[smc-discuss] Why we fear Google

[Pirate Praveen]

On Saturday 26 April 2014 12:47 AM, Kunjappu Abhijith.R wrote:
> ഗൂഗിള്‍ നമ്മെപ്പറ്റി എന്താണ് മനസിലാക്കിയിട്ടുള്ളത് എന്നതറിയാന്‍ ഒരു അഡ് കാണുമ്പോള്‍ Don't
> Show this Ad കൊടുത്താല്‍ മതി. നമുക്കുപോലും അറിയാത്ത രീതിയില്‍ അവര്‍ നമ്മെ Profile
> ചെയ്യും. ഞാനുമെപ്പോഴും ഗൂഗിളിനെ ഭയക്കുന്നു, പക്ഷെ നല്ല ഒരു Alternative ലഭ്യമല്ല.
>

startpage.com for google search, it is google itself without profiling.
ixquick.com for search, it is a good google.com replacement.

Both of them are from the same company.

For email, you can request at autistici.org (it has many domain choices
like privacyrequired.com or onenetbeyond.org). It uses roundcube
software and it is pretty good, it has threaded view, but missing
conversation view (all mails in one page like google does). But we are
getting close to gmail features with mailpile.is (it is still alpha,
they raised more than 1 lakh USD through crowd funding).

For mobile, you can use firefox os. It is still rough though and don't
buy ZTE Open (buy a more powerful model).

For file storage, calendar and addressbook there is owncloud and there
are android apps to integrate it with mobile. Manu recently moved his
contacts and calendar to own cloud from google.

For chat you have many xmpp providers like autistici.org, yax.im but we
still needs to fix many rough edges for making it usable on mobile phones.

we have a list of some high priority projects to get us out of the cloud
http://fosscommunity.in/index.php?title=High_Priority_Projects

If enough of us are convinced about the need for alternatives, we can
make it happen. But the problem is not technological, most people are
not convinced. Many think they are smarter than facebook when they say
they only share public things there.

Today, I migrated many mailing lists to my autistici.org address
(onenetbeyond.org) and in the coming days, I hope to move all of my
mails away from gmail. It will take some efforts because we are too much
comfortable with gmail.