Terafall asks:
I like many services from Google but lately I’m concerned about my privacy since Google collects user’s data. Can anybody recommend me alternative to Google’s service?
So far I replaced
1)Google Search with Duckduckgo
2)Google Chrome with Firefox
11 Answers -
Kyem Ghosh
June 7, 2012the best alternatives for your gmail is hotmail or yahoo mail.. But my choice is for hotmail. It has a good spam filtre, I like it.
Zoho calanders can replace your google calander. It can go with Google calander, but I don’t think it can reach out with the google calander.
For maps, I can’t go away with google although I have gone through other sites where they suggest bing. Bing’s map image is much clear than gmap but it is not accurate like gmap. Gmap has served me for a long time and I’ll never go out of it…
For RSS reader, newsblur is the one I go for..
Flicker or photobucket is much better than picasa…
Msoffice docs is good and easy than google docs..
But there is no alternative for google voice, I guess..
Arun Singh
June 7, 2012there is many alternatives some of them
Google drive alternative Skydrive or dropbox
Blogger alternative wordpress or tumblr
Google map alternative Bing maps
Goolge + alternative Facebook
Picasa alternative Flickr
Alex Downs
June 7, 2012If you want to completely block out Google, avoid android, and go the route of iProducts or windows phone. Dropbox or SugarSync are good Drive alternatives. I would recommend Yahoo for email, not had the best experience with Hotmail/Live personally. Wolframalpha is also good for search engines. For Maps it’s hard to say, if all you want are directions I’d say go the route of Mapquest.
Sri Vamsy Gurram
June 7, 2012Hi Terafall,
With the Privacy policy changes, people are lookout for google alternatives. Lifehacker.com covered an article recently on this topic which is very useful. I am sure it will help you too.
here is the link….
http://lifehacker.com/5876794/going-google+free-the-best-alternatives-to-google-services-on-the-web
Kannon Y
June 7, 2012There are quite a few alternatives to most of Google’s services, but not all.
Google offers a few unique products which cannot truly be replaced with alternatives. For example, there’s no real alternative to Google Voice, although there are half measures that one may choose to take using such services as the Asterisk PBX. Unfortunately, configuring a PBX can take a great deal of effort, cost and know-how.
My favorite alternative to Google Reader is JustReader on Android and RSSOwl on the desktop OSes.
You may find interest in this list of free IMAP or POP alternatives to Gmail. In my opinion, the only mail programs worth using are offline (Thunderbird) combined with a free e-mail service.
Alan Wade
June 7, 2012Here is a list of alternatives with writeups:
http://lifehacker.com/5876794/going-google+free-the-best-alternatives-to-google-services-on-the-web
Susendeep Dutta
June 7, 2012You can have a look at the links below to know that besides switching away from Google products,how can you also remove your data from it.
Google Alternatives: How To Pull Yourself Out Of That G-hole -
http://www.webpronews.com/google-apps-alternatives-how-to-pull-yourself-out-of-that-g-hole-2012-03
How To: Escape From Google’s Clutches, Once and For All -
http://gizmodo.com/5879015/how-to-escape-from-googles-clutches-once-and-for-all
GamE
June 7, 2012Web Search
Yahoo! Search
Bing
Ask.com
Image Search
Flickr
Yahoo! Image Search
Bing Images
Ask.com Image Search
Video Search
Truveo
Blinkx
Yahoo! Video Search
Bing Videos
Ask.com Video Search
Maps
MapQuest
Yahoo! Maps
Bing Maps – Bird’s eye view is awesome 8)
Ask.com Maps uses Bing Maps.
News
- Too many to list but here are a few
popurls
Digg
Yahoo! News
Bing News
Ask.com News
Shopping
PriceGrabber
Amazon
eBay
Yahoo! Shopping
Bing Shopping
Ask.com Shopping uses Pronto.
Gmail
Zoho Mail
Yahoo! Mail doesn’t offer for free POP access and forces you to view their news tab first, so I don’t recommend it. However, you probably have one just to use some of their other services.
Books
- Book search one area where Google doesn’t have real competition. The following come close.
BookFinder
Amazon Books
Finance
Yahoo! Finance
Fool.com
Translate
Yahoo! Babel Fish
Scholar – Google doesn’t have competition for searching scholarly papers.
Blog Search
Technorati
YouTube
- To be honest I haven’t tried these out, I really only use YouTube for online tutorials.
Seesmic
Hulu
VideoSurf
Dailymotion
Vimeo
Metacafe
Calendar
Zoho Calendar
Photos (Picasa)
Flickr
Zooomr
Documents
Zoho has replacements for all of Google Docs (documents, spreadsheets, presentations) and much more. But not only that you can log in via OpenID with one click from different accounts, including your Gmail account.
Google Reader
Bloglines
Sites
Weebly
Chrome
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Blogger
WordPress.com
Google Notebook
Evernote
Zoho Notebook
Google Earth
NASA World Wind
SketchUp
MoI
Blender
Google Talk
Meebo
Adsense
ClickBank
Chitika
Adwords
Microsoft adCenter
Yahoo! Search Marketing
Google Analytics
Clicky
Alan Trinder
June 8, 2012I find it difficult to move from Google, the Microsoft alternatives I find just ignore my settings, they do things like chose the language they will send me mail in based on my location. Flickr is OK and I use the paid version but I am thinking of moving to Picasa as i need it for some things.
Maps are very important to me and nothing comes close to Google. I have owned my house for 5 years but it only exists on Google.
So the only one I am seriously considering is Firefox and that is because of the problems with adobe crashing on chrome.
Are Google any more sinister than the others? unlikely I think
Agreed, I doubt that Google is more ‘evil’ than the others. They’ve shown the most open-ness out of all the rest.
June 8, 2012“We are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act, and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”
- Eric Schmidt, Google CEO
I say stop tracking me in the first place, I am an adult I don’t need daddy watching everything I do its none of their business.
I don’t want third party websites rummaging through my privet business, Google is selling your information to them.
If I pirate videos and software I go to jail, Google sells my information and they get an award? My God!
If your corporate your Evil.
We need and have alternatives, and should use them.
If we stop using Google products and voice our opinions maybe they will get the message and give us our privacy.
June 9, 2012Oron
June 8, 2012Terafall, as you can see from other responses, there are many many alternatives. However it really depends on what products and services you use, and what privacy concerns you have. I’m not sure, for example, that moving from GMail to Yahoo or Hotmail will improve your privacy status.
I suggest you make a list of the specific services and products you want to replace, and we’ll be able to give you a more focused answer.
John Cal
June 9, 2012Google is EVIL!!
But so are all corporations. I agree I do not want to be tracked.
I switched to Duckduckgo.com too and I am looking for a different mail server but I am guessing Hotmail and yahoo mail are going to be same when it comes to tracking you.
I wish Ubuntu would come out with some kind of free mail server. “JohnC@ubuntumail.com” lol
I would add to your Firefox:
BetterPrivacy, This will allow you to delete Flash Cookies that can track you.
Cookie Whitelist, this blocks all cookies until you give that website permission.
Ghostery this blocks trackers and cookies
Flashblock, it will prevent any flash media from loading unless you click it.