Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
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I've long been trying to de-googlify myself, but it's certainly ramped up this year.
Been trying out Kagi and just set up proton mail account. Not sure what I'll land on in the end but it's nice trying out newer services.
It's not too hard. The most important things are web search and email. I still use Google Maps. But I don't want my private emails and searches at a company who is user hostile and preditory.
I quite disagree, it is very hard. Sure, switching search engine takes all of two seconds, and email can be had from many vendors free and commercial.
But calendaring! A calendar that is at least somewhat integrated with am email client, supports more than one actual calendar, and has real-world capability to share them with others - "if you succeed in this, two me how."
My calendaring needs might be less restrictive than yours, but Proton offers a nice calendar that from what I understand offers at least some integration with their e-mail client. Have you checked it out?
I use Nextcloud self-maintained on a VPS myself for all my calendaring needs, which is basically keeping track of appointments, syncing via CalDAV to my phone, as well as sharing some sub-calendars with other people. Setting up a Nextcloud-server is admittedly a bit more hassle than just signing up for a service, but also here there are options of making it a bit easier than hosting yourself.
I find Google Maps by far the hardest service to rid myself off, followed by Gmail (the time it takes!!! Been using Proton for two years, still not completely rid of my Gmail-account). I'm slowly getting used to using OSM-based map services more and more.
CalDav? Integrated in nextcloud. Or Mailcow. Why does it needs to be integrated with e-mail? Thunderbird is able to add all invitations or reminders into my CalDav Account.
The Fastmail calendar is pretty good. Just a random page about them: https://www.fastmail.com/blog/shared-calendars/
Ohh, this does indeed look quite fantastic. I am certainly going to look more into this. Thank you!
_Edit: Ah, but $50/user/year. For the whole family that adds up real fast. Still, nice tip.
It is hard when you have a business. You really have to actively try to stay away from them. They control so much business infrastructure.
I know my business partner (god bless him, great friend but...) is super into big tech and every new product they offer. So it's a bit of an uphill battle.
And I'm lucky. I own my own firm. Most people don't have such a luxury.
Google server infrastructure products are almost universally worse than Amazon's. The interfaces, APIs, and documentation look like they were designed by people who don't understand humanity.
Most importantly, they are designed by people that don't use them. Amazon uses AWS themselves, Google doesn't use GCP.
At least they're not as bad as Microsoft. Azure is a goddamn dog with fleas.
I am fortunate enough to have never had MS servers forced upon me.
Good to know.
I found out about Kagi from another Lemmy user and I've been really impressed. I feel like I'm getting better results than Google. I'm using their Personalized Results feature and it helps a ton!