[elliottpayne]

I switched to fastmail and duckduckgo in lieu of google products a little over a year ago for some of the same reasons. I tried to switch to safari from chrome, and that experiment lasted about 3 months before I got annoyed by how safari handles multiple tabs.

But, as far as most of the criticisms posted here, they're really unfounded. If you want to be a purist about privacy, you really have to just quit using technology. It's not realistic. Yes, you can be an idealist and try to run your own email server, etc. but it's really about balancing tradeoffs. I also use Apple maps and iCloud and dropbox and Evernote and... many other services we should give just as much scrutiny to as Google.

I don't see my choices as being about riding a high-horse, it's about a diversified portfolio of services that helps me avoid total lock-in. The day that google heavily oversteps with the G+ product strategy or twitter completely goes to shit, I've got a series of alternative services that can pick up the slack.

[toxican]

My thing isn't that I don't trust any one particular Google product. It's that I don't feel safe putting all of my eggs into one basket. A year ago, Google was my phone, my search engine, my email, video hosting, my DNS, my IM service (GTalk when it was still a thing), and cloud storage system. That's a lot of personal stuff all tied together under one account. So I split things up. I hosted some stuff where I could (email and online storage) and used different services/products where I couldn't. But I also continue to use Google for my search engine.

I don't really see it as a question of if Google will screw up with people's data, it's a question of when.

[anaktos]

By the time when, Google will be our overlords. Running the world with no one to be able to resist their ironclad rule. Because they know you, they know where your most loved live, what you need most to live, what your habits are, what medications you need.

Doesn't that sound bit too pessimistic? Of course it does. You already trusted Google, why trust another company and risk your data?

What if, from the 10 companies you trust your data with, 2 of the go rogue and use your data against you? OR what if they get hacked, and lose everything? That's what I fear more than giving too much data to Google. I'd rather trust one super reliable guy (Google), than trusting 5 (Self hosting) maybe trust-able, 3 shady guys, and 2 unreliable guys. But that's just me, I make sure all my accounts have 2 step auth.

[boling11]

This. Right now I'm also more comfortable with Apple having my info, because their business is built on providing me with a premium product & charging me for it. Google is built on monetizing my data and selling me better ads.

[enraged_camel]

>>But, as far as most of the criticisms posted here, they're really unfounded. If you want to be a purist about privacy, you really have to just quit using technology. It's not realistic.

Exactly. It's not realistic because it's a strawman, and a disingenuous one at that.

No one really wants to be a "purist" about privacy. Indeed, the only way to live a 100% private life is to have a cabin on some uncharted island and never leave it.

Rational people, on the other hand, realize that there are certain privacy costs to living in modern society. They simply want to make informed decisions about which benefits to trade off those costs for.

What the author advises against is giving all your information to one company, i.e. Google. This holds especially true since said company's core business is serving you advertisements and generally controlling your Internet experience (using the "personal filter bubble" described in the article) using the information it has about you. Instead, he is suggesting that people spread their information across multiple service providers so that no single one of them can compile it to get a wholesome picture of who you are. The point is not to avoid giving your personal information (although the less you have to give, the better). The point is to avoid putting all of it in the hands of one company.

[TD-Linux]

I'm not sure if switching to Safari is a huge jump ahead, because both are closed source software. You could switch to Chromium and get Chrome without the tracking, or use Firefox instead.