this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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Privacy

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

would you mind if i translate this to my language and use it as a poster?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

korean. I might have to change a few things.. I'll be running some small local campaign at work about degoogling/free software etc and there are surprisingly very few good graphical contents I could find and this looks great.

I'll get back to you if I actually get to use this. Thanks :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Any alternatives for Google Tasks?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Great list so far! I'd also like to recommend KSuite. They have email services and KDrive for storage.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I think I'm all set now,...but I will check this out and potentially add it to the website links page!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Not listing Organic Maps is a travesty. Possibly mention Immich, though I see you're going more for SaaS and not really self hosted

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yes, this is definitely more for beginners (like myself. :) I will check out Organic Maps and maybe add them in, thanks!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

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

https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/tts/apk-engine.html

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

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

https://sopuli.xyz/c/CoMaps

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

Organic Maps and OpenStreetMap should be listed as map alternatives. Mullvad Leta is a recently popular private search engine.

Google isn't inherently bad; they are bad for privacy but good for security. For that reason, Chromium-based browsers such as Vanadium, Trivalent, or Brave Browser are still good alternatives to Google Chrome even though Chromium (which is the open source base for Chromium-based browsers) is developed by Google.

Also: the "T" in PeerTube should be capitalized.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thank you, thank you, thank you! If there was one browser from my list you'd replace with Vanadium, which would it be?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Epic, only because I've never heard of it so it probably isn't recommended often. I should note that Vanadium is only available on Android and is very difficult to install if you don't use GrapheneOS. Trivalent is only available for a small subset of Linux distros (and comes preinstalled on secureblue). Brave Browser is cross-platform and recommended by GrapheneOS as an alternative to Vanadium if you want specific features Vanadium lacks.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

nah With all respect, as a proton user, proton docs sucks ass. but that may change in the future

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Maybe after this!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Open source licensing, offline-only usability, and self-hostable are the only important criteria to me, and they are not listed here.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

It's contacts syncing that I'm stuck on. Hoping to do something with a box running OMV but I've never come across anything so simple as Google Contacts 😔

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Isn't Grayjay a frontend for YouTube?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Aha! Yes, it is. Any suggestions for non-YouTube video platforms?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Maybe Peertube or Odyssey.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Nextcloud replaces Photo's, Drive and docs.

And more

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Oh, perfect!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Since you included decentralized solutions like Peertube, maybe add SearXNG instances for searches ?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

As a software dev... im still too stupid to use searxng. Guess its more of a "If its not that easy I wont go further learning it".

Maybe it was a lot of features missing that I missed from Duckduckgo.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

OK, I'm glad it's not just me. :D

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SearXNG#Instances

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

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!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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+.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thanks, I'll check out Magic Earth!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

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.

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