I started to enumerate the Google apps that I use(d) and noticed that my vision had become a tunnel vision making Google the main name that stood out. Mail, Contact, Calendar, Search, Photo albums, Docs, ...
Could I do with less Google for my day to day stuff? I am not planning to ban Google only because it is Google. They have a very good suite of products and many of my friends use it. I do like Google Docs and Google Groups for instance.
But what Google applications could I replace by non-Google ones and not suffer a loss of functionality?
GMail for instance. I made an AOL account and migrated my Google Contacts. This works fine for me. As I can connect through IMAP - like I do for GMail - AOL/AIM has now replaced Gmail.
The chat feature of GMail has been replaced with AIM IM in Pidgin.
The Google Calendar - that I do not share - has now become the AIM Calendar
Googles Search Engine is now https://ixquick.com/
I now use http://jalbum.net/ to share my pictures instead of Picassa.
It is not much and so far it has been a fun exploration to look for Google alternatives. Moreover I actually like that kind diversity instead of the Google monoculture.
2 reactions:
still, you're shifting the management of your personal information from one company to another. Wouldn't it be great if you could manage your own? It's possible to do that but requires a bit of setup. Tonido is something you might look at though:
http://tonido.com/
@devnet,
it has nothing to do with 'personal information' laying for grabs within another companies vaults. I don't think that after more that 12 years on the net, they don't know who I am and what I do. :-)
Google is becoming just as 'evident' for webbased apps as Microsoft is for Operating Systems, or like the name Ubuntu stands for Linux in peoples minds.
There are alternatives and I just wanted to see if some things could be accomplished without shopping at Google.
OTOH your suggestion to have a peek at Tonido is nice. I'll have a look at it. Thanks for the tip.
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