I created an infographic of privacy-forward alternatives to Google products…and would love your feedback.
Is it easy to use? Enough white space? Intuitive? Sharable? Is there anything I’m missing?
The infographic image in this post is NOT clickable. The link above will give you a downloadable PDF with working hyperlinks.
Re: the legend, “easy set-up/use” means either that this is a big part of the alternative product’s branding, or I’ve used it myself and found it easy.
would you mind if i translate this to my language and use it as a poster?
What’s your language? Would the products.links still make sense to readers of this new version?
In any case, it’s fine with me as long as you’re not making. monetary profit from the poster. Also, will you please share a copy I can add to my website?
Also, I made a poster of a similar infographic I created several years ago when I owned a content studio…I forgot all about that and think I may do it for the English version as well! I can sell it at cost. A friend also suggested I turn it into a mouse pad.
Any alternatives for Google Tasks?
Ooh, good question! It looks like Nextcloud has a tasks app. I can’t fit every product on the infographic, but may add this to the links website page.
Great list so far! I’d also like to recommend KSuite. They have email services and KDrive for storage.
I think I’m all set now,…but I will check this out and potentially add it to the website links page!
nah With all respect, as a proton user, proton docs sucks ass. but that may change in the future
Open source licensing, offline-only usability, and self-hostable are the only important criteria to me, and they are not listed here.
Yes, I’d say this is for beginners—say, my mom—who are heavily in the Google ecosystem and don’t know how to get out. Maybe I should change the focus away from privacy, since Google has many other issues besides privacy that made me leave.
Since you included decentralized solutions like Peertube, maybe add SearXNG instances for searches ?
Hmm…Peertube was so easy for me to search and use—I think a lot of people wouldn’t even know it’s decentralized—but the SearXNG website is much more complicated. I’m looking for non-Google products that are easy for the average, non-tech person. Think SearXNG would work?
All they need to know is basically “Just pick an instance close to you and be done, and if it ever stops working well just pick another”, which is the same thing as when creating an account on the Fediverse except that instances come and go a lot more.
So it would depends entirely on whether they can find the list of public instances easily… which is admittedly a problem 😅
You’re right about the website, there is a link to the list of public instances on https://docs.searxng.org/ but it’s a bit drowned amidst all the other stuff. If I was a regular user I would take one look at the website and run away really fast.
The Wikipedia page on SearXNG does link it, in the section about instances, but I’m not sure how many people would check the wikipedia page rather than the website
Thanks! I can’t imagine even explaining to my mom what an instance is, much less how to use one. Maybe the situation will change when more and more people start joining these sites. But I will list SearXNG on the links page!
In the map area, I have been trying all of the proposed alternatives but ended up using Magic Earth as my main alternative on Android. For walking, I use OsmAnd+.
Thanks, I’ll check out Magic Earth!
Magic Earth is great, but unfortunately, it isn’t open source. I’ve been using Mapy and it’s far from prefect, but I think it’s heading in the right direction.
Mapy Interesting! I can’t get it to give me directions from one (U.S. residence to another), but I’ll keep an eye on it.
Not listing Organic Maps is a travesty. Possibly mention Immich, though I see you’re going more for SaaS and not really self hosted
Yes, this is definitely more for beginners (like myself. :) I will check out Organic Maps and maybe add them in, thanks!
If you try Organic Maps yourself, try using Sherpa Onnx TTS with it. It’s a great open source match and really makes the experience of navigation top tier
Thanks!
Disregard my OM suggestion. I just became aware of recent drama within It’s community and there looks to be a fork coming soon.
https://openletter.earth/open-letter-to-organic-maps-shareholders-a0bf770c
Wow, these seems to be controversy over a lot of privacy-based alternatives! I already added OM to the infographic but am happy to replace it (until the new fork is ready) with a different easy-to-use U.S., privacy-forward map.
Y’all should probably stop mentioning proton
As someone who wants to drop Proton VPN and has stopped using their mail in favor of mailbox.org, I think we should still mention them, just with an asterisk. People deserve to make their own choice about if they wish to support him or not. At least it’s non-profit now.
I really wanna stop using the VPN and go to Mullvad (since they’ve proved they have no logs), but they don’t offer port forwarding anymore, and the only other option is AirVPN, which had a server seizure in 2015 that they didn’t want to disclose until like 2023… (gag order?)
I don’t torrent often, but I do occasionally…
How is mailbox? I just recently got proton set up with my custom domain and I kind of like it to be honest and their app is nice too.
ETA: I thought you meant how do I like the Proton mailbox@! :D
I like it. The only issue for me is that the search is slow, but that’s because they have to compile all your data first…as opposed to Gmail, which already and always has access.
Another plus of Proton Mail is their masked email app. When I go to a site that asks me to enter an email, the app can create a masked email for me on the fly.
I don’t do anything fancy, just use the light version with the email I made, and use anonaddy to alias for free. I use Thunderbird as a client.
It works, although the web app is kinda slow. If you enable MFA Tokens, instead of the password you made, you now type a PIN + TOTP code to login, which is dumb (They might be changing it soon). I know some have pointed out a security issue about flags or smth, specifically about how people can spoof your email and send messages as you. This comment specifically shows what tests failed and passed.
It’s cheap (Light plan is ~1€ per month) and allows easy one click enabling of PGP for webmail and encrypted sending (to mailbox.org users) but if you’re a pro you can do expert/customizable settings for those instead.
I just wanted something that was relatively private and secure, and will work with Thunderbird.
Maybe consider Posteo too, which has another lengthy post of Privacy.guides forums about whether it’s good or not.
Honestly, maybe I would move to Posteo due to the DMARC policy and MFA being iffy on Mailbox, but we’ll see. I use aliases to avoid too much spam anyway.
