this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023

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Google alternative (self.technology)

submitted 1 year ago by jasonbcfcufc to c/technology

88 comments fedilink hide all child comments

what are the best Google alternative apps ?

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[–] techgearwhips 61 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (15 children)

Google Voice - Cheogram

Search - Duck Duck Go or Start Page

Contacts - NextCloud

Calendar - NextCloud

Tasks - Task.Org

Keep - Joplin

Maps - Magic Earth

Passwords & Sign In - Bitwarden or Keepass

Docs & Sheets - Open Office

Gmail - Proton or Tutanota

Dialer - Simple Dialer

Files - Material Files

Chrome - Firefox

YouTube - Peertube

Photos - NextCloud

Bookmarks - NextCloud, Floccus, or XBrowsersync

I use all of these but I still have to use Google Voice and Maps because they are just superior to everything else that I have tried imo. And I sometimes use gmail too because certain website logins are locked to my old Gmail's.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Not open office, use libre office.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not Libra Office, Only Office. After all we are replacing Google, so we need integrated collab (without an RDP hack).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

OnlyOffice is run by Russians.

[–] kenbw2 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is everyone in Russia responsible for the actions of their government?

[–] danielo515 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

No, but totalitarian governments tend to get into everything, and a popular piece of software is something they will be interested in.

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[–] techgearwhips 5 points 1 year ago

Actually I use only office (not open office) with collabora apps on my android and iphone. I always get the two names mixed up.

[–] AdrianTheFrog 9 points 1 year ago

onlyoffice is much more polished than openoffice or libreoffice but a bit less open

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

thank you so much for introducing me to cheogram. for maps try Magic Earth app based on openstreetmap.org

[–] techgearwhips 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You're welcome. And yes Magic Earth is what I use. Maybe you skipped by it in my list. But sometimes I go back to Maps when I'm somewhere unknown and don't want to get lost in the sauce lol

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[–] spez_ 2 points 1 year ago

Photos - Immich

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like duckduckgo. Kagi exists, if you're willing to pay for it.

[–] GuyDudeman 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Kagi is really really great. But it's too steep for my wallet.

I'm currently deciding between using Ecosia, Brave, SearXNG, and Duck Duck Go.

[–] WhiteRice 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you elaborate more on why you like Kagi? Does it get very relevant results? Eliminate blog spam? Does it make the internet seem larger than a handful of apps?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like how you can block individual sites from search results, prioritize search results from specific websites, etc. It's quite steep, but I feel it is worth it if you can afford it and are able to justify such an expense. For disclaimer, I don't currently use it because I can't justify such an expense but I likely will in the future.

[–] WhiteRice 3 points 1 year ago

Thank you, it sounds pretty neat. I won’t have to keep typing “site:”

[–] Caboose12000 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I've been using ecosia for the past week and so far it's great, no complaints

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've been using SearXNG for the past couple of weeks, it pulls from most the major search engines like google, Bing, duckduckgo and qwant, but you can easily set it up to not show google and Bing.

For most things it works great, the videos tab isn't anywhere as good as Google's(even when it pulls from Google) but for what I need its great.

It will also strip links of tracking and stuff like that.

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[–] nbafantest 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use duck duck go.

It's pretty good, but it's obviously not as good as google. And I'll frequently have to actually google something.

Things that are almost comically bad on DDG:

-maps/restaurants/businesses -news/current events

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[–] Veedem 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I use DuckDuckGo for search. Has worked well for me.

Other than that, I’m mostly on Apple devices so I use their alternatives. Gmail is the one I haven’t been able to get away from. I use it in too many places now.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm slowly migrating over to protonmail, but changing email is a long process.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I have already migrated to proton mail and it's great. The only thing I still use gmail for is to attend google meets and use google drives.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Google search - Start page

Gmail - Proton Mail

Google Drive - MEGA

Youtube- Newpipe

YouTube music - Black hole or Musify

Pixel Phones - Pine64 (Linux phone)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn't Newpipe just a frontend to YouTube? It's better for privacy, sure, but it still technically supports YouTube.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You might prefer Peertube then

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Would recommend self hosting the drive aspect, cheaper and you retain your own information all the while.

Pixel phones are fine with a custom OS. Linux phones are horrible both with user interface and battery life.

Instead of black hole (which has horrible catalog of music) or Musify, just selfhost Deemix+Navidrome.

Instead of startpage use something more reputable like qwant or duckduckgo.

Proton can be debatable because of it's past, though they have since fixed it. Alternatives include : tutanota, mailbox.org, etc. Alot of good email alternatives exist.

[–] Caboose12000 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

can you expand a little on protons past? I haven't heard about it. I'm trying to decide what email service to go with currently since I just bought a domain and I wanted to use it with my new non-googled email

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Protonmail doesn't have a past of bad behaviour per se - they do comply with legal subpoenas from the Swiss authorities (they are based there) but as emails are user-key encrypted and they don't keep a copy of the user key, the most they can provide is IP addresses and dates.

There was some stuff that went down with regards to a French activist but nothing that puts Protonmail at fault (again, legally binding court order, they literally had no choice)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Dont know how to host. If someone can make a guide, I would love to host all my stuff. I am not sure about using Duckduckgo as anything US based is a big red flag. As a EU citizen, I would prefer search engine hosted in EU.

[–] ulemmyagain 3 points 1 year ago

https://yunohost.org/ This is by far the easiest way to get into self-hosting I've seen. I have more specific needs so I don't personally use it, but it's really cool.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is a bit off-topic but I have been working on a peer-to-peer search engine to index the decentralized web (ipfs). It's only a MVP as of today

[–] iopq 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It works, but the top 100 results were from Wikipedia

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks for trying out! Very few websites are indexed yet because due its decentralized architecture, people need to run nodes and add the websites they care about themselves. There is no crawler

[–] Myrbolg 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

For Search I use Duckduckgo (free).

For Mail, Calendar and Contacts I use Fastmail (free or paid, I use the paid version).

For file storage there's plenty of alternatives (Dropbox etc.)

For browser I use Edge, but it is also built on Chromium. I will make my choice once the recent Web Environment Integrity topic has become more clear.

[–] Kingofthezyx 16 points 1 year ago

Why do you use Edge over Firefox?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You're free to do whatever you want, but I think it's important to be informed and reading your comment about Edge I thought I might clarify: The reason WEI is a problem is because of Chrom(e)(ium)'s sheer market share. If it's easy for websites to assume a non-attested browser is a bot or a small minority of privacy-minded people they will simply not serve those.

Basically I'm saying by staying with your current browser you're helping Google push this through.

But again, you're free to do whatever you think is right for you.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Search - SearXNG - Has the option to self-host but is an aggregated search engine. Respects privacy, lots of configurable search engines.

https://github.com/searxng/searxng

Browser - Firefox - Really enjoying the mobile version with addon support.

Maps - OsmAnd~ - Honestly not as good as maps, but fits the bill.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For maps check out Organic Maps: https://organicmaps.app/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Also check out GMaps VW when OSM is not enough. You can use for Google maps without a Google account.

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[–] linkinkampf19 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I just switched from Chrome to Brave, and then shortly after from Brave to Vivaldi. Search engine is now Startpage.com, which while slower than Google, it's been bringing up decent results. Unfortunately I still use quite a few Google-centric apps, so hopefully I'm able to discover more options as time goes on.

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[–] PaperTowel 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I personally think Brave Search doesn't get enough love. It's surprisingly great, search results are fast and always get me relevant sites, and the AI summarizer is really good.

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[–] spez_ 2 points 1 year ago

For Google Photos, Immich

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