but it looks like Microsoft's Sticky Notes will soon get an update with syncing and a mobile phone client - https://winbuzzer.com/2018/09/03/microsofts-sticky-notes-3-u... so that's an option.

[colecut]

Nextcloud made it pretty easy to get away from Google Drive and Keep. I really like using QOwnNotes to manage my markdown files which are synced to nextcloud.

[fokinsean]

I'm in fairly deep too, ~3 years of photos in their service. As convenient it is to do search and essentially having a "free" backup, I really need to move off. I'm not worried about moving mail since it's more of an iterative process, but moving photos is going to be a pita.

[thinkmassive]

https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

[earenndil]

What's wrong with firefox extensions? I haven't noticed anything untoward in my time using it.

[coldacid]

Firefox extensions _used_ to offer much more access and control of the browser, but they've since switched to a Chrome-like model that isn't near feature parity with Chrome. It was a huge step back.

[dtn]

I'm pretty sure that Firefox's model is a superset of Chrome's

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web... seems to suggest feature parity, at the very least

[sanatgersappa]

I use Firefox Notes instead of Keep - https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/notes

[imranq]

How do all of these note taking apps compare with Evernote?