FuckOffGoogle - User contributions [en]

GoogleAlternatives

2018-03-09T07:22:24Z

Byte00: /* News */

=='''Replacements, Alternatives to Google Products and Services'''==

Google’s products (e.g. the Android operating system) and services (search engine, YouTube, Google Mail, etc.) aggregate user data on a massive scale. This data is used to present users with a personalized experience, or in other words, a filter bubble of search results and targeted advertising. There is an obvious potential for abuse, but it’s more subtle than that.

This “filter bubble” not only exploits our tastes, experiences, behaviours, biases and turn them into revenue, it also blocks everyone from having some "neutral" (or common) vision of what exists over the internet, therefore reinforcing biases and polarizations. Furthermore, it manipulates people into habitual use of their products. Just try to observe yourself when you are bored or depressed: Can you resist the compulsion to visit YouTube for that instant reward?

This opaque capacity to influence what people may or may not see (besides the anti-competitive behaviour it represents when the same company owns the advertisement market) is overall an immense political power we cannot tolerate nor let unaccounted for. It silently puts Google and other companies above the law. Remember: Any profit-oriented business is only as lawful and ethical as it needs to be in order to avoid prosecution. It’s a calculated risk. The line needs to be drawn by us, the consumers.

The fact that it is hard for most people to escape Google’s grasp itself is worrying. Hence, this page is used to gather alternatives to Google products and services which respect user privacy.

''It is though dangerous to think in terms of "alternatives", like the goal was to reach equivalence to what Google offers (and risk to always lag behind). In reality what we want is *better* services than the ones of Google, because they would rest on *better* principles, such as decentralization/distribution of services, end-to-end encryption, uncompromising free/libre software, etc.''

While presenting these "alternatives" or "replacements" here, we must keep in mind that the true goal is to achieve proper distribution/decentralization of information and communication, and empower people to understand and control where their information goes.

=== Existing Resources and Guides ===

https://pad.okfn.org/p/google_alternatives (2017)

https://www.kuketz-blog.de/das-kranke-www-stop-using-google-web-services/ (2017)

https://raventools.com/blog/google-alternatives/ (2015)

https://impossiblehq.com/complete-guide-leaving-google/ (2014)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/02/how-stop-using-google-search-services (2013)

https://lifehacker.com/5876794/going-google-free-the-best-alternatives-to-google-services-on-the-web (2012)

A more generic guide about privacy and tools: https://www.privacytools.io/

== Self-hosting ==

Self-hosting (running one's own services on one own's server) may be the ''one-and-only'' way -on a political and on a technological perspective- to get rid of centralized services and some other potential sources of eavesdropping. Self-hosting is not accessible to everyone, as it requires some resources and experience to set-up (yet everyone has a potential to start learning it). Yet, pretty much the same way you do not have to learn to become a farmer before getting fruits and vegetables grown in a fair and respectful way, self-hosting is often practiced in a mutualized way: to the scale of a bunch of friends, of a collective, a company, a university, a city... or a neighborhood?

An '''amazing''' list of free/libre software for self-hosting: https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted/blob/master/README.md

==Search Engines==

https://searx.info (meta-search engine, free/libre software. just one instance of many: https://searx.dk https://search.disroot.org etc. full list of instances on http://stats.searx.oe5tpo.com/)

https://www.duckduckgo.com (centralized, US company)

https://www.metager.de (open source, privacy-focused search run by a non-profit NGO)

==Email Providers==

===posteo.de===
Very good email provider. 1 Euro per month, no spam, no bullshit, just email. Posteo is based in Berlin and has a political agenda in regards to privacy protection. So they have encrypted servers and so on.
Also see: https://posteo.de/en/site/features
=== mailbox.org===
Very good email provider. 1 Euro per month, no spam, no bullshit, just email. Mailbox is based in Germany and has a political agenda in regards to privacy protection. So they have encrypted servers and so on.
Also see: https://mailbox.org/sichere-email/
===protonmail.com===
End-to-end encrypted email based in Switzerland. No logging. Complete anonymity. Open source and funded by the community, not ads. The free account offers 500MB storage and 150 emails per day. Paid plans are also available.
Also see: https://protonmail.com/

===riseup.net===
Full disk encryption, personally encrypted email storage and many more fantastic features. Check out https://riseup.net/en/email for more. Donate as you see fit for usage and apply for an account. High quality provider.

==Mobile Operating Systems==

=== Usable today ===

[https://lineageos.org/ LineageOS] is the most popular community distribution of Google's Android operating system. Using Lineage, it is possible to have a fully-functional android phone without all of the integration with google services that android ordinarily entails. Many LineageOS users choose to install things that will interact with Google services, but it is not necessary to do so.

[https://replicant.us Replicant] — Android without any proprietary crap. Replicant is similar to Lineage in that it is a distribution of Android, but has a much stronger dedication to the principles of free (libre) software. In practice, this means that it doesn't work on nearly as many device models and that some drivers are missing (GPU, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc.). It is an interesting project to help demonstrate how much Android relies on proprietary software to function, to debunk Google's myth that "Android is Free/libre software". '''Please note, you can order Replicant ready phones, shipped to anywhere, from the brilliant [https://autotelic.berlin/ Autotelic].'''

[https://sailfishos.org/ Sailfish OS] — Partially open source, developed by Finnish company Jolla and the Sailfish OS community. Licensed devices come with a (proprietary) Android compatibility layer as a stop-gap solution to the relatively small amount of native apps. Though it contains many proprietary parts, the community has ported the OS to a variety of existing devices beyond those sold by Jolla.

=== Near-future developments ===

[https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ PureOS] — Privacy-focused operating system and mobile phone currently in development. Several choices for UI and software. Phone will have a CPU that is separated from the baseband processor, and will have hardware kill switches for radios, microphone, camera, etc.

[https://www.postmarketos.org/ postmarketOS] (pmOS), is a touch-optimized, pre-configured Alpine Linux that can be installed on smartphones and other mobile devices. The project is at very early stages of development and is not usable for most people yet, but it does have initial support for many different devices and seems to have considerable development momentum. They are "aiming for a 10 year life-cycle for smartphones".

==Maps and Navigation==

'''OpenStreetmap'''! - It's just so much better than google maps! You can edit the map yourself and add roads, houses or stores. Whatever you find relevant. Have a look at:

The map itself: https://www.openstreetmap.org

For comparison to Google maps: http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/

For routing: https://graphhopper.com/maps/

Download OpenStreetmap-Data: http://download.geofabrik.de/

Integrate OpenStreetmap in your website (wordpress): https://wordpress.org/plugins/osm/

===Arguments===

Giving Google a list of all the places you go not only help them profile your income and your habits, but it also enables them to target advertisement to you (according to where you may go) or predict your next moves. These data are invaluable for instance for insurance or transport companies to whom google may sell them. Geolocation data stored in Google servers, could potentially be used to incriminate people (you *were* at this protest, weren't you? You were not sick at home that day? etc.)

OpenStreetMap is entirely non-profit and contributive. With it people can (re)appropriate the map and the territory, and invent new uses for it (like disaster recovery in Haïti that abundantly used OSM). Inhabitants of small, isolated places can together get to much better cartography than what is of Google's financial interests. Data from OSM can be reused in each and every possible way, with no licensing conditions subjected to further changes.

==Docs and Sheets==

-'''Etherpad''' For collaborative text editing

-'''Mailbox Office''' If you have your email account at mailbox you also have a browser based office suite included:
https://mailbox.org/ihr-office/

-'''LibreOffice Online''' Use libreoffice on the website directly:
https://www.rollapp.com/libreoffice

-'''LibreOffice (offline)''' The installed program libreoffice can open and save documents directly from servers (ssh, ftp), WebDAV ans so on
Also see: https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Using_Remote_Files_1/pl

-'''Collabora Online''' Run an online office suite on your own server
Also see: https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/

===Arguments===

Using google's sheets and docs for your organizing is literally storing all your data with them complete with edit history of all collaborators.

==Browser==
Use Firefox, for example, to avoid worst Google-Spying on you. The Chrome Browser has several tracking functionalities that spy on user browsing behaviour:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#User_tracking

Google also connects data generated from the Google browser with other personal data it has gathered with other Google services.

===Helpful Browser-Plugins for Firefox===

-'''Privacy Badger''':
It prevents cookies and trackers that spy on your browsing behaviour. You can choose which trackers are allowed to track you and which ones are not. For example, it is recommended to deactivate all Trackers by Google (e.G. Google Analytics) and by Facebook (share buttons and so on)
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/privacy-badger17/

- '''HTTPS Everywhere''':
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

- '''uBlock Origin''':
https://www.ublock.org/

-'''User Agent Switcher''':
This Addon will fake your browser randomly. So after a few minutes it switches browser and operating system. At least it seams like that for websites you are presently surfing on. This makes it very hard for websites to track you according the information you give them in connection to your browser and your operating system.
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/

===Arguments===

Google's business model is based on selling YOUR personal and private data. It's called data mining and is a malicious business model!

Yet, Firefox is *far* from being perfect: Firefox without extensions is as vulnerable to data-harvesting as any other browser. Management of cookies is really cumbersome, and they are accepted by default. Also by default are accepted ads, cross-site scripting and all these features of "modern" web that makes tracking easy. + Mozilla boasts about defending people's privacy when in reality they didn't do much to change anything about this (Isn't Google even still their default search engine, after years of collecting their money?), as for their implicit acceptance of DRM in HTML5...

==News==

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events Wikipedia Current Events] displays the day's headlines and gives both source links and Wikipedia articles for context. It is hand-curated rather than automatic, which means it's quite low volume.

[https://newstral.com/ Newstral] is very similar to Google News. It is a news search engine with a homepage that displays the most viewed content by topic and person mentioned. You can pin searches to the top of your dashboard without needing to sign up for an account. Available in German, Spanish, Dutch, and English.

[http://www.freshnews.org/ Freshnews] is a customizable dashboard of tech news headlines, organized by outlet. With an account, you can choose which sources are omitted from the dashboard, and blacklist keywords.

[https://legiblenews.com/ Legible News] scrapes the Wikipedia current events portal for new links, and displays them on the site.

[https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/news Nextcloud] has a news RSS app you can self-host to build your own Google News alternative.

==Alerts==

[https://github.com/huginn/huginn Huginn] is a hackable version of Zapier/IFTTT that can be connected to APIs like DuckDuckGo and Twitter to listen for a keyword and send you alerts when that keyword is mentioned on the platform. [Here https://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2014/03/17/know-when-the-world-changes-with-huginn/] is a guide on setting up a self-hosted alert monitor with the tool.

[https://www.talkwalker.com/alerts Talkwalker Alerts] is a free alternative to Google Alerts which tracks mentions of a keyword across news sites, blogs, and social media, and sends you an email digest of the mentions. Good for passively tracking a company's activity, like Google! The [https://www.talkwalker.com/privacy-policy privacy policy] shows that your data could be shared with third parties if you connect external services to the platform, but this only applies to other Talkwalker products; Talkwalker Alerts is a standalone service. The ethics of the company aren't ideal, but it is at least not Google. You can feed the alerts into your RSS reader rather than email, too.

[https://tt-rss.org/ Tiny Tiny RSS] is a self-hosted feed aggregator which is [https://tt-rss.org/oldforum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2892 theoretically extensible] to listen for keywords within your added feeds. Possible to hack together your own version of Google Alerts by adding a lot of active feeds and writing your own plugin. Will take work, not ideal.

==Translation==

[https://deepl.com/translator Deepl translator] Works MUCH better than Google Translate, and is accessible via tor.

==Google Earth==
Marble - It's a globe like Google Earth but with multiple maps you can choose from. For example historic maps, OpenStreetmap. You can even change the globe to moon or Venus or other planets. Great piece of software!
Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_(software)

===Arguments===
-Google Earth is a closed source software
-Google Earth collects data about what people search and combines this information with the general personal-data-database

==Social Network==
Google+ is a social network by Google. It is a competitor to Facebook or LinkedIn. All of these services make money from personal user data.

-'''Diaspora''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly. Compatible with Friendica. Find servers you can sign on:
https://podupti.me/

-'''Friendica''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly. Compatible with Diaspora. Find servers you can sign on:
https://dir.friendica.social/servers

-'''Gnu-Social''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly.
Also see: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Social

-'''Mastodon''' A decentralized social network with an active user base spread out over many instances. Open Source. Works perfectly.
Also see: https://joinmastodon.org

Alternatives to Google+ (and Facebook):

===Arguments===

GoogleAlternatives

2018-03-09T07:21:52Z

Byte00: Fixed my own shitty link formatting

=='''Replacements, Alternatives to Google Products and Services'''==

Google’s products (e.g. the Android operating system) and services (search engine, YouTube, Google Mail, etc.) aggregate user data on a massive scale. This data is used to present users with a personalized experience, or in other words, a filter bubble of search results and targeted advertising. There is an obvious potential for abuse, but it’s more subtle than that.

This “filter bubble” not only exploits our tastes, experiences, behaviours, biases and turn them into revenue, it also blocks everyone from having some "neutral" (or common) vision of what exists over the internet, therefore reinforcing biases and polarizations. Furthermore, it manipulates people into habitual use of their products. Just try to observe yourself when you are bored or depressed: Can you resist the compulsion to visit YouTube for that instant reward?

This opaque capacity to influence what people may or may not see (besides the anti-competitive behaviour it represents when the same company owns the advertisement market) is overall an immense political power we cannot tolerate nor let unaccounted for. It silently puts Google and other companies above the law. Remember: Any profit-oriented business is only as lawful and ethical as it needs to be in order to avoid prosecution. It’s a calculated risk. The line needs to be drawn by us, the consumers.

The fact that it is hard for most people to escape Google’s grasp itself is worrying. Hence, this page is used to gather alternatives to Google products and services which respect user privacy.

''It is though dangerous to think in terms of "alternatives", like the goal was to reach equivalence to what Google offers (and risk to always lag behind). In reality what we want is *better* services than the ones of Google, because they would rest on *better* principles, such as decentralization/distribution of services, end-to-end encryption, uncompromising free/libre software, etc.''

While presenting these "alternatives" or "replacements" here, we must keep in mind that the true goal is to achieve proper distribution/decentralization of information and communication, and empower people to understand and control where their information goes.

=== Existing Resources and Guides ===

https://pad.okfn.org/p/google_alternatives (2017)

https://www.kuketz-blog.de/das-kranke-www-stop-using-google-web-services/ (2017)

https://raventools.com/blog/google-alternatives/ (2015)

https://impossiblehq.com/complete-guide-leaving-google/ (2014)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/02/how-stop-using-google-search-services (2013)

https://lifehacker.com/5876794/going-google-free-the-best-alternatives-to-google-services-on-the-web (2012)

A more generic guide about privacy and tools: https://www.privacytools.io/

== Self-hosting ==

Self-hosting (running one's own services on one own's server) may be the ''one-and-only'' way -on a political and on a technological perspective- to get rid of centralized services and some other potential sources of eavesdropping. Self-hosting is not accessible to everyone, as it requires some resources and experience to set-up (yet everyone has a potential to start learning it). Yet, pretty much the same way you do not have to learn to become a farmer before getting fruits and vegetables grown in a fair and respectful way, self-hosting is often practiced in a mutualized way: to the scale of a bunch of friends, of a collective, a company, a university, a city... or a neighborhood?

An '''amazing''' list of free/libre software for self-hosting: https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted/blob/master/README.md

==Search Engines==

https://searx.info (meta-search engine, free/libre software. just one instance of many: https://searx.dk https://search.disroot.org etc. full list of instances on http://stats.searx.oe5tpo.com/)

https://www.duckduckgo.com (centralized, US company)

https://www.metager.de (open source, privacy-focused search run by a non-profit NGO)

==Email Providers==

===posteo.de===
Very good email provider. 1 Euro per month, no spam, no bullshit, just email. Posteo is based in Berlin and has a political agenda in regards to privacy protection. So they have encrypted servers and so on.
Also see: https://posteo.de/en/site/features
=== mailbox.org===
Very good email provider. 1 Euro per month, no spam, no bullshit, just email. Mailbox is based in Germany and has a political agenda in regards to privacy protection. So they have encrypted servers and so on.
Also see: https://mailbox.org/sichere-email/
===protonmail.com===
End-to-end encrypted email based in Switzerland. No logging. Complete anonymity. Open source and funded by the community, not ads. The free account offers 500MB storage and 150 emails per day. Paid plans are also available.
Also see: https://protonmail.com/

===riseup.net===
Full disk encryption, personally encrypted email storage and many more fantastic features. Check out https://riseup.net/en/email for more. Donate as you see fit for usage and apply for an account. High quality provider.

==Mobile Operating Systems==

=== Usable today ===

[https://lineageos.org/ LineageOS] is the most popular community distribution of Google's Android operating system. Using Lineage, it is possible to have a fully-functional android phone without all of the integration with google services that android ordinarily entails. Many LineageOS users choose to install things that will interact with Google services, but it is not necessary to do so.

[https://replicant.us Replicant] — Android without any proprietary crap. Replicant is similar to Lineage in that it is a distribution of Android, but has a much stronger dedication to the principles of free (libre) software. In practice, this means that it doesn't work on nearly as many device models and that some drivers are missing (GPU, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc.). It is an interesting project to help demonstrate how much Android relies on proprietary software to function, to debunk Google's myth that "Android is Free/libre software". '''Please note, you can order Replicant ready phones, shipped to anywhere, from the brilliant [https://autotelic.berlin/ Autotelic].'''

[https://sailfishos.org/ Sailfish OS] — Partially open source, developed by Finnish company Jolla and the Sailfish OS community. Licensed devices come with a (proprietary) Android compatibility layer as a stop-gap solution to the relatively small amount of native apps. Though it contains many proprietary parts, the community has ported the OS to a variety of existing devices beyond those sold by Jolla.

=== Near-future developments ===

[https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ PureOS] — Privacy-focused operating system and mobile phone currently in development. Several choices for UI and software. Phone will have a CPU that is separated from the baseband processor, and will have hardware kill switches for radios, microphone, camera, etc.

[https://www.postmarketos.org/ postmarketOS] (pmOS), is a touch-optimized, pre-configured Alpine Linux that can be installed on smartphones and other mobile devices. The project is at very early stages of development and is not usable for most people yet, but it does have initial support for many different devices and seems to have considerable development momentum. They are "aiming for a 10 year life-cycle for smartphones".

==Maps and Navigation==

'''OpenStreetmap'''! - It's just so much better than google maps! You can edit the map yourself and add roads, houses or stores. Whatever you find relevant. Have a look at:

The map itself: https://www.openstreetmap.org

For comparison to Google maps: http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/

For routing: https://graphhopper.com/maps/

Download OpenStreetmap-Data: http://download.geofabrik.de/

Integrate OpenStreetmap in your website (wordpress): https://wordpress.org/plugins/osm/

===Arguments===

Giving Google a list of all the places you go not only help them profile your income and your habits, but it also enables them to target advertisement to you (according to where you may go) or predict your next moves. These data are invaluable for instance for insurance or transport companies to whom google may sell them. Geolocation data stored in Google servers, could potentially be used to incriminate people (you *were* at this protest, weren't you? You were not sick at home that day? etc.)

OpenStreetMap is entirely non-profit and contributive. With it people can (re)appropriate the map and the territory, and invent new uses for it (like disaster recovery in Haïti that abundantly used OSM). Inhabitants of small, isolated places can together get to much better cartography than what is of Google's financial interests. Data from OSM can be reused in each and every possible way, with no licensing conditions subjected to further changes.

==Docs and Sheets==

-'''Etherpad''' For collaborative text editing

-'''Mailbox Office''' If you have your email account at mailbox you also have a browser based office suite included:
https://mailbox.org/ihr-office/

-'''LibreOffice Online''' Use libreoffice on the website directly:
https://www.rollapp.com/libreoffice

-'''LibreOffice (offline)''' The installed program libreoffice can open and save documents directly from servers (ssh, ftp), WebDAV ans so on
Also see: https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Using_Remote_Files_1/pl

-'''Collabora Online''' Run an online office suite on your own server
Also see: https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/

===Arguments===

Using google's sheets and docs for your organizing is literally storing all your data with them complete with edit history of all collaborators.

==Browser==
Use Firefox, for example, to avoid worst Google-Spying on you. The Chrome Browser has several tracking functionalities that spy on user browsing behaviour:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#User_tracking

Google also connects data generated from the Google browser with other personal data it has gathered with other Google services.

===Helpful Browser-Plugins for Firefox===

-'''Privacy Badger''':
It prevents cookies and trackers that spy on your browsing behaviour. You can choose which trackers are allowed to track you and which ones are not. For example, it is recommended to deactivate all Trackers by Google (e.G. Google Analytics) and by Facebook (share buttons and so on)
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/privacy-badger17/

- '''HTTPS Everywhere''':
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

- '''uBlock Origin''':
https://www.ublock.org/

-'''User Agent Switcher''':
This Addon will fake your browser randomly. So after a few minutes it switches browser and operating system. At least it seams like that for websites you are presently surfing on. This makes it very hard for websites to track you according the information you give them in connection to your browser and your operating system.
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/

===Arguments===

Google's business model is based on selling YOUR personal and private data. It's called data mining and is a malicious business model!

Yet, Firefox is *far* from being perfect: Firefox without extensions is as vulnerable to data-harvesting as any other browser. Management of cookies is really cumbersome, and they are accepted by default. Also by default are accepted ads, cross-site scripting and all these features of "modern" web that makes tracking easy. + Mozilla boasts about defending people's privacy when in reality they didn't do much to change anything about this (Isn't Google even still their default search engine, after years of collecting their money?), as for their implicit acceptance of DRM in HTML5...

==News==

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events Wikipedia Current Events] displays the day's headlines and gives both source links and Wikipedia articles for context. It is hand-curated rather than automatic, which means it's quite low volume.

[https://newstral.com/Newstral] is very similar to Google News. It is a news search engine with a homepage that displays the most viewed content by topic and person mentioned. You can pin searches to the top of your dashboard without needing to sign up for an account. Available in German, Spanish, Dutch, and English.

[http://www.freshnews.org/ Freshnews] is a customizable dashboard of tech news headlines, organized by outlet. With an account, you can choose which sources are omitted from the dashboard, and blacklist keywords.

[https://legiblenews.com/ Legible News] scrapes the Wikipedia current events portal for new links, and displays them on the site.

[https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/news Nextcloud] has a news RSS app you can self-host to build your own Google News alternative.

==Alerts==

[https://github.com/huginn/huginn Huginn] is a hackable version of Zapier/IFTTT that can be connected to APIs like DuckDuckGo and Twitter to listen for a keyword and send you alerts when that keyword is mentioned on the platform. [Here https://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2014/03/17/know-when-the-world-changes-with-huginn/] is a guide on setting up a self-hosted alert monitor with the tool.

[https://www.talkwalker.com/alerts Talkwalker Alerts] is a free alternative to Google Alerts which tracks mentions of a keyword across news sites, blogs, and social media, and sends you an email digest of the mentions. Good for passively tracking a company's activity, like Google! The [https://www.talkwalker.com/privacy-policy privacy policy] shows that your data could be shared with third parties if you connect external services to the platform, but this only applies to other Talkwalker products; Talkwalker Alerts is a standalone service. The ethics of the company aren't ideal, but it is at least not Google. You can feed the alerts into your RSS reader rather than email, too.

[https://tt-rss.org/ Tiny Tiny RSS] is a self-hosted feed aggregator which is [https://tt-rss.org/oldforum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2892 theoretically extensible] to listen for keywords within your added feeds. Possible to hack together your own version of Google Alerts by adding a lot of active feeds and writing your own plugin. Will take work, not ideal.

==Translation==

[https://deepl.com/translator Deepl translator] Works MUCH better than Google Translate, and is accessible via tor.

==Google Earth==
Marble - It's a globe like Google Earth but with multiple maps you can choose from. For example historic maps, OpenStreetmap. You can even change the globe to moon or Venus or other planets. Great piece of software!
Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_(software)

===Arguments===
-Google Earth is a closed source software
-Google Earth collects data about what people search and combines this information with the general personal-data-database

==Social Network==
Google+ is a social network by Google. It is a competitor to Facebook or LinkedIn. All of these services make money from personal user data.

-'''Diaspora''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly. Compatible with Friendica. Find servers you can sign on:
https://podupti.me/

-'''Friendica''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly. Compatible with Diaspora. Find servers you can sign on:
https://dir.friendica.social/servers

-'''Gnu-Social''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly.
Also see: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Social

-'''Mastodon''' A decentralized social network with an active user base spread out over many instances. Open Source. Works perfectly.
Also see: https://joinmastodon.org

Alternatives to Google+ (and Facebook):

===Arguments===

GoogleAlternatives

2018-03-09T07:19:57Z

Byte00: Added Google News and Google Alerts alternatives (again)

=='''Replacements, Alternatives to Google Products and Services'''==

Google’s products (e.g. the Android operating system) and services (search engine, YouTube, Google Mail, etc.) aggregate user data on a massive scale. This data is used to present users with a personalized experience, or in other words, a filter bubble of search results and targeted advertising. There is an obvious potential for abuse, but it’s more subtle than that.

This “filter bubble” not only exploits our tastes, experiences, behaviours, biases and turn them into revenue, it also blocks everyone from having some "neutral" (or common) vision of what exists over the internet, therefore reinforcing biases and polarizations. Furthermore, it manipulates people into habitual use of their products. Just try to observe yourself when you are bored or depressed: Can you resist the compulsion to visit YouTube for that instant reward?

This opaque capacity to influence what people may or may not see (besides the anti-competitive behaviour it represents when the same company owns the advertisement market) is overall an immense political power we cannot tolerate nor let unaccounted for. It silently puts Google and other companies above the law. Remember: Any profit-oriented business is only as lawful and ethical as it needs to be in order to avoid prosecution. It’s a calculated risk. The line needs to be drawn by us, the consumers.

The fact that it is hard for most people to escape Google’s grasp itself is worrying. Hence, this page is used to gather alternatives to Google products and services which respect user privacy.

''It is though dangerous to think in terms of "alternatives", like the goal was to reach equivalence to what Google offers (and risk to always lag behind). In reality what we want is *better* services than the ones of Google, because they would rest on *better* principles, such as decentralization/distribution of services, end-to-end encryption, uncompromising free/libre software, etc.''

While presenting these "alternatives" or "replacements" here, we must keep in mind that the true goal is to achieve proper distribution/decentralization of information and communication, and empower people to understand and control where their information goes.

=== Existing Resources and Guides ===

https://pad.okfn.org/p/google_alternatives (2017)

https://www.kuketz-blog.de/das-kranke-www-stop-using-google-web-services/ (2017)

https://raventools.com/blog/google-alternatives/ (2015)

https://impossiblehq.com/complete-guide-leaving-google/ (2014)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/02/how-stop-using-google-search-services (2013)

https://lifehacker.com/5876794/going-google-free-the-best-alternatives-to-google-services-on-the-web (2012)

A more generic guide about privacy and tools: https://www.privacytools.io/

== Self-hosting ==

Self-hosting (running one's own services on one own's server) may be the ''one-and-only'' way -on a political and on a technological perspective- to get rid of centralized services and some other potential sources of eavesdropping. Self-hosting is not accessible to everyone, as it requires some resources and experience to set-up (yet everyone has a potential to start learning it). Yet, pretty much the same way you do not have to learn to become a farmer before getting fruits and vegetables grown in a fair and respectful way, self-hosting is often practiced in a mutualized way: to the scale of a bunch of friends, of a collective, a company, a university, a city... or a neighborhood?

An '''amazing''' list of free/libre software for self-hosting: https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted/blob/master/README.md

==Search Engines==

https://searx.info (meta-search engine, free/libre software. just one instance of many: https://searx.dk https://search.disroot.org etc. full list of instances on http://stats.searx.oe5tpo.com/)

https://www.duckduckgo.com (centralized, US company)

https://www.metager.de (open source, privacy-focused search run by a non-profit NGO)

==Email Providers==

===posteo.de===
Very good email provider. 1 Euro per month, no spam, no bullshit, just email. Posteo is based in Berlin and has a political agenda in regards to privacy protection. So they have encrypted servers and so on.
Also see: https://posteo.de/en/site/features
=== mailbox.org===
Very good email provider. 1 Euro per month, no spam, no bullshit, just email. Mailbox is based in Germany and has a political agenda in regards to privacy protection. So they have encrypted servers and so on.
Also see: https://mailbox.org/sichere-email/
===protonmail.com===
End-to-end encrypted email based in Switzerland. No logging. Complete anonymity. Open source and funded by the community, not ads. The free account offers 500MB storage and 150 emails per day. Paid plans are also available.
Also see: https://protonmail.com/

===riseup.net===
Full disk encryption, personally encrypted email storage and many more fantastic features. Check out https://riseup.net/en/email for more. Donate as you see fit for usage and apply for an account. High quality provider.

==Mobile Operating Systems==

=== Usable today ===

[https://lineageos.org/ LineageOS] is the most popular community distribution of Google's Android operating system. Using Lineage, it is possible to have a fully-functional android phone without all of the integration with google services that android ordinarily entails. Many LineageOS users choose to install things that will interact with Google services, but it is not necessary to do so.

[https://replicant.us Replicant] — Android without any proprietary crap. Replicant is similar to Lineage in that it is a distribution of Android, but has a much stronger dedication to the principles of free (libre) software. In practice, this means that it doesn't work on nearly as many device models and that some drivers are missing (GPU, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc.). It is an interesting project to help demonstrate how much Android relies on proprietary software to function, to debunk Google's myth that "Android is Free/libre software". '''Please note, you can order Replicant ready phones, shipped to anywhere, from the brilliant [https://autotelic.berlin/ Autotelic].'''

[https://sailfishos.org/ Sailfish OS] — Partially open source, developed by Finnish company Jolla and the Sailfish OS community. Licensed devices come with a (proprietary) Android compatibility layer as a stop-gap solution to the relatively small amount of native apps. Though it contains many proprietary parts, the community has ported the OS to a variety of existing devices beyond those sold by Jolla.

=== Near-future developments ===

[https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ PureOS] — Privacy-focused operating system and mobile phone currently in development. Several choices for UI and software. Phone will have a CPU that is separated from the baseband processor, and will have hardware kill switches for radios, microphone, camera, etc.

[https://www.postmarketos.org/ postmarketOS] (pmOS), is a touch-optimized, pre-configured Alpine Linux that can be installed on smartphones and other mobile devices. The project is at very early stages of development and is not usable for most people yet, but it does have initial support for many different devices and seems to have considerable development momentum. They are "aiming for a 10 year life-cycle for smartphones".

==Maps and Navigation==

'''OpenStreetmap'''! - It's just so much better than google maps! You can edit the map yourself and add roads, houses or stores. Whatever you find relevant. Have a look at:

The map itself: https://www.openstreetmap.org

For comparison to Google maps: http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/

For routing: https://graphhopper.com/maps/

Download OpenStreetmap-Data: http://download.geofabrik.de/

Integrate OpenStreetmap in your website (wordpress): https://wordpress.org/plugins/osm/

===Arguments===

Giving Google a list of all the places you go not only help them profile your income and your habits, but it also enables them to target advertisement to you (according to where you may go) or predict your next moves. These data are invaluable for instance for insurance or transport companies to whom google may sell them. Geolocation data stored in Google servers, could potentially be used to incriminate people (you *were* at this protest, weren't you? You were not sick at home that day? etc.)

OpenStreetMap is entirely non-profit and contributive. With it people can (re)appropriate the map and the territory, and invent new uses for it (like disaster recovery in Haïti that abundantly used OSM). Inhabitants of small, isolated places can together get to much better cartography than what is of Google's financial interests. Data from OSM can be reused in each and every possible way, with no licensing conditions subjected to further changes.

==Docs and Sheets==

-'''Etherpad''' For collaborative text editing

-'''Mailbox Office''' If you have your email account at mailbox you also have a browser based office suite included:
https://mailbox.org/ihr-office/

-'''LibreOffice Online''' Use libreoffice on the website directly:
https://www.rollapp.com/libreoffice

-'''LibreOffice (offline)''' The installed program libreoffice can open and save documents directly from servers (ssh, ftp), WebDAV ans so on
Also see: https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Using_Remote_Files_1/pl

-'''Collabora Online''' Run an online office suite on your own server
Also see: https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/

===Arguments===

Using google's sheets and docs for your organizing is literally storing all your data with them complete with edit history of all collaborators.

==Browser==
Use Firefox, for example, to avoid worst Google-Spying on you. The Chrome Browser has several tracking functionalities that spy on user browsing behaviour:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#User_tracking

Google also connects data generated from the Google browser with other personal data it has gathered with other Google services.

===Helpful Browser-Plugins for Firefox===

-'''Privacy Badger''':
It prevents cookies and trackers that spy on your browsing behaviour. You can choose which trackers are allowed to track you and which ones are not. For example, it is recommended to deactivate all Trackers by Google (e.G. Google Analytics) and by Facebook (share buttons and so on)
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/privacy-badger17/

- '''HTTPS Everywhere''':
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

- '''uBlock Origin''':
https://www.ublock.org/

-'''User Agent Switcher''':
This Addon will fake your browser randomly. So after a few minutes it switches browser and operating system. At least it seams like that for websites you are presently surfing on. This makes it very hard for websites to track you according the information you give them in connection to your browser and your operating system.
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/

===Arguments===

Google's business model is based on selling YOUR personal and private data. It's called data mining and is a malicious business model!

Yet, Firefox is *far* from being perfect: Firefox without extensions is as vulnerable to data-harvesting as any other browser. Management of cookies is really cumbersome, and they are accepted by default. Also by default are accepted ads, cross-site scripting and all these features of "modern" web that makes tracking easy. + Mozilla boasts about defending people's privacy when in reality they didn't do much to change anything about this (Isn't Google even still their default search engine, after years of collecting their money?), as for their implicit acceptance of DRM in HTML5...

==News==

[Wikipedia Current Events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events] displays the day's headlines and gives both source links and Wikipedia articles for context. It is hand-curated rather than automatic, which means it's quite low volume.

[Newstral https://newstral.com/] is very similar to Google News. It is a news search engine with a homepage that displays the most viewed content by topic and person mentioned. You can pin searches to the top of your dashboard without needing to sign up for an account. Available in German, Spanish, Dutch, and English.

[Freshnews http://www.freshnews.org/] is a customizable dashboard of tech news headlines, organized by outlet. With an account, you can choose which sources are omitted from the dashboard, and blacklist keywords.

[Legible News https://legiblenews.com/] scrapes the Wikipedia current events portal for new links, and displays them on the site.

[Nextcloud https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/news] has a news RSS app you can self-host to build your own Google News alternative.

==Alerts==

[Huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn] is a hackable version of Zapier/IFTTT that can be connected to APIs like DuckDuckGo and Twitter to listen for a keyword and send you alerts when that keyword is mentioned on the platform. [Here https://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2014/03/17/know-when-the-world-changes-with-huginn/] is a guide on setting up a self-hosted alert monitor with the tool.

[Talkwalker Alerts https://www.talkwalker.com/alerts] is a free alternative to Google Alerts which tracks mentions of a keyword across news sites, blogs, and social media, and sends you an email digest of the mentions. Good for passively tracking a company's activity, like Google! The [https://www.talkwalker.com/privacy-policy privacy policy] shows that your data could be shared with third parties if you connect external services to the platform, but this only applies to other Talkwalker products; Talkwalker Alerts is a standalone service. The ethics of the company aren't ideal, but it is at least not Google. You can feed the alerts into your RSS reader rather than email, too.

[Tiny Tiny RSS https://tt-rss.org/] is a self-hosted feed aggregator which is [https://tt-rss.org/oldforum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2892 theoretically extensible] to listen for keywords within your added feeds. Possible to hack together your own version of Google Alerts by adding a lot of active feeds and writing your own plugin. Will take work, not ideal.

==Translation==

[https://deepl.com/translator Deepl translator] Works MUCH better than Google Translate, and is accessible via tor.

==Google Earth==
Marble - It's a globe like Google Earth but with multiple maps you can choose from. For example historic maps, OpenStreetmap. You can even change the globe to moon or Venus or other planets. Great piece of software!
Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_(software)

===Arguments===
-Google Earth is a closed source software
-Google Earth collects data about what people search and combines this information with the general personal-data-database

==Social Network==
Google+ is a social network by Google. It is a competitor to Facebook or LinkedIn. All of these services make money from personal user data.

-'''Diaspora''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly. Compatible with Friendica. Find servers you can sign on:
https://podupti.me/

-'''Friendica''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly. Compatible with Diaspora. Find servers you can sign on:
https://dir.friendica.social/servers

-'''Gnu-Social''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly.
Also see: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Social

-'''Mastodon''' A decentralized social network with an active user base spread out over many instances. Open Source. Works perfectly.
Also see: https://joinmastodon.org

Alternatives to Google+ (and Facebook):

===Arguments===

Google Campus In Other Cities

2018-03-08T06:39:04Z

Byte00: /* Google Campus In Other Cities */

== Google Campus In Other Cities ==
There are [https://www.googleforentrepreneurs.com/campuses/ 6 existing Google Campuses] as of February 2018.

=== Tel Aviv ===

=== London ===

=== Seoul ===

=== Madrid ===

=== Warsaw ===

The Warsaw Google campus opened in 2015 in one of the city's [https://novaworkboard.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/praga-polnoc-poor-but-beautiful/ poorest] areas. The 1600m2 site is a cluster of Neo-Gothic industrial buildings built in 1897, once home to a vodka factory. The Google building sits among other renovated buildings in the complex, such as hotels, restaurants, and conference centers.

[[File:Google_Warsaw_Campus_Koneser.png|800px]]

In March 2015, Google gave its Polish employees [http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-to-close-krakow-office/ no option] but to relocate to the new Warsaw location as it closed the Krakow office.

'''More info'''

* [https://www.campus.co/warsaw/en/ Official Google link]
* [https://medium.com/@webgovpl/google-campus-warsaw-is-coming-soon-but-why-poland-ac44534d1606 Polish government announcement]
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Vodka_Factory_%22Koneser%22 Information on the area from Wikipedia]

=== Sao Paulo ===

Google Campus In Other Cities

2018-03-08T06:38:52Z

Byte00: /* Warsaw */

Google Campus In Other Cities

2018-03-08T06:32:02Z

Byte00: /* Warsaw */

== Google Campus In Other Cities ==
There are [https://www.googleforentrepreneurs.com/campuses/ 6 existing Google Campuses] as of February 2018.

=== Tel Aviv ===

=== London ===

=== Seoul ===

=== Madrid ===

=== Warsaw ===

The Warsaw Google campus opened in 2015 in one of the city's [https://novaworkboard.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/praga-polnoc-poor-but-beautiful/ poorest] residential areas. The 1600m2 site is a cluster of Neo-Gothic industrial buildings built in 1897, once home to a vodka factory. The Google building sits among other renovated buildings in the complex, such as hotels, restaurants, and conference centers.

[[File:Google_Warsaw_Campus_Koneser.png|800px]]

In March 2015, Google gave its Polish employees [http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-to-close-krakow-office/ no option] but to relocate to the new Warsaw location as it closed the Krakow office.

'''More info'''

* [https://www.campus.co/warsaw/en/ Official Google link]
* [https://medium.com/@webgovpl/google-campus-warsaw-is-coming-soon-but-why-poland-ac44534d1606 Polish government announcement]
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Vodka_Factory_%22Koneser%22 Information on the area from Wikipedia]

=== Sao Paulo ===

Google Campus In Other Cities

2018-03-08T06:25:52Z

Byte00: /* Warsaw */

== Google Campus In Other Cities ==
There are [https://www.googleforentrepreneurs.com/campuses/ 6 existing Google Campuses] as of February 2018.

=== Tel Aviv ===

=== London ===

=== Seoul ===

=== Madrid ===

=== Warsaw ===

The Warsaw Google campus opened in 2015 in one of the city's poorest residential areas. The 1600m2 site is a cluster of Neo-Gothic industrial buildings built in 1897, once home to a vodka factory. The Google building sits among other renovated buildings in the complex such as hotels, restaurants, and conference centers.

[[File:Google_Warsaw_Campus_Koneser.png|800px]]

'''More info'''

* [https://www.campus.co/warsaw/en/ Official Google link]
* [https://medium.com/@webgovpl/google-campus-warsaw-is-coming-soon-but-why-poland-ac44534d1606 Polish government announcement]
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Vodka_Factory_%22Koneser%22 Information on the area from Wikipedia]

=== Sao Paulo ===

Google Campus In Other Cities

2018-03-08T06:25:39Z

Byte00: /* Warsaw */

== Google Campus In Other Cities ==
There are [https://www.googleforentrepreneurs.com/campuses/ 6 existing Google Campuses] as of February 2018.

=== Tel Aviv ===

=== London ===

=== Seoul ===

=== Madrid ===

=== Warsaw ===

The Warsaw Google campus opened in 2015 in one of the city's poorest residential areas. The 1600m2 site is a cluster of Neo-Gothic industrial buildings built in 1897, once home to a vodka factory. The Google building sits among other renovated buildings in the complex such as hotels, restaurants, and conference centers.

[[File:Google_Warsaw_Campus_Koneser.png|800px]]

More info

* [https://www.campus.co/warsaw/en/ Official Google link]
* [[https://medium.com/@webgovpl/google-campus-warsaw-is-coming-soon-but-why-poland-ac44534d1606 Polish government announcement]]
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Vodka_Factory_%22Koneser%22 Information on the area from Wikipedia]]

=== Sao Paulo ===

Google Campus In Other Cities

2018-03-08T06:25:30Z

Byte00: /* Warsaw */

== Google Campus In Other Cities ==
There are [https://www.googleforentrepreneurs.com/campuses/ 6 existing Google Campuses] as of February 2018.

=== Tel Aviv ===

=== London ===

=== Seoul ===

=== Madrid ===

=== Warsaw ===

The Warsaw Google campus opened in 2015 in one of the city's poorest residential areas. The 1600m2 site is a cluster of Neo-Gothic industrial buildings built in 1897, once home to a vodka factory. The Google building sits among other renovated buildings in the complex such as hotels, restaurants, and conference centers.

[[File:Google_Warsaw_Campus_Koneser.png|800px]]

More info

* [[https://www.campus.co/warsaw/en/ Official Google link]]
* [[https://medium.com/@webgovpl/google-campus-warsaw-is-coming-soon-but-why-poland-ac44534d1606 Polish government announcement]]
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Vodka_Factory_%22Koneser%22 Information on the area from Wikipedia]]

=== Sao Paulo ===

Google Campus In Other Cities

2018-03-08T06:23:15Z

Byte00: /* Google Campus In Other Cities */

== Google Campus In Other Cities ==
There are [https://www.googleforentrepreneurs.com/campuses/ 6 existing Google Campuses] as of February 2018.

=== Tel Aviv ===

=== London ===

=== Seoul ===

=== Madrid ===

=== Warsaw ===

The Warsaw Google campus opened in 2015 in one of the city's poorest residential areas. The 1600m2 site is a cluster of Neo-Gothic industrial buildings built in 1897, once home to a vodka factory. The Google building sits among other renovated buildings in the complex such as hotels, restaurants, and conference centers.

[[File:Google_Warsaw_Campus_Koneser.png|800px]]

More info

Official Google link: https://www.campus.co/warsaw/en/
Polish government announcement: https://medium.com/@webgovpl/google-campus-warsaw-is-coming-soon-but-why-poland-ac44534d1606
Information on the area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Vodka_Factory_%22Koneser%22

=== Sao Paulo ===

Google Campus In Other Cities

2018-03-08T06:16:23Z

Byte00: /* Google Campus In Other Cities */

Google Campus In Other Cities

2018-03-08T06:15:05Z

Byte00: /* Google Campus In Other Cities */

Google Campus In Other Cities

2018-03-08T06:09:02Z

Byte00: /* Warsaw */

Google Campus In Other Cities

2018-03-08T06:08:31Z

Byte00: /* Warsaw */

File:Google Warsaw Campus Koneser.png

2018-03-08T06:07:52Z

Byte00: Location of the Google Campus in the Koneser complex

Location of the Google Campus in the Koneser complex

File:Snip20180308 25.png

2018-03-08T06:04:20Z

Byte00: Google's Warsaw Campus shown in the Koneser complex

Google's Warsaw Campus shown in the Koneser complex

Google and discrimination

2018-03-07T07:10:05Z

Byte00:

Google surfs on their image of a nice, lefty, "progressive" bunch, but in reality, like most mega-corps, it is aggressively discriminating among its employees. Furthermore, Google claims its "Google campus" aims at promoting diversity and the such, when they fail at promoting it internally.

Here are resources about Google and discrimination:

== Ex-Google engineer: I was fired for being too liberal - Ars Technica - 2018 ==

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1263833

== Female Google engineer says she faced “frequent sexual harassment” - Ars Technica - 2018 ==

Woman charges that “Google was fully aware” of sexist behavior but didn’t stop it.
A Google engineer says she was a frequent target of regular sexual harassment during her seven years at the company. In a lawsuit filed in March 2018, Loretta Lee (no relation) accused the Mountain View company of having a "bro-culture" that was hostile to women, and of doing too little to address the problem.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/google-turned-a-blind-eye-to-toxic-bro-culture-lawsuit-says/

== Trials against Google for discrimination ==

https://de.scribd.com/document/368688363/James-Damore-vs-Google-Class-Action-Lawsuit#from_embed

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/01/google-gender-pay-discrimination-lawsuit

GoogleAlternatives

2018-03-05T11:30:19Z

Byte00: /* Social Network */

=='''Replacements, Alternatives to Google Products and Services'''==

Google’s products (e.g. the Android operating system) and services (search engine, YouTube, Google Mail, etc.) aggregate user data on a massive scale. This data is used to present users with a personalized experience, or in other words, a filter bubble of search results and targeted advertising. There is an obvious potential for abuse, but it’s more subtle than that.

This “filter bubble” not only exploits our tastes, experiences, behaviours, biases and turn them into revenue, it also blocks everyone from having some "neutral" (or common) vision of what exists over the internet, therefore reinforcing biases and polarizations. Furthermore, it manipulates people into habitual use of their products. Just try to observe yourself when you are bored or depressed: Can you resist the compulsion to visit YouTube for that instant reward?

This opaque capacity to influence what people may or may not see (besides the anti-competitive behaviour it represents when the same company owns the advertisement market) is overall an immense political power we cannot tolerate nor let unaccounted for. It silently puts Google and other companies above the law. Remember: Any profit-oriented business is only as lawful and ethical as it needs to be in order to avoid prosecution. It’s a calculated risk. The line needs to be drawn by us, the consumers.

The fact that it is hard for most people to escape Google’s grasp itself is worrying. Hence, this page is used to gather alternatives to Google products and services which respect user privacy.

''It is though dangerous to think in terms of "alternatives", like the goal was to reach equivalence to what Google offers (and risk to always lag behind). In reality what we want is *better* services than the ones of Google, because they would rest on *better* principles, such as decentralization/distribution of services, end-to-end encryption, uncompromising free/libre software, etc.''

While presenting these "alternatives" or "replacements" here, we must keep in mind that the true goal is to achieve proper distribution/decentralization of information and communication, and empower people to understand and control where their information goes.

=== Existing Resources and Guides ===

https://pad.okfn.org/p/google_alternatives (2017)

https://www.kuketz-blog.de/das-kranke-www-stop-using-google-web-services/ (2017)

https://raventools.com/blog/google-alternatives/ (2015)

https://impossiblehq.com/complete-guide-leaving-google/ (2014)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/02/how-stop-using-google-search-services (2013)

https://lifehacker.com/5876794/going-google-free-the-best-alternatives-to-google-services-on-the-web (2012)

A more generic guide about privacy and tools: https://www.privacytools.io/

== Self-hosting ==

Self-hosting (running one's own services on one own's server) may be the ''one-and-only'' way -on a political and on a technological perspective- to get rid of centralized services and some other potential sources of eavesdropping. Self-hosting is not accessible to everyone, as it requires some resources and experience to set-up (yet everyone has a potential to start learning it). Yet, pretty much the same way you do not have to learn to become a farmer before getting fruits and vegetables grown in a fair and respectful way, self-hosting is often practiced in a mutualized way: to the scale of a bunch of friends, of a collective, a company, a university, a city... or a neighborhood?

An '''amazing''' list of free/libre software for self-hosting: https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted/blob/master/README.md

==Search Engines==

https://searx.info (meta-search engine, free/libre software. just one instance of many: https://searx.dk https://search.disroot.org etc. full list of instances on http://stats.searx.oe5tpo.com/)

https://www.duckduckgo.com (centralized, US company)

https://www.metager.de (open source, privacy-focused search run by a non-profit NGO)

==Email Providers==

===posteo.de===
Very good email provider. 1 Euro per month, no spam, no bullshit, just email. Posteo is based in Berlin and has a political agenda in regards to privacy protection. So they have encrypted servers and so on.
Also see: https://posteo.de/en/site/features
=== mailbox.org===
Very good email provider. 1 Euro per month, no spam, no bullshit, just email. Mailbox is based in Germany and has a political agenda in regards to privacy protection. So they have encrypted servers and so on.
Also see: https://mailbox.org/sichere-email/
===protonmail.com===
End-to-end encrypted email based in Switzerland. No logging. Complete anonymity. Open source and funded by the community, not ads. The free account offers 500MB storage and 150 emails per day. Paid plans are also available.
Also see: https://protonmail.com/

===riseup.net===
Full disk encryption, personally encrypted email storage and many more fantastic features. Check out https://riseup.net/en/email for more. Donate as you see fit for usage and apply for an account. High quality provider.

==Mobile Operating Systems==

[https://sailfishos.org/ Sailfish OS] — Based on open source, developed by Finnish company Jolla and the Sailfish OS community. Licensed devices come with a (proprietary) Android compatibility layer as a stop-gap solution to the relatively small amount of native apps.

[https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ PureOS] — Privacy-focused operating system and mobile phone. Several choices for UI and software. Phone has CPU separate from baseband processor and hardware kill switches.

[https://replicant.us Replicant] — AndroidOS without all the proprietary crap. Means it works only on some rather ancient devices and that some drivers are missing (GPU, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc.). Interesting project to help demonstrate how much Android relies on proprietary software to function, to debunk Google's myth that "Android is Free/libre software".

==Maps and Navigation==

'''OpenStreetmap'''! - It's just so much better than google maps! You can edit the map yourself and add roads, houses or stores. Whatever you find relevant. Have a look at:

The map itself: https://www.openstreetmap.org

For comparison to Google maps: http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/

For routing: https://graphhopper.com/maps/

Download OpenStreetmap-Data: http://download.geofabrik.de/

Integrate OpenStreetmap in your website (wordpress): https://wordpress.org/plugins/osm/

===Arguments===

Giving Google a list of all the places you go not only help them profile your income and your habits, but it also enables them to target advertisement to you (according to where you may go) or predict your next moves. These data are invaluable for instance for insurance or transport companies to whom google may sell them. Geolocation data stored in Google servers, could potentially be used to incriminate people (you *were* at this protest, weren't you? You were not sick at home that day? etc.)

OpenStreetMap is entirely non-profit and contributive. With it people can (re)appropriate the map and the territory, and invent new uses for it (like disaster recovery in Haïti that abundantly used OSM). Inhabitants of small, isolated places can together get to much better cartography than what is of Google's financial interests. Data from OSM can be reused in each and every possible way, with no licensing conditions subjected to further changes.

==Docs and Sheets==

-'''Etherpad''' For collaborative text editing

-'''Mailbox Office''' If you have your email account at mailbox you also have a browser based office suite included:
https://mailbox.org/ihr-office/

-'''LibreOffice Online''' Use libreoffice on the website directly:
https://www.rollapp.com/libreoffice

-'''LibreOffice (offline)''' The installed program libreoffice can open and save documents directly from servers (ssh, ftp), WebDAV ans so on
Also see: https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Using_Remote_Files_1/pl

-'''Collabora Online''' Run an online office suite on your own server
Also see: https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/

===Arguments===

Using google's sheets and docs for your organizing is literally storing all your data with them complete with edit history of all collaborators.

==Browser==
Use Firefox, for example, to avoid worst Google-Spying on you. The Chrome Browser has several tracking functionalities that spy on user browsing behaviour:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#User_tracking

Google also connects data generated from the Google browser with other personal data it has gathered with other Google services.

===Helpful Browser-Plugins for Firefox===

-'''Privacy Badger''':
It prevents cookies and trackers that spy on your browsing behaviour. You can choose which trackers are allowed to track you and which ones are not. For example, it is recommended to deactivate all Trackers by Google (e.G. Google Analytics) and by Facebook (share buttons and so on)
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/privacy-badger17/

- '''HTTPS Everywhere''':
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

- '''uBlock Origin''':
https://www.ublock.org/

-'''User Agent Switcher''':
This Addon will fake your browser randomly. So after a few minutes it switches browser and operating system. At least it seams like that for websites you are presently surfing on. This makes it very hard for websites to track you according the information you give them in connection to your browser and your operating system.
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/

===Arguments===

Google's business model is based on selling YOUR personal and private data. It's called data mining and is a malicious business model!

Yet, Firefox is *far* from being perfect: Firefox without extensions is as vulnerable to data-harvesting as any other browser. Management of cookies is really cumbersome, and they are accepted by default. Also by default are accepted ads, cross-site scripting and all these features of "modern" web that makes tracking easy. + Mozilla boasts about defending people's privacy when in reality they didn't do much to change anything about this (Isn't Google even still their default search engine, after years of collecting their money?), as for their implicit acceptance of DRM in HTML5...

==Translation==

[https://deepl.com/translator Deepl translator] Works MUCH better than Google Translate, and is accessible via tor.

==Google Earth==
Marble - It's a globe like Google Earth but with multiple maps you can choose from. For example historic maps, OpenStreetmap. You can even change the globe to moon or Venus or other planets. Great piece of software!
Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_(software)

===Arguments===
-Google Earth is a closed source software
-Google Earth collects data about what people search and combines this information with the general personal-data-database

==Social Network==
Google+ is a social network by Google. It is a competitor to Facebook or LinkedIn. All of these services make money from personal user data.

-'''Diaspora''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly. Compatible with Friendica. Find servers you can sign on:
https://podupti.me/

-'''Friendica''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly. Compatible with Diaspora. Find servers you can sign on:
https://dir.friendica.social/servers

-'''Gnu-Social''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly.
Also see: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Social

-'''Mastodon''' A decentralized social network with an active user base spread out over many instances. Open Source. Works perfectly.
Also see: https://joinmastodon.org

Alternatives to Google+ (and Facebook):

===Arguments===

GoogleAlternatives

2018-03-05T11:29:52Z

Byte00: /* protonmail.com */

=='''Replacements, Alternatives to Google Products and Services'''==

Google’s products (e.g. the Android operating system) and services (search engine, YouTube, Google Mail, etc.) aggregate user data on a massive scale. This data is used to present users with a personalized experience, or in other words, a filter bubble of search results and targeted advertising. There is an obvious potential for abuse, but it’s more subtle than that.

This “filter bubble” not only exploits our tastes, experiences, behaviours, biases and turn them into revenue, it also blocks everyone from having some "neutral" (or common) vision of what exists over the internet, therefore reinforcing biases and polarizations. Furthermore, it manipulates people into habitual use of their products. Just try to observe yourself when you are bored or depressed: Can you resist the compulsion to visit YouTube for that instant reward?

This opaque capacity to influence what people may or may not see (besides the anti-competitive behaviour it represents when the same company owns the advertisement market) is overall an immense political power we cannot tolerate nor let unaccounted for. It silently puts Google and other companies above the law. Remember: Any profit-oriented business is only as lawful and ethical as it needs to be in order to avoid prosecution. It’s a calculated risk. The line needs to be drawn by us, the consumers.

The fact that it is hard for most people to escape Google’s grasp itself is worrying. Hence, this page is used to gather alternatives to Google products and services which respect user privacy.

''It is though dangerous to think in terms of "alternatives", like the goal was to reach equivalence to what Google offers (and risk to always lag behind). In reality what we want is *better* services than the ones of Google, because they would rest on *better* principles, such as decentralization/distribution of services, end-to-end encryption, uncompromising free/libre software, etc.''

While presenting these "alternatives" or "replacements" here, we must keep in mind that the true goal is to achieve proper distribution/decentralization of information and communication, and empower people to understand and control where their information goes.

=== Existing Resources and Guides ===

https://pad.okfn.org/p/google_alternatives (2017)

https://www.kuketz-blog.de/das-kranke-www-stop-using-google-web-services/ (2017)

https://raventools.com/blog/google-alternatives/ (2015)

https://impossiblehq.com/complete-guide-leaving-google/ (2014)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/02/how-stop-using-google-search-services (2013)

https://lifehacker.com/5876794/going-google-free-the-best-alternatives-to-google-services-on-the-web (2012)

A more generic guide about privacy and tools: https://www.privacytools.io/

== Self-hosting ==

Self-hosting (running one's own services on one own's server) may be the ''one-and-only'' way -on a political and on a technological perspective- to get rid of centralized services and some other potential sources of eavesdropping. Self-hosting is not accessible to everyone, as it requires some resources and experience to set-up (yet everyone has a potential to start learning it). Yet, pretty much the same way you do not have to learn to become a farmer before getting fruits and vegetables grown in a fair and respectful way, self-hosting is often practiced in a mutualized way: to the scale of a bunch of friends, of a collective, a company, a university, a city... or a neighborhood?

An '''amazing''' list of free/libre software for self-hosting: https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted/blob/master/README.md

==Search Engines==

https://searx.info (meta-search engine, free/libre software. just one instance of many: https://searx.dk https://search.disroot.org etc. full list of instances on http://stats.searx.oe5tpo.com/)

https://www.duckduckgo.com (centralized, US company)

https://www.metager.de (open source, privacy-focused search run by a non-profit NGO)

==Email Providers==

===posteo.de===
Very good email provider. 1 Euro per month, no spam, no bullshit, just email. Posteo is based in Berlin and has a political agenda in regards to privacy protection. So they have encrypted servers and so on.
Also see: https://posteo.de/en/site/features
=== mailbox.org===
Very good email provider. 1 Euro per month, no spam, no bullshit, just email. Mailbox is based in Germany and has a political agenda in regards to privacy protection. So they have encrypted servers and so on.
Also see: https://mailbox.org/sichere-email/
===protonmail.com===
End-to-end encrypted email based in Switzerland. No logging. Complete anonymity. Open source and funded by the community, not ads. The free account offers 500MB storage and 150 emails per day. Paid plans are also available.
Also see: https://protonmail.com/

===riseup.net===
Full disk encryption, personally encrypted email storage and many more fantastic features. Check out https://riseup.net/en/email for more. Donate as you see fit for usage and apply for an account. High quality provider.

==Mobile Operating Systems==

[https://sailfishos.org/ Sailfish OS] — Based on open source, developed by Finnish company Jolla and the Sailfish OS community. Licensed devices come with a (proprietary) Android compatibility layer as a stop-gap solution to the relatively small amount of native apps.

[https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ PureOS] — Privacy-focused operating system and mobile phone. Several choices for UI and software. Phone has CPU separate from baseband processor and hardware kill switches.

[https://replicant.us Replicant] — AndroidOS without all the proprietary crap. Means it works only on some rather ancient devices and that some drivers are missing (GPU, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc.). Interesting project to help demonstrate how much Android relies on proprietary software to function, to debunk Google's myth that "Android is Free/libre software".

==Maps and Navigation==

'''OpenStreetmap'''! - It's just so much better than google maps! You can edit the map yourself and add roads, houses or stores. Whatever you find relevant. Have a look at:

The map itself: https://www.openstreetmap.org

For comparison to Google maps: http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/

For routing: https://graphhopper.com/maps/

Download OpenStreetmap-Data: http://download.geofabrik.de/

Integrate OpenStreetmap in your website (wordpress): https://wordpress.org/plugins/osm/

===Arguments===

Giving Google a list of all the places you go not only help them profile your income and your habits, but it also enables them to target advertisement to you (according to where you may go) or predict your next moves. These data are invaluable for instance for insurance or transport companies to whom google may sell them. Geolocation data stored in Google servers, could potentially be used to incriminate people (you *were* at this protest, weren't you? You were not sick at home that day? etc.)

OpenStreetMap is entirely non-profit and contributive. With it people can (re)appropriate the map and the territory, and invent new uses for it (like disaster recovery in Haïti that abundantly used OSM). Inhabitants of small, isolated places can together get to much better cartography than what is of Google's financial interests. Data from OSM can be reused in each and every possible way, with no licensing conditions subjected to further changes.

==Docs and Sheets==

-'''Etherpad''' For collaborative text editing

-'''Mailbox Office''' If you have your email account at mailbox you also have a browser based office suite included:
https://mailbox.org/ihr-office/

-'''LibreOffice Online''' Use libreoffice on the website directly:
https://www.rollapp.com/libreoffice

-'''LibreOffice (offline)''' The installed program libreoffice can open and save documents directly from servers (ssh, ftp), WebDAV ans so on
Also see: https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Using_Remote_Files_1/pl

-'''Collabora Online''' Run an online office suite on your own server
Also see: https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/

===Arguments===

Using google's sheets and docs for your organizing is literally storing all your data with them complete with edit history of all collaborators.

==Browser==
Use Firefox, for example, to avoid worst Google-Spying on you. The Chrome Browser has several tracking functionalities that spy on user browsing behaviour:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#User_tracking

Google also connects data generated from the Google browser with other personal data it has gathered with other Google services.

===Helpful Browser-Plugins for Firefox===

-'''Privacy Badger''':
It prevents cookies and trackers that spy on your browsing behaviour. You can choose which trackers are allowed to track you and which ones are not. For example, it is recommended to deactivate all Trackers by Google (e.G. Google Analytics) and by Facebook (share buttons and so on)
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/privacy-badger17/

- '''HTTPS Everywhere''':
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

- '''uBlock Origin''':
https://www.ublock.org/

-'''User Agent Switcher''':
This Addon will fake your browser randomly. So after a few minutes it switches browser and operating system. At least it seams like that for websites you are presently surfing on. This makes it very hard for websites to track you according the information you give them in connection to your browser and your operating system.
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/

===Arguments===

Google's business model is based on selling YOUR personal and private data. It's called data mining and is a malicious business model!

Yet, Firefox is *far* from being perfect: Firefox without extensions is as vulnerable to data-harvesting as any other browser. Management of cookies is really cumbersome, and they are accepted by default. Also by default are accepted ads, cross-site scripting and all these features of "modern" web that makes tracking easy. + Mozilla boasts about defending people's privacy when in reality they didn't do much to change anything about this (Isn't Google even still their default search engine, after years of collecting their money?), as for their implicit acceptance of DRM in HTML5...

==Translation==

[https://deepl.com/translator Deepl translator] Works MUCH better than Google Translate, and is accessible via tor.

==Google Earth==
Marble - It's a globe like Google Earth but with multiple maps you can choose from. For example historic maps, OpenStreetmap. You can even change the globe to moon or Venus or other planets. Great piece of software!
Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_(software)

===Arguments===
-Google Earth is a closed source software
-Google Earth collects data about what people search and combines this information with the general personal-data-database

==Social Network==
Google+ is a social network by Google. It is a competitor to Facebook or LinkedIn. All of these services make money from personal user data.

-'''Diaspora''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly. Compatible with Friendica. Find servers you can sign on:
https://podupti.me/
-'''Friendica''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly. Compatible with Diaspora. Find servers you can sign on:
https://dir.friendica.social/servers
-'''Gnu-Social''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly.
Also see: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Social
-'''Mastodon''' A decentralized social network with an active user base spread out over many instances. Open Source. Works perfectly.
Also see: https://joinmastodon.org

Alternatives to Google+ (and Facebook):

===Arguments===

GoogleAlternatives

2018-03-05T11:29:20Z

Byte00: Added ProtonMail and Mastodon. Fixed a few typos.

=='''Replacements, Alternatives to Google Products and Services'''==

Google’s products (e.g. the Android operating system) and services (search engine, YouTube, Google Mail, etc.) aggregate user data on a massive scale. This data is used to present users with a personalized experience, or in other words, a filter bubble of search results and targeted advertising. There is an obvious potential for abuse, but it’s more subtle than that.

This “filter bubble” not only exploits our tastes, experiences, behaviours, biases and turn them into revenue, it also blocks everyone from having some "neutral" (or common) vision of what exists over the internet, therefore reinforcing biases and polarizations. Furthermore, it manipulates people into habitual use of their products. Just try to observe yourself when you are bored or depressed: Can you resist the compulsion to visit YouTube for that instant reward?

This opaque capacity to influence what people may or may not see (besides the anti-competitive behaviour it represents when the same company owns the advertisement market) is overall an immense political power we cannot tolerate nor let unaccounted for. It silently puts Google and other companies above the law. Remember: Any profit-oriented business is only as lawful and ethical as it needs to be in order to avoid prosecution. It’s a calculated risk. The line needs to be drawn by us, the consumers.

The fact that it is hard for most people to escape Google’s grasp itself is worrying. Hence, this page is used to gather alternatives to Google products and services which respect user privacy.

''It is though dangerous to think in terms of "alternatives", like the goal was to reach equivalence to what Google offers (and risk to always lag behind). In reality what we want is *better* services than the ones of Google, because they would rest on *better* principles, such as decentralization/distribution of services, end-to-end encryption, uncompromising free/libre software, etc.''

While presenting these "alternatives" or "replacements" here, we must keep in mind that the true goal is to achieve proper distribution/decentralization of information and communication, and empower people to understand and control where their information goes.

=== Existing Resources and Guides ===

https://pad.okfn.org/p/google_alternatives (2017)

https://www.kuketz-blog.de/das-kranke-www-stop-using-google-web-services/ (2017)

https://raventools.com/blog/google-alternatives/ (2015)

https://impossiblehq.com/complete-guide-leaving-google/ (2014)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/02/how-stop-using-google-search-services (2013)

https://lifehacker.com/5876794/going-google-free-the-best-alternatives-to-google-services-on-the-web (2012)

A more generic guide about privacy and tools: https://www.privacytools.io/

== Self-hosting ==

Self-hosting (running one's own services on one own's server) may be the ''one-and-only'' way -on a political and on a technological perspective- to get rid of centralized services and some other potential sources of eavesdropping. Self-hosting is not accessible to everyone, as it requires some resources and experience to set-up (yet everyone has a potential to start learning it). Yet, pretty much the same way you do not have to learn to become a farmer before getting fruits and vegetables grown in a fair and respectful way, self-hosting is often practiced in a mutualized way: to the scale of a bunch of friends, of a collective, a company, a university, a city... or a neighborhood?

An '''amazing''' list of free/libre software for self-hosting: https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted/blob/master/README.md

==Search Engines==

https://searx.info (meta-search engine, free/libre software. just one instance of many: https://searx.dk https://search.disroot.org etc. full list of instances on http://stats.searx.oe5tpo.com/)

https://www.duckduckgo.com (centralized, US company)

https://www.metager.de (open source, privacy-focused search run by a non-profit NGO)

==Email Providers==

===posteo.de===
Very good email provider. 1 Euro per month, no spam, no bullshit, just email. Posteo is based in Berlin and has a political agenda in regards to privacy protection. So they have encrypted servers and so on.
Also see: https://posteo.de/en/site/features
=== mailbox.org===
Very good email provider. 1 Euro per month, no spam, no bullshit, just email. Mailbox is based in Germany and has a political agenda in regards to privacy protection. So they have encrypted servers and so on.
Also see: https://mailbox.org/sichere-email/
===protonmail.com===
End-to-end encrypted email based in Switzerland. No logging. Complete anonymity. Open source and funding by the community, not ads. The free account offers 500MB storage and 150 emails per day. Paid plans are also available.
Also see: https://protonmail.com/
===riseup.net===
Full disk encryption, personally encrypted email storage and many more fantastic features. Check out https://riseup.net/en/email for more. Donate as you see fit for usage and apply for an account. High quality provider.

==Mobile Operating Systems==

[https://sailfishos.org/ Sailfish OS] — Based on open source, developed by Finnish company Jolla and the Sailfish OS community. Licensed devices come with a (proprietary) Android compatibility layer as a stop-gap solution to the relatively small amount of native apps.

[https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ PureOS] — Privacy-focused operating system and mobile phone. Several choices for UI and software. Phone has CPU separate from baseband processor and hardware kill switches.

[https://replicant.us Replicant] — AndroidOS without all the proprietary crap. Means it works only on some rather ancient devices and that some drivers are missing (GPU, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc.). Interesting project to help demonstrate how much Android relies on proprietary software to function, to debunk Google's myth that "Android is Free/libre software".

==Maps and Navigation==

'''OpenStreetmap'''! - It's just so much better than google maps! You can edit the map yourself and add roads, houses or stores. Whatever you find relevant. Have a look at:

The map itself: https://www.openstreetmap.org

For comparison to Google maps: http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/

For routing: https://graphhopper.com/maps/

Download OpenStreetmap-Data: http://download.geofabrik.de/

Integrate OpenStreetmap in your website (wordpress): https://wordpress.org/plugins/osm/

===Arguments===

Giving Google a list of all the places you go not only help them profile your income and your habits, but it also enables them to target advertisement to you (according to where you may go) or predict your next moves. These data are invaluable for instance for insurance or transport companies to whom google may sell them. Geolocation data stored in Google servers, could potentially be used to incriminate people (you *were* at this protest, weren't you? You were not sick at home that day? etc.)

OpenStreetMap is entirely non-profit and contributive. With it people can (re)appropriate the map and the territory, and invent new uses for it (like disaster recovery in Haïti that abundantly used OSM). Inhabitants of small, isolated places can together get to much better cartography than what is of Google's financial interests. Data from OSM can be reused in each and every possible way, with no licensing conditions subjected to further changes.

==Docs and Sheets==

-'''Etherpad''' For collaborative text editing

-'''Mailbox Office''' If you have your email account at mailbox you also have a browser based office suite included:
https://mailbox.org/ihr-office/

-'''LibreOffice Online''' Use libreoffice on the website directly:
https://www.rollapp.com/libreoffice

-'''LibreOffice (offline)''' The installed program libreoffice can open and save documents directly from servers (ssh, ftp), WebDAV ans so on
Also see: https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Using_Remote_Files_1/pl

-'''Collabora Online''' Run an online office suite on your own server
Also see: https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/

===Arguments===

Using google's sheets and docs for your organizing is literally storing all your data with them complete with edit history of all collaborators.

==Browser==
Use Firefox, for example, to avoid worst Google-Spying on you. The Chrome Browser has several tracking functionalities that spy on user browsing behaviour:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#User_tracking

Google also connects data generated from the Google browser with other personal data it has gathered with other Google services.

===Helpful Browser-Plugins for Firefox===

-'''Privacy Badger''':
It prevents cookies and trackers that spy on your browsing behaviour. You can choose which trackers are allowed to track you and which ones are not. For example, it is recommended to deactivate all Trackers by Google (e.G. Google Analytics) and by Facebook (share buttons and so on)
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/privacy-badger17/

- '''HTTPS Everywhere''':
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

- '''uBlock Origin''':
https://www.ublock.org/

-'''User Agent Switcher''':
This Addon will fake your browser randomly. So after a few minutes it switches browser and operating system. At least it seams like that for websites you are presently surfing on. This makes it very hard for websites to track you according the information you give them in connection to your browser and your operating system.
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/

===Arguments===

Google's business model is based on selling YOUR personal and private data. It's called data mining and is a malicious business model!

Yet, Firefox is *far* from being perfect: Firefox without extensions is as vulnerable to data-harvesting as any other browser. Management of cookies is really cumbersome, and they are accepted by default. Also by default are accepted ads, cross-site scripting and all these features of "modern" web that makes tracking easy. + Mozilla boasts about defending people's privacy when in reality they didn't do much to change anything about this (Isn't Google even still their default search engine, after years of collecting their money?), as for their implicit acceptance of DRM in HTML5...

==Translation==

[https://deepl.com/translator Deepl translator] Works MUCH better than Google Translate, and is accessible via tor.

==Google Earth==
Marble - It's a globe like Google Earth but with multiple maps you can choose from. For example historic maps, OpenStreetmap. You can even change the globe to moon or Venus or other planets. Great piece of software!
Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_(software)

===Arguments===
-Google Earth is a closed source software
-Google Earth collects data about what people search and combines this information with the general personal-data-database

==Social Network==
Google+ is a social network by Google. It is a competitor to Facebook or LinkedIn. All of these services make money from personal user data.

-'''Diaspora''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly. Compatible with Friendica. Find servers you can sign on:
https://podupti.me/
-'''Friendica''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly. Compatible with Diaspora. Find servers you can sign on:
https://dir.friendica.social/servers
-'''Gnu-Social''' A decentralized social network. Open Source. Works perfectly.
Also see: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Social
-'''Mastodon''' A decentralized social network with an active user base spread out over many instances. Open Source. Works perfectly.
Also see: https://joinmastodon.org

Alternatives to Google+ (and Facebook):

===Arguments===