Living in a Post-Google World

Some days ago I needed to find an email address I hadn’t contacted for a long time and I remembered that I mailed from a Google Apps account with that contact. Because Google’s method of storing contacts is slightly too frivolous, I never synced my Google contacts with my iOS/Mac addres book and would rely on sending from Airmail to do that job.

Sure enough, few minutes later I had the email address I wanted. Thanks for never forgetting, Google.

But I felt slightly dirty about it too. Not that much though, because I had quickly spun up a Virtual Machine to log in to Google, using a VPN from a country I had never mailed from and just needed to confirm the account’s phone number to get into Gmail.

Truth is I live in a “Post Google” world already.

1. Search: DuckDuckGo

Sorry to disappoint you, blockchain fans, but after trying for some days I gave up on Presearch. I just did’t see the use for it anymore. It felt slow. I like working from the browser’s omnibar and I know my DuckDuckGo Bangs I need.

I recently explained why you should use DuckDuckGo.

DuckDuckGo browser for iOS

And they have a browser for mobile too. Goodbye digital fingerprinting by websites!

2. Email: Fastmail

Like many for whom email is a vital part of their day, I’ve switched to Fastmail. Fastmail has been in the business for quite some years and has built up a solid reputation among business users as well, especially in the startup world. With competitive prices, Fastmail is an excellent alternative to Google’s Gmail, Calendar, and Contacts.

As expected, you can use your own domain (at $5/user/month) and Fastmail can be configured with most common apps. And, of course, if you prefer all-in-one there’s an app as well.

Best of all, Fastmail is used by the DuckDuckGo team as well.

3. Browser: Safari and Brave Browser

As a Mac and iOS user this is an easy one. Get rid of all those distractions and use browsers with solid privacy features and not extension kitchen sinks.

To me that means Brave browser, now with Metamask extension too, and Safari, which I keep as clean as possible with just Instapaper and uBlock extensions to get rid of pesky ads and Google Analytics trackers, and their ilk, across the internet. And on the sites you may be reading this on.

4. Docs: iCloud

This is where things get more difficult but not for Apple users as we have the whole iWork Suite, consisting of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, as well as iCloud’s photosharing and Files options available for all our devices.

Occasionally when I need to share text with someone, I will use Automattic’s Simplenote, that despite Automattic’s privacy policy with the Jetpack for WordPress extension. The real reason why I use Simplenote, aside from its lightweight no distraction approach to note taking, with basic Markdown support and even collaboration features, is its ability to sync with nvAlt.

Hardcore note taking users may recognize nv from Notational Velocity. nvAlt is the Mac app. Still the fastest notes everything bucket.

For files I still have a Dropbox account, a very old one which has grown to more than 20GB storage space because of all referrals I managed to receive back in the days, but I’ve mostly converted to Apple’s Files and iCloud already. I’m a minimalist and those barebones options, combined with Apple’s respect for one’s privacy work fine for me.

Without iCloud I would need to do more research but most likely I would end up hosting my own cloud storage on a CDN, together with running open source software to replace docs and maybe also include todo functionality, like some may know from Basecamp. Resilio Sync is a service recommended by peers though.

5. Maps: Apple Maps

Again an Apple only product but for those non-iOS users who wish to not have their location tracked, searched, stored there’s the excellent OpenStreetMap.

Bonus: Difficulties

Generally, I have not many problems in this post Google world, maybe with the exception of some people relying on Google’s messenger (Allo, I think it’s called nowadays?), and way too many who switched “for privacy” to the E2E WhatsApp (LOLz), but there’s the excellent Signal Messenger and as long as Facebook keeps leaking data as it has done in recent years, converting people isn’t that difficult. And if they want stickers, there’s always Telegram too.

Additionally, the open source and peer-reviewed Signal keeps getting better and better with each new release.

The biggest struggle I lived was saying goodbye to Google Analytics on websites. Yup, that’s right. Hypocrite, innit? :D

But there just isn’t any solid alternative, except for maybe Clicky yet it does have nowhere near the depth GA offers when it comes to tweaking and optimizing traffic flow and UX.

Yet, I’ve decided a while back not to care about that anymore and just to rely on WordPress’ Jetpack stats, because I use JetPack’s photon CDN and lazyload already.

Beyond those, there’s of course still Twitter - as long as they’re not descending in the fake news era and YouTube. The latter the most persistent privacy invader we can barely escape. Unless by not watching any YT hosted video at all.

Aside from those two, life has become rather independent from Google. The next challenge will be more challenging, but without Amazon Prime I won’t have to fear for drone’s to observe my surroundings to upset. Difficult to escape all those servers and infra though.