SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Trying to do without Google to see how hard it can be is a way to understand just how much Google's tentacles are intertwined in everyday's life
As part of an experiment to live without the tech giants, I'm cutting Google from my life both by abandoning its products and by preventing myself, technologically, from interacting with the company in any way.
Engineer Dhruv Mehrotra built a virtual private network, or VPN, for me that prevents my phone, computers, and smart devices from communicating with the 8,699,648 IP addresses controlled by Google... Because I'm blocking Google with Dhruv's VPN, I have to find replacements for all the useful services Google provides and without which my life would largely cease to function:
- I migrate my browser bookmarks over to Firefox (made by Mozilla).
- I change the default search engine on Firefox and my iPhone from Google—a privilege for which Google reportedly pays Apple up to $13 billion per year—to privacy-respecting DuckDuckGo, a search engine that also makes money off ads but doesn't keep track of users' searches.
- I download Apple Maps and the Mapquest app to my phone. I hear Apple Maps is better than it used to be, and damn, Mapquest still lives! I don't think I've used that since the 90s/a.k.a. the pre-smartphone age, back when I had to print directions for use in my car.
- I switch to Apple's calendar app.
- I create new email addresses on Protonmail and Riseup.net (for work and personal email, respectively) and direct people to them via autoreplies in Gmail. Lifehack: The easiest way to get to inbox zero is to start a brand new inbox.
...
This experiment is not just about boycotting Google products. I'm also preventing my devices from interacting with Google in invisible or background ways, and that makes for some big challenges.
---- continue after the break ---
One morning, I have a meeting downtown. I leave my apartment with enough time to get there via Uber, but when I open the app, it won't work. Same thing with Lyft. It turns out they're both dependent on Google Maps such that I can't even enter my destination while blocking Google. [and late for the meeting]...
Google is a behemoth when it comes to maps. According to various surveys, the vast majority of consumers—up to 77 per cent—use Google Maps to navigate the world.
...
"Your smart home pings Google at the same time every hour in order to determine whether or not it's connected to the internet," Dhruv tells me. "Which is funny to me because these devices' engineers decided to determine connectivity to the entire internet based on the uptime of a single company. It's a good metaphor for how far the internet has strayed from its original promise to decentralize control."
...
Most of the websites I visit have frustratingly long load times because so many of them rely on resources from Google and get confused when my computer won't let them talk to the company's servers. On Airbnb, photos won't load. New York Times articles won't appear until the site has tried (and failed) to load Google Analytics, Google Pay, Google News, Google ads, and a Doubleclick tracker.
As I sit staring at my screen and drumming my fingers, I get flashbacks to computing via dial-up in the '90s, when I used to read a book while waiting for websites to open.
...
Mere hours into the first day of the Google block, my devices have tried to reach Google's servers more often than the 15,000 times they tried to ping Facebook's the entire week before. By the end of the week, my devices have tried to communicate with Google's servers over 100,000 times, comparable to Amazon, at 293,000 times during its block. Most of Google's pings seem to be in the form of trackers, ads, and resources built into websites.
...
To figure out why Dropbox isn't working, I look at the HTML of its home page — the otherwise invisible code that makes up the website — and discover Google is mentioned dozens of times. Dropbox even links out to Google's privacy policy from its own homepage, because it uses Google to make sure a web visitor is a real person. Because I'm blocking Google, Dropbox thinks I'm not a real person and won't let me sign in.I am trying to do research for a story that will take me to South Africa and need to see street-level views of buildings there. I realise I don't know how else to do that without Google Maps' Street View, so the research has to wait.
...
And one day, blocking Google could be even harder. With Footpath Labs, a product from the company to "smarten up" urban areas, Google's trackers will extend into the real world, tracking not just how we move around the web but how we move around our cities. That would lead to tracking that Dhruv and I might not be able to stop.
See also Google Launches "Sidewalk Labs" Spinoff Company
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Appalbarry on Wednesday January 30 2019, @11:59PM (14 children)
The great thing about being absorbed into the Googleplex (or Apple for that matter) is that your data, preferences, history, and such follow you to whatever device you use. In the days of desktop computers that wasn't an issue, but if you're moving between desktop, laptop, and phone, it's pretty much essential.
On the other hand Google's products seem to be on an endless downhill slide in terms of usability. I dread every new iteration of Gmail, and their contact system really lacks. And don't even start on the mess that is Android. Or products like G+ that are discontinued with little or no warning.
I thought that if I could get the connectedness of Google with some other products I could be gone immediately. Now it appears I may be wrong.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31 2019, @12:22AM (11 children)
How is this essential? I don't link up any of my devices to each other and it is fine...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Thursday January 31 2019, @12:28AM (10 children)
Especially my phone -- I consider my phone a poisoned device and do my very best to keep it completely isolated from my computers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31 2019, @12:51AM (1 child)
wrap it tightly in foil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31 2019, @01:44PM
But the foil makes sparks in the microwave.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31 2019, @01:30AM (5 children)
Yes. Also, I do use my phone for 2fa so would really prefer not to log into any services from it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Apparition on Thursday January 31 2019, @02:02AM (4 children)
Using a mobile spy device for 2FA isn't a great idea. Yubikey or GTFO.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31 2019, @02:52AM (3 children)
It is still way better than no 2fa at all.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31 2019, @03:10AM (2 children)
Actually, no. You are adding a compromised link into the chain. That is not better by definition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31 2019, @03:45AM
The same threat needs to compromise both the pc and the phone rather than just one. How is that not more difficult?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday January 31 2019, @08:25AM
Not worse either. You can think 1fa as a particular case of 2fa in which one of the two factors is an 'allow all' / 'fully compromised'.
It's worse only if the weak link is used alone in some contexts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Thursday January 31 2019, @02:05AM (1 child)
What is this magical thinking? "I don't want to hook the phone to the PC, because google owns the phone, so instead I'll run all the google junk on my PC and tell it to sync."
I really just can't even.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 31 2019, @02:52AM
Just a note -
You need not synch that phone to recieve a text message for 2FA. Don't need any apps, don't even need to sign into any Google account.
In fact, I bought a burner phone which immediately connected to Google and asked you to sign into your Google account upon activation. I did NOT sign in. Instead, I created a new account, fed it poisoned information, then never used that account for anything at all. Didn't browse the web, certainly did not use the phone to sign into any accounts that I have online. Had I put the phone number onto the list of phones to which 2FA codes should be sent, that would have connected the accounts, but I never used it for that.
Now that I think about it, I believe there are seven different Google accounts that are "dead" now. I've entirely forgotten the login credentials I used for them.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Thursday January 31 2019, @02:03AM (1 child)
Which means not through google.
It's 2019. Why can't I just carry around a my ~/ on an encrypted flash drive and connect it to whatever I need to work on?!?!
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday January 31 2019, @04:15PM
You can usually do that anyway. So long as you have access to a free USB port and the computer's configured to boot from an external device. Otherwise, most people just use their own device for mobile computing. Since, you can't rely on what someone else might have.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"