Tell HN: I De-Googled Myself

18 points | by degoogled 5 hours ago ago

11 comments

  • zache6 2 hours ago ago

    If you're using something Fire Stick/Android TV, TizenTube Cobalt has been great for me and my family. It has an ad blocker, Sponsorblock, Dearrow, and a few other goodies.

  • danshipt 3 hours ago ago

    I liked it until the part about paying for yt. I prefer to not use yt again than to pay for it and make google even richer

    • delduca 3 hours ago ago

      I agree, but it's quite hard not to pay for YouTube when you have kids and they watch it on television.

      • jayturley 16 minutes ago ago

        With streaming balkanized into so many individual providers, it's hard to pay for more than a couple.

        So the Grandson has learned to discriminate ads from content, and as soon as an ad comes one, we all chorus, "Stinky Ad!" and then everyone rushes to be the first person to get to the remote and skip it.

        It's not a perfect solution, but it's what we have.

      • lwowowx an hour ago ago

        It’s very easy to get kids to break habits.

  • bythckr 2 hours ago ago

    How did you degoogle Android?

    • tripleee an hour ago ago

      I'm using GrapheneOS - very simple to setup. Only actual downside is it only works on pixel devices currently

      • Cider9986 an hour ago ago

        It's fantastic. If you want any app recommendations, lmk. I like to replace the default apps with more up to date ones.

  • fsflover 2 hours ago ago

    > it became a matter of principle to do a Google Takeout of my photos and create a script to import them into Apple Photos

    Meet the new boss, the same as the old one. If you actually want to make a change, consider GNU/Linux on desktop and phones.

  • Leewen 2 hours ago ago

    It’s cool ,but I can’t to fucking lazy

  • verdverm 3 hours ago ago

    I'm on a similar path, huge Google fan for 20 years. Something has happened under Sundar and Kurian (cloud), maybe some insiders will comment to let us know. What I see is slop across every product line, I assume from over indexing on Ai with insufficient HITL around a model family that is not as good at agentic.

    Haven't made it all the way, but I was able to find a way to downgrade my Google One back to the $2/m for extra storage. YouTube will remain to avoid ads. Everything else has been switched or is being worked on, but after 20 years it takes longer than I imagined. I'm giving up tap to pay and headed towards GrapheneOS instead of Apple, where your going to get Gemini a la Siri. OpenCode Go, Fireworks, and OEM Spark for my llms. Still looking for my cloud provide, leaning towards digital ocean.