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I get on my VPN to provide less data to Google. Routing my traffic through an advertising company always felt like a bad idea to me.
I’ve had like three primary email accounts since the dawn of the popular internet in the 90’s
The first was Hotmail because that was a big deal at the time.
The second was google because the interface was slick and it came with (what was at the time) a lot of free storage.
The third is protonmail specifically because after decade+ on Google I realized they pretty much have the keys to the kingdom on my life’s data. All my personal relationships and business being filtered through their inbox for a long-ass time. Just because they “know me” inside out for a significant part of my life doesn’t mean I gotta just keep feeding them data indefinitely.
Add it to the pile.
Tbh at least this one makes sense, who is going to use a VPN (an internet privacy tool) from Google?
who is going to use a VPN (an internet privacy tool) from Google?
Exactly. That would be like using a web browser made by Google so they have direct access to your internet browsing history. Ridiculous!
People who live in countries with internet censorship?
Google VPN is/was only available in select countries.
https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/7582172
There are 2 lists of countries applicable here. The list of countries where the VPN is included with a Google One subscription and the list where you could use the VPN while traveling.
You’ll notice that countries known for internet censorship are missing from both lists, so using it for that purpose wouldn’t work at all.
Oh wow, it’s useless
when traveling Communist countries in Asia with google fi it was really nice to have
but then they revoked my data service while charging me the same amount every month, because they said I’m traveling too much.
How long did it take for them to turn it off?
two years I think. they told me I need to go to the United States at least once a year.
Seems entirely reasonable to me, depending on the country it costs them extra to route your calls overseas to another network.
Fi makes it pretty clear that use outside the US is meant to be temporary (unless you’re on military duty overseas). The person you replied to got a really long run and honestly has no cause for complaint.
Google: people weren’t using it.
The People: you cancel literally everything you create, so why should we bother?
Remember when people were using allo and Google play music? Google doesn’t.
I loved Allo. I was really depressed to have to use Whatsapp after Google cancelled it. And one of my favorite things to do was use my Google rewards points to buy music.
And they wonder why no one invests time and interest in any of their new “experimental” products.
Allo didn’t ever make sense. What about Hangouts. Hangouts worked with imessage. And also works better than allo did And also works better than aloe did at any pointat any point.
Whats crazy is Hangouts is still going (in the form of Chat and Meet). I’ve had the same group chat going with a few buddies on it for years and years now. And it is still better than anything outside of Signal in my opinion for messaging.
Google is what the Fox network was in the 90s and 2000s.
Let the wind blow high, let the wind blow low
So no one spoke up or no one listened to guy who said “this is a bad idea, no one really trusts us”
At this point, I’m surprised anybody (including myself) still buys/uses Google services, given how risky it is that you’ll become dependent on them and then they kill off the product(s). I really need to get off my ass and switch mail providers.
Google mail is extremely unlikely to get shut down.
But anyway, Proton Mail allows importing e-mails from Google.
grumbles about inbox by gmail
Inbox was absolutely stellar and I can’t believe they got rid of it.
ProtonMail is pretty awesome and makes it very easy to switch.
Most people will use whatever the default on their device is. Most phones that aren’t iPhones come with Google apps and services set as default.
The only Google services I still use are YouTube and in rare cases Google Maps. But if YouTube continues to enshittify I’ll stop using that. I’ve been using Google Maps mainly to get information about places to eat/sleep in cities, not really for navigation.
There was a time when the Google apps just worked, the applications were optimised for UX. Maybe I’ve just only noticed it now but the directions (and assistant in general) aren’t as useful, reliable, and filled with sponsored stuff.
what do you use for navigation and how does it compare?
Google Maps was a great app and service, it had decent navigation and always a lot of information on a lot of places. Nowadays it’s cluttered with features including a “news feed” with social network-like posts made by people on places in the area.
On iOS devices I can highly recommend Apple Maps nowadays. They completely overhauled their maps a few years ago and I got great results navigating with it. The app isn’t bloated, it’s fast, the map material looks great and their version of Street View is a lot more sophisticated.
For strictly navigating you can also check out TomTom AmiGO. It’s a free variant of TomTom’s navigational system. I wouldn’t really use it outside of car navigation though.
I used to use Sygic a few years back, but they switched to a subscription model and keep nagging existing “lifetime” buyers to subscribe.
Apple Maps also straight up gives objectively better audio guidance (e.g. “move to the right lane to turn right at the next light” vs “turn right in 300 feet”).
Additionally the “directions” portion of the screen has large font and is clearly visible compared to Google’s tiny font on a window the size of 10% of the screen to show you more ads. (Yes, the reason some business appear at all zoom levels while others only pop up at street level is ads)
What a fall from grace. I remember when Apple Maps would direct people to drive through halfway built overpasses with 500 feet of open air at the end because it’s not built yet.
Who would use that shite?
Or are you hiring VPN and MITM combo here?
Google: trust us, we can’t see your VPN traffic. Most users: No.
RIP to the only VPN that reliably let you watch streaming services overseas.
Here’s to enabling the OpenVPN / Wireguard feature on your router.
