| I am currently going through this exercise, and here's what I done: 1) Chrome -> Firefox (Firefox 9 is surprisingly snappy, seems to me like a perfectly sensible alternative) 2) Search -> https://duckduckgo.com/lite - doesn't even show your query string in the URL. BUT: Works only in general search terms, not for specific (long) queries. There, Google is still unavoidable, it seems. But for 90% of my searches, DDG is perfecly OK. 3) Zoner instead of Picasa and zonerama.com instead of Photos in G+. [zonerama gives 2GB for free] 4) GMail: I found Hotmail to be adequate, but recently I switched to paying for my own webhosting, so I don't use free email anymore. 5) Google Calendar/Tasks -> Toodledo.com 6) Google Analytics,Adsense -> don't know...haven't found alternative yet. In mu current understanding, it is not a problem to use some of the Google services, if one found them to be the best. What one should avoid, in my opinion, is to register account with Google and attach one's real-life identity to it. I did it in the past, and now consider it a big mistake of mine. I must say that I am still amazed so many people are ok with that. |
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