So, I’m sure we all know about the WEI thing at this point, which is bad and weird enough; and also the sudden move to block ad-blockers on YouTube. I don’t know how that’s going to work out, but it’s pretty irritating. Not to mention, going to the gym, coming home, and suddenly getting loads of fitness-related ads piled on top of you… so I’m clearly being tracked.
Now I’m hearing that YouTube, which seems to just want to pile AI-topic-related tabloid TV on me in its recommendations, is now increasing its price per month for premium by a whopping two bucks, to $13.99. That’s as much as Netflix. So I can be ad-free on freakin’ YouTube, with contented created basically for them, for the same price as a network that actually takes responsibility for its shows.
The clear problems with Netflix notwithstanding, that’s another subject for another day.
It’s one thing after another these days. It’s been a while since I was a web designer/developer, but what does it look like from the front lines? Exactly how much hot water are they in?
On a further note, I’m reading the writing on the wall at this point and am wishing to begin to entirely remove myself from dependency on Google services. Docs, Drive, Mail, everything. Not easy, I know. Is there a list of competing (and possibly fediverse-ish) products out there somewhere?
If you’re willing to learn a bit of tech self-support :), consider running your own server box with NextCloud – there are calendar, media player plugins, etc. There are Android and iOS Nextcloud drive clients, a news reader, …
It’s not all quite as slick as Google Photos/Drive and so on, but very very usable.
Another alternative is the Proton suite (Protonmail, ProtonVPN, Proton Calendar, Drive, …) they do charge a small amount but you get their added security.
I’m willing to pay a small, or at least reasonable-for-the-service, amount; and I just found out about Proton. Thanks for sharing!
Also check out Skiff and CryptPad if you are looking for Google Docs alternatives.
May I ask why this suggestion is unpopular?
I have no idea. Both are solid services with sound privacy credentials and recommended by Privacy Guides (Cryptpad as a productivity tool and Skiff for its mail service). I use both regularly and have been able to completely replace Google Docs because of them. The only reason I can think of anyone down-voting my suggestion is that Skiff is not fully open source yet, but they are in the process of making it so.
Yet again, everybody downvotes. 😆 Guys, at least inform me of the issue here, these sound like reasonable alternatives. I’m going to assume that they are.
I am also curious to know the reason. The downvoting seem to be only happening in programming.dev instance though. Things are still sane here in kbin.social.
In the absence of any explanation, I am just going to assume there are a lot of Google Docs fans in this community.
Yeah, whatever though. Thanks for contributing.
Yes, or something like [murena]{https://murena.io} which is a free (for 1GB or pay for more storage) cloud service that runs on NextCloud. It’s what /e/OS uses for storing/syncing calendar etc.