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this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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I do not trust Google at this stage. I pine for the day when Google seemed like a good company. Gmail was awesome when it came out, for example, and Google search worked well. Now I feel they are harvesting all my data to jam ads down my throat. Google search now sucks ass and just returns websites that have a bunch of AI nonsense or aggregated content that is effectively worthless.
I am migrating away from Google.
Does anyone know a good way to migrate to a good gmail alternative?
Proton Mail is a good alternative. A good thing to watch for a either a lack of or a very limited free account. This means they're not making money off harvesting your data. If it's free, you're the product.
I get your point and also have a Proton subscription, but is the Proton Mail free tier really that limited? 1GB of inbox space seems plenty to me for most "casual" users, especially if you regularily clean up mails you don't need anymore. The paid tiers are definitely interesting if you do more than that though.
The free tier is plenty but I pay for it because I use my own domain.
Skiff are pretty good too. Worth a look.
Get yourself your own domain and set up proton mail. It costs a little bit, but you can create email addresses for everything you want.
Zoho is still a corprate mail service, ive ised it and they are "okay" in terms of integrity
Edit: wrong comment to reply to
I'm curious: how did you expect them to pay for the overhead of providing this service? I'm sure you didn't think that they would just eat the cost of providing it forever, right?
Not that I disagree, but this is a shit take IMHO. It's always been the case that ads paid for "free" services, but the scale and invasiveness of the ads and data collection has clearly accelerated beyond a reasonable level. They waited until they captured a large enough user base and crowded out enough of their competition before gouging their users for ad revenue. They have the size and reach of a small(or medium-sized, even) nation, the data they are able to collect is a wet dream for any three letter agency.
Just because ads are what make the business model feasible doesn't mean they get a free pass to abuse their market position carte blanche. They should be cut down to size, and not just by user migration.
Reasonable to whom? You? Google? The legal system? Some dude living in a bunker in South Dakota? Which person or entity should google consult with before making a decision on what level is "reasonable"?
Making the decision to fund a vast majority of the internet with ads was a pretty big mistake in hindsight, though I couldn't say which way would have been better.
We don't disagree on the basics; I just don't blame a company for acting in the company's best financial interests. That's kind of the way they work-- arguably the CEO of a public company is bound by law to do so. I blame the representatives in the (US) government for failing to protect my interests and privacy. I frequently see news articles about consumer protections in Europe and feel jealous that we don't have the same level here.
I think that thinking is part of the problem. Why don't people take responsibility for their lives and stop using abusive services? Almost everyone knows Google spies and abuses people's info, but they are too lazy to change or don't care cuz they like free shit. So I say let them stay and get abused. Those who care move on - like we did here from another abuser in Reddit.
Like you did here? In what way?
well like I said, I found Reddit abusive in their spying, censorship and money grabs, so I dropped them and came here. The people who care will drop Google, the rest will remain as victims. Can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved. I think many haven't realized that is us the users who give these big corps all their power.
How do you know your instance doesn't spy, censor, or.. well, I guess you're correct on the money grabs part, haha.
If they were concerned, they could spin up their own instance or join one that's run by someone they trust.
The same could not be said for reddit.
Why are you even here?
I assume everyone is spying but i use a vpn so I don't care. Censorship here is difficult for a server as people can very easily change to another one, and money grabs are pretty hard here 😉 Nothing is perfect, but I like this place a lot more than reddit. I don't use anything Google and am enjoying that also.
legally yes they've been fined by numerous governments for excessive privacy violations
That's fair but presumably, since they're not racking up fines cumulatively, that they are now in accordance with the law... so are you saying that the current level is "reasonable"? Am I misunderstanding you point?
I don't blame Google for perusing their capitalistic interests.
I blame a neoliberal system that encourages it, and I blame capitalist apologists that get in the way of meaningful change.
If a (at this time fictional, really powerful, general purpose) AI exists to enshure as many stamps are delivered to its door as possable (a maximizer), it needs to make inert anything that would restrain it from that goal in any capacity. Law is subverted because with laws, you cant maximize stamps by stealing the carbon from others (likely killing them) to grow trees to stuff and let rot in a random house.
Maximizers are indiffrent to human life.
This is not the users problem. This is googles problem.
If they want to give away a thing for free, then don’t be surprised when people take that thing for free.
My point was that people should have known it was never free to begin with.
apologist use that soundbyte even if thats not what you ment. Ive made the same mistake.
Read more about their actual budget.
I don't understand your comment. Can you elaborate?
They run roughly a 50% profit margin, with ~80% of their budget coming from advertising revenue. Given that that's amounting to about 100B year over year, with the Orwellian scope of their, what word can I use, surveillance - I would call it excessive.
recurrant subscriptions, Corprate mail hosting, non invasive ads, not double-dipping, notreadimg your mail
It doesnt make all the money, but its not corrupt.
Sometimes I wonder if people never blocked adds, would websites have less adds?
It would add to adds 🤣 @shalva97 @joe
I believe there would be the same amount, or possibly more ads, but more targeted and more intrusive.
But that would make websites with less adds more popular. Maybe it would increase the number of websites that just show enough adds to support their servers... I don't know maybe it will be very small percentage, but at least not 0
Personally I'm surprised that there's not a premium tier that we can pay for to get quality back on Google services. Google business is the same crap but with a custom domain