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by outworlder 2816 days ago
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...

2 comments

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