Google's gotten weird. Yesterday I was doing some keyword planning and got a negative (-) cpc and cost. I looked everywhere to try to determine what that meant and didn't find anything.
They have online chat support, so I tried that. I got routed to a sales rep who called me on the phone and who, after taking all my information while basically ignoring my question, finally heard me. She didn't know the answer.
She sent me a support link which was the same one that routed me to her. I told her this and all she could say was she was sorry and she couldn't help unless I was ready to launch a campaign.
I honestly don't think she knew anything. I'm suspicious that these are indy workers getting routed prospects by Google. I don't know. The whole thing was sleazy.
Years ago when I managed to get someone on the line she stayed with me until my problem was solved. And this wasn't even a problem (or maybe it was? wouldn't be the first bug I found on their site). I was just asking a question.
I planned a google ad campaign with a 200 TOTAL budget.
A google representative helped me setting up the account, after 4 days she calls me back and said that my ad is doing very well,
And it’s already holding at 800$.
Till now google didn’t give me back my money with claiming that I don’t have prof. They are not willing to listen to there own phone systems recording’s because they know that I’m right.
So basically WE ARE NOT THE CUSTOMER WE ARE THE PRODUCT
If Apple were a different company, it would've made maps available for use on web browsers and non-Apple devices. That could also help in a more rapid improvement of maps as opposed to the mostly-useless state it's been in (except for a few countries and regions in certain countries that Apple likes and works more on).
> and still a little YouTube (anonymously in a Firefox container)
If a Firefox Container is an option, then I'd rather prefer Startpage to DDG for search. Most of the time, I end up performing the search on DDG at least twice (the second time with a bang command to go to Startpage or Google) or I have a heuristic that DDG won't help and just go to the other search engines.
> DNS → Cloudflare DNS
Others to consider are Quad9 (9.9.9.9) and NextDNS (if you want ad and tracker blocking lists to be configured at the DNS level, sorta like a Pi-Hole, but on the cloud).
> I feel like I've won a lot by doing all this. I own my data now, so Google can't arbitrarily take it away from me, which gives me peace of mind. I'm no longer part of their ad ecosystem, being tracked all around the internet and having my attention sold to the highest bidder.
The "Google can't arbitrarily take it away" is a good argument, but "I'm no longer part of their ad ecosystem, being tracked all around the internet" requires a lot more effort than just avoiding using google.com, youtube.com, gmail.com, etc. I'm not saying that the current transitions are useless, but that there's more to it.
> If Apple were a different company, it would've made maps available for use on web browsers and non-Apple devices. That could also help in a more rapid improvement of maps as opposed to the mostly-useless state it's been in (except for a few countries and regions in certain countries that Apple likes and works more on).
Startpage is now owned by System1. It’s an Adtech company. I personally know some people who work/worked there and they do not recommend using Startpage for privacy reasons anymore.
> The "Google can't arbitrarily take it away" is a good argument, but "I'm no longer part of their ad ecosystem, being tracked all around the internet" requires a lot more effort than just avoiding using google.com, youtube.com, gmail.com, etc. I'm not saying that the current transitions are useless, but that there's more to it.
This becomes much easier with uMatrix + uBlock Origin extensions for Firefox!
> requires a lot more effort than just avoiding using google.com, youtube.com, gmail.com, etc.
Yeah this is fair! I don't want to give the impression that this is all it takes to get Google to stop stalking you. But I do think it at least helps. I found a lot of the chatter in the de-googling community to a bit purist and defeatist at times, but maybe I went too far the other way, here. I want to encourage people to do the same without thinking it's all hopeless or doesn't make any impact because Google's gonna get you one way or another, but I also don't want to paint an unrealistic picture, as if this is all it takes to wash our hands of Google's reach.
I finally got around to installing a PiHole, and it blew my mind that the default behavior was to use an upstream resolver. I had never imagined that the countless folks more privacy-oriented than myself, would tolerate this.
After reading up on it, okay, I get that those upstream forwarding resolvers will be faster due to being geographically distributed and having a huge number of users (== very current cache), but man. Seemed to be defeating half the point.
I'm using the supported Unbound config now, but.. still surprised it's not the default.
> If Apple were a different company, it would've made maps available for use on web browsers and non-Apple devices. That could also help in a more rapid improvement of maps as opposed to the mostly-useless state it's been in (except for a few countries and regions in certain countries that Apple likes and works more on).
If apple would have done that (for Maps and other services), how would it be different than Google?
Google offers these services for free to the end-user and generates revenue from ads.
Apple is using these services to sell more hardware devices, and generates revenue from there.
I never use the DDG results when looking for something. People on here will sometimes say that the results are as good as Google, but it's just not true in my experience. I would switch completely to Startpage, but I value the !bang feature too much. So for general searches, everything is prefaced with !sp. It's just muscle memory now.
When it comes to technology, people prefer one-stop shopping. Google's email, mapping, mobile OS, search, calendars, video, photos are all free and best-of-class or at least good enough to be satisfactory to 80% of the people, who think they're getting a bargain even as they put more and more of their personal information in Google's hands.
It seems as though there's no way to break this voluntary-monopoly. Waze came along with brilliant innovations like BLE devices monitoring traffic in underpasses etc. (my company makes some of the devices they use) and finding best alternative routes, and an innovative UX, so Google simply bought them, problem solved.
There's a whole menagerie of alternatives to Youtube, but they're like ants next to an elephant. And of course, Youtube itself was bought by Google; they've advanced it technically, but it was better in the old days, less censorship and better remuneration for creators.
Like a lot of other techies, I've switched to DDG for searches and I don't really miss Google search. Probably I use !g about once or twice a month.
It seems to me there's lots of opportunities to improve on Google's offerings; Apple seems uninterested in competing head-to-head aside from its mobile phone OS, but there are still innovations out there waiting to be discovered. Perhaps some here will be among those future billionaires, giving us better alternatives to The Goog which in my opinion has gotten a little too big for its britches.
> Apple seems uninterested in competing head-to-head aside from its mobile phone OS,
I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple keep nibbling at Google's software business as it transitions more fully to an added-value services model. Little moves like Apple Music on android, Apple TV+ on Android-based TVs... One could see a similar play occurring with fitness, books, and maybe even maps in the services-centric Apple future.
Moving large numbers of files - like the 50k of Google Photos the author mentions - can be done using https://rclone.org. Set up Google Photos as a source and then use the copy command to move it to a different location[1]. There are a lot of different commands which work with many different cloud storage systems e.g. sync everything one way locally to a backup, mount a FUSE filesystem, do two-way sync, etc.
Beware that using rclone with google photos may result in lower quality images and missing metadata. Below is taken from the rclone website:
Limitations
Downloading Images
When Images are downloaded this strips EXIF location (according to the docs and my tests). This is a limitation of the Google Photos API and is covered by bug #112096115.
The current google API does not allow photos to be downloaded at original resolution. This is very important if you are, for example, relying on "Google Photos" as a backup of your photos. You will not be able to use rclone to redownload original images. You could use 'google takeout' to recover the original photos as a last resort
Downloading Videos
When videos are downloaded they are downloaded in a really compressed version of the video compared to downloading it via the Google Photos web interface. This is covered by bug #113672044.
As others have said Google Photos backup via RClone has some caveats, mainly not downloading at original quality. Google Takeout does solve this but but in weird hierarchies.
I stumbled on a new project which simulates a browser download using a headless Chrome Developer tools session[0]. Looks interesting, supports continuation and can be ran on a cron job. Worth a look.
I've been looking for something like sync.com but free and opensource. Does such a thing exist?
I'm planning on setting up my own nextcloud server, and they also have their own file manager system (Nextcloud Files), which is great for keeping files in sync across devices.
And although it's nice to edit a text file that's stored on a cloud server from any of your devices, I want to be able to use more powerful desktop applications to edit/organize other files. e.g. beets for music, digikam for bulk organizing the directory structure of my photos. Darktable for editing photos.
Does anyone know of a workflow that lets me do all the organizing/editing on a desktop, but still keep it all in sync with my other devices via a cloud server?
I tried a lot of note taking apps and liked this one for its simplicity (just markdown) and cross platform support. Then just store sync it all either via boxcryptor or nextcloud.
This is a business opportunity to provide services at a minimal cost for people. Say 1$ per month per service.
Email - 1$
Calendar - 1$
Document Collab - 1$
Each addon a calculated minimalist approach to each. I still recall what gmail was when it was invite only back in the early aughts. I would still utilize that gmail client. I do NOT need gmail as it is today. And I would certainly pay 1$ per month for that service.
(E)
For a minimal and basic interface, along with a low cost, I and certainly others that I know who are tech illiterate, would pay that low cost for simplicity + privacy.
The thing this article doesn't cover is that while you can (and imo should) make all these changes, Google will still track much of what you do online.
The internet is rotten with linked media, amp pages, blogs, and ads hosted on Google servers.
If you want off Google, you should use something like Pi-hole to lessen that. Since it's DNS level only, I imagine even that won't make you invisible to Google.
This was a great read, but Google has a million other ways to collect data about you, against your will. That deserves a mention.
I try to use Bing for all my searches (set it as the browser default), but at least a third of the time I end up needing to open Google and search there instead. Anyone got any tips for getting better results out of Bing? It doesn't help that when I'm using a VPN, searching for an English term often causes Bing to deliver a bunch of results in the native language of the place the VPN is located, rather than in English.
The quote and plus search operators are your friends for that last third. I don't think Bing tailors its search results as aggressively as Google does, so you sometimes have to be more explicit with domain-specific searches.
If you sign in with a Microsoft Account, Bing does a bit better at guessing which language/locality you want results in, and a few other related things.
Of course, at that point you are just trading opt-out Google tracking for opt-in Bing tracking, and that may defeat some of the reasoning behind why you are using VPN for those searches. I find Bing ads and Bing tracking far less problematic and insidious than Google's, so it's an interesting trade off, for sure. One interesting part of the trade off that Google doesn't match (neither opt-out nor opt-in tracking) is "Microsoft Rewards" where Bing gives you a small cut of tracked ad fees in "rewards points" (like credit card/frequent flyer "mileage" programs) that you can redeem for things like gift cards. Sure, it's a cynical loyalty grab, but at least for me it shows that Microsoft still prefers to be a product company at the end of the day and is a little less likely to fall into the evil opt-out only panopticon tracking ad direction that Google has. Obviously other people's opinions vary, and many are loathe to trust Microsoft, but it's an interesting trade-off to be aware of.
Every time I try to get out of google they (my colleagues) pull me back in. They share documents in google docs and google drive. I have no choice but to keep my google account.
Firefox Containers are extremely helpful in this regard. I put off using them for a long time because i thought it would be a hassle but it’s super easy and keeps your work-related google activity segregated from the rest of your digital life. It also helps a lot with switching between google accounts; before I used containers I was constantly fighting with Google’s account switcher, which more often than not just straight-up didn’t work (it would either act like I had switched accounts but I hadn’t, or it would put me into a sort of endless “which account do you want to use / enter your password” loop.
I personnally see work-related accounts as not mine. I'm in the process of de-googling myself, but I don't mind my company still using it that much because in the end it's not mine, and they actually have read and agreed with the Terms of Use. None of my personal info is reachable from my work email.
You can create a "Google account" using a non-Google e-mail address. You still have access to all their services but you don't have to use them for anything other than accessing documents.
> I suspect means it [DDG] would be a perfectly fine replacement for most people
I suspect otherwise. DDG is as good as Google in certain topics, especially programming-related topics. But otherwise, not so good. Sometimes, it feels like it simply has indexed less pages than Google.
But I still use DDG as much as possible, only !g when the results are unsatisfactory. I don't know how much it actually help DDG, though, since it doesn't seem to get much better over the past few years.
As developers we understand the most how privacy is violated across the Internet. If we can’t contribute to the change in the ecosystem, we don’t have much hope for the rest of the industry.
As an aside: As more and more techies repeatedly fail to decouple their digital belongings from Google‘s infrastructure, it should become clear how strong the lock-in effect of cloud services is in general and in particular their proper UX.
EG.: one of gmails main selling points always was the „available anywhere“ web interface and its quick, and useful search.
I did something similar a few weeks ago and found that https://rclone.org/ worked for me to automatically port Google Photos data to a Nextcloud instance with WebDAV. That being said, it cannot pull the original quality images, only the compressed version.
Problem is on the phone side. There is a duopoly; Apple or Google. Neither is great. We should be able to have control over this, as it is increasingly being the way in which the majority of the public have access to their information (photos, docs, etc).
Same on the desktop we have MS, Apple.
Yes Linux (variations) are available on both, more so on desktop, but not a real possibility for most consumes.
Seconding NextDNS, it’s well worth the price for the features and privacy. And not having to administer a piHole, which was always slightly unstable for me.
Your list neglects a huge data vacuum, scooping up your personal data: the Android OS on your phone, which Google develops. My recommendation to replace: eOS by the eFoundation (https://e.foundation/)
[+] [-] dhimes|5 years ago|reply
They have online chat support, so I tried that. I got routed to a sales rep who called me on the phone and who, after taking all my information while basically ignoring my question, finally heard me. She didn't know the answer.
She sent me a support link which was the same one that routed me to her. I told her this and all she could say was she was sorry and she couldn't help unless I was ready to launch a campaign.
I honestly don't think she knew anything. I'm suspicious that these are indy workers getting routed prospects by Google. I don't know. The whole thing was sleazy.
Years ago when I managed to get someone on the line she stayed with me until my problem was solved. And this wasn't even a problem (or maybe it was? wouldn't be the first bug I found on their site). I was just asking a question.
[+] [-] modeitsch|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wtmt|5 years ago|reply
If Apple were a different company, it would've made maps available for use on web browsers and non-Apple devices. That could also help in a more rapid improvement of maps as opposed to the mostly-useless state it's been in (except for a few countries and regions in certain countries that Apple likes and works more on).
> and still a little YouTube (anonymously in a Firefox container)
If a Firefox Container is an option, then I'd rather prefer Startpage to DDG for search. Most of the time, I end up performing the search on DDG at least twice (the second time with a bang command to go to Startpage or Google) or I have a heuristic that DDG won't help and just go to the other search engines.
> DNS → Cloudflare DNS
Others to consider are Quad9 (9.9.9.9) and NextDNS (if you want ad and tracker blocking lists to be configured at the DNS level, sorta like a Pi-Hole, but on the cloud).
> I feel like I've won a lot by doing all this. I own my data now, so Google can't arbitrarily take it away from me, which gives me peace of mind. I'm no longer part of their ad ecosystem, being tracked all around the internet and having my attention sold to the highest bidder.
The "Google can't arbitrarily take it away" is a good argument, but "I'm no longer part of their ad ecosystem, being tracked all around the internet" requires a lot more effort than just avoiding using google.com, youtube.com, gmail.com, etc. I'm not saying that the current transitions are useless, but that there's more to it.
[+] [-] rayrag|5 years ago|reply
Try https://satellites.pro/plan/world_map# - you can switch between Apple Maps, OSM, Mapbox, Google Maps, Yandex and Esri
[+] [-] t212|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivanche|5 years ago|reply
This becomes much easier with uMatrix + uBlock Origin extensions for Firefox!
[+] [-] reaktivo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmclean|5 years ago|reply
Yeah this is fair! I don't want to give the impression that this is all it takes to get Google to stop stalking you. But I do think it at least helps. I found a lot of the chatter in the de-googling community to a bit purist and defeatist at times, but maybe I went too far the other way, here. I want to encourage people to do the same without thinking it's all hopeless or doesn't make any impact because Google's gonna get you one way or another, but I also don't want to paint an unrealistic picture, as if this is all it takes to wash our hands of Google's reach.
I updated the post to reflect this.
[+] [-] skinkestek|5 years ago|reply
I too actually want to use certain software from Apple, I just refuse to use it on Mac as me and the Mac WM keep talking past each other :-)
[+] [-] rconti|5 years ago|reply
After reading up on it, okay, I get that those upstream forwarding resolvers will be faster due to being geographically distributed and having a huge number of users (== very current cache), but man. Seemed to be defeating half the point.
I'm using the supported Unbound config now, but.. still surprised it's not the default.
[+] [-] LUmBULtERA|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yuribro|5 years ago|reply
If apple would have done that (for Maps and other services), how would it be different than Google?
Google offers these services for free to the end-user and generates revenue from ads.
Apple is using these services to sell more hardware devices, and generates revenue from there.
[+] [-] dopu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] blisterpeanuts|5 years ago|reply
It seems as though there's no way to break this voluntary-monopoly. Waze came along with brilliant innovations like BLE devices monitoring traffic in underpasses etc. (my company makes some of the devices they use) and finding best alternative routes, and an innovative UX, so Google simply bought them, problem solved.
There's a whole menagerie of alternatives to Youtube, but they're like ants next to an elephant. And of course, Youtube itself was bought by Google; they've advanced it technically, but it was better in the old days, less censorship and better remuneration for creators.
Like a lot of other techies, I've switched to DDG for searches and I don't really miss Google search. Probably I use !g about once or twice a month.
It seems to me there's lots of opportunities to improve on Google's offerings; Apple seems uninterested in competing head-to-head aside from its mobile phone OS, but there are still innovations out there waiting to be discovered. Perhaps some here will be among those future billionaires, giving us better alternatives to The Goog which in my opinion has gotten a little too big for its britches.
[+] [-] swiftcoder|5 years ago|reply
I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple keep nibbling at Google's software business as it transitions more fully to an added-value services model. Little moves like Apple Music on android, Apple TV+ on Android-based TVs... One could see a similar play occurring with fitness, books, and maybe even maps in the services-centric Apple future.
[+] [-] dmytton|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_copy/
[+] [-] oarsinsync|5 years ago|reply
Limitations
Downloading Images
When Images are downloaded this strips EXIF location (according to the docs and my tests). This is a limitation of the Google Photos API and is covered by bug #112096115.
The current google API does not allow photos to be downloaded at original resolution. This is very important if you are, for example, relying on "Google Photos" as a backup of your photos. You will not be able to use rclone to redownload original images. You could use 'google takeout' to recover the original photos as a last resort Downloading Videos
When videos are downloaded they are downloaded in a really compressed version of the video compared to downloading it via the Google Photos web interface. This is covered by bug #113672044.
Source: https://rclone.org/googlephotos/#limitations
[+] [-] darkfirefly|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] budafish|5 years ago|reply
I stumbled on a new project which simulates a browser download using a headless Chrome Developer tools session[0]. Looks interesting, supports continuation and can be ran on a cron job. Worth a look.
[0] https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp
[+] [-] executesorder66|5 years ago|reply
I'm planning on setting up my own nextcloud server, and they also have their own file manager system (Nextcloud Files), which is great for keeping files in sync across devices.
And although it's nice to edit a text file that's stored on a cloud server from any of your devices, I want to be able to use more powerful desktop applications to edit/organize other files. e.g. beets for music, digikam for bulk organizing the directory structure of my photos. Darktable for editing photos.
Does anyone know of a workflow that lets me do all the organizing/editing on a desktop, but still keep it all in sync with my other devices via a cloud server?
[+] [-] iou|5 years ago|reply
Google Keep -> Joplin (https://joplinapp.org/)
I tried a lot of note taking apps and liked this one for its simplicity (just markdown) and cross platform support. Then just store sync it all either via boxcryptor or nextcloud.
[+] [-] yeuxardents|5 years ago|reply
Email - 1$
Calendar - 1$
Document Collab - 1$
Each addon a calculated minimalist approach to each. I still recall what gmail was when it was invite only back in the early aughts. I would still utilize that gmail client. I do NOT need gmail as it is today. And I would certainly pay 1$ per month for that service.
(E) For a minimal and basic interface, along with a low cost, I and certainly others that I know who are tech illiterate, would pay that low cost for simplicity + privacy.
[+] [-] uniqueid|5 years ago|reply
The internet is rotten with linked media, amp pages, blogs, and ads hosted on Google servers.
If you want off Google, you should use something like Pi-hole to lessen that. Since it's DNS level only, I imagine even that won't make you invisible to Google.
This was a great read, but Google has a million other ways to collect data about you, against your will. That deserves a mention.
[+] [-] logicchains|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crocodiletears|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WorldMaker|5 years ago|reply
Of course, at that point you are just trading opt-out Google tracking for opt-in Bing tracking, and that may defeat some of the reasoning behind why you are using VPN for those searches. I find Bing ads and Bing tracking far less problematic and insidious than Google's, so it's an interesting trade off, for sure. One interesting part of the trade off that Google doesn't match (neither opt-out nor opt-in tracking) is "Microsoft Rewards" where Bing gives you a small cut of tracked ad fees in "rewards points" (like credit card/frequent flyer "mileage" programs) that you can redeem for things like gift cards. Sure, it's a cynical loyalty grab, but at least for me it shows that Microsoft still prefers to be a product company at the end of the day and is a little less likely to fall into the evil opt-out only panopticon tracking ad direction that Google has. Obviously other people's opinions vary, and many are loathe to trust Microsoft, but it's an interesting trade-off to be aware of.
[+] [-] paulcarroty|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vinni2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hairofadog|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ricc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rakoo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xbadcafebee|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] probably_wrong|5 years ago|reply
I have seen this work more than once.
[+] [-] bdefore|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] powersnail|5 years ago|reply
I suspect otherwise. DDG is as good as Google in certain topics, especially programming-related topics. But otherwise, not so good. Sometimes, it feels like it simply has indexed less pages than Google.
But I still use DDG as much as possible, only !g when the results are unsatisfactory. I don't know how much it actually help DDG, though, since it doesn't seem to get much better over the past few years.
[+] [-] ericholscher|5 years ago|reply
As developers we understand the most how privacy is violated across the Internet. If we can’t contribute to the change in the ecosystem, we don’t have much hope for the rest of the industry.
[+] [-] idownvoted|5 years ago|reply
EG.: one of gmails main selling points always was the „available anywhere“ web interface and its quick, and useful search.
[+] [-] mattvot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vvanpo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbradford|5 years ago|reply
http://www.scorchedweb.com/uncategorized/exit-the-goolag/
[+] [-] karlzt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcwoods|5 years ago|reply
Same on the desktop we have MS, Apple.
Yes Linux (variations) are available on both, more so on desktop, but not a real possibility for most consumes.
[+] [-] iou|5 years ago|reply
It's better for sure, just from trying a couple (OpenDns, cloudflare, quad9) I really love the offering from nextDNS
https://nextdns.io
It somewhat smashes together the features of pi-hole and opendns with the features like DoT or DoH as you get in cloudflare
[+] [-] buildbot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnmpage|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mro_name|5 years ago|reply
IMO paying money and thus enabling humane businesses to thrive is key.