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Add it to the pile.
Tbh at least this one makes sense, who is going to use a VPN (an internet privacy tool) from Google?
My purpose for a VPN is more about connecting to WiFi APs I don’t control. Google VPN worked just fine for that.
These days you don’t get much extra benefit on a VPN over TLS which you get on 99% of websites.
I disagree here, as an American using a Swiss exit node (most compliant) websites are forced to allow a much higher degree of privacy to comply with the laws there.
While I block all third party advertising and tracking anyway, it’s incredibly satisfying seeing websites explicitly list out everything they’re tracking about you and having that “reject all” button.
who is going to use a VPN (an internet privacy tool) from Google?
Exactly. That would be like using a web browser made by Google so they have direct access to your internet browsing history. Ridiculous!
I did. Because it was free with another service I’m already paying for.
when traveling Communist countries in Asia with google fi it was really nice to have
but then they revoked my data service while charging me the same amount every month, because they said I’m traveling too much.
How long did it take for them to turn it off?
two years I think. they told me I need to go to the United States at least once a year.
Seems entirely reasonable to me, depending on the country it costs them extra to route your calls overseas to another network.
Fi makes it pretty clear that use outside the US is meant to be temporary (unless you’re on military duty overseas). The person you replied to got a really long run and honestly has no cause for complaint.
I wish they would at least give me a discount for the service without the data.
A better solution might be to not travel to communist countries.
yeah you should stay home
in micronations
My sister. No fucking idea why
Yeah right? I have a VPN to prevent Google (amongst many others) from having too much of my data.
Googles can have a little bit of my data, as a treat
Other than source IP address, I don’t see how does that prevent Google from having your data.
I completely block all Google access via DNS blocklists (I realize it’s not 100% bulletproof as you could get around the block by just knowing the IP address). Because their tracking is including in basically every app and website I think this is the only effective way to stop tracking.
Using a VPN might make you more anonymous in other ways, but that alone isn’t going to stop anything from building a profile on you.
People who live in countries with internet censorship?
Google VPN is/was only available in select countries.
https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/7582172
There are 2 lists of countries applicable here. The list of countries where the VPN is included with a Google One subscription and the list where you could use the VPN while traveling.
You’ll notice that countries known for internet censorship are missing from both lists, so using it for that purpose wouldn’t work at all.
Oh wow, it’s useless
Do you mean a media piracy tool?
That’s what he said.
Torrenting was blocked on it anyway, as far as I could tell.
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I had to help out a client this week because this migration broke their website. Turns out that Squarespace’s omain forwarding feature drops query params. This brokes thousands of links. Fun times.
Oh yikes. I would’ve recommended Gandi but they were bought out too. Seems like no one wants to play the registrar game anymore.
I’ve heard lots of recommendations for Porkbun. Personally, I have mine with Cloudflare because they’re cheap.
Moved to porkbun because they added DDNS support to OPNsense for porkbun
I moved to porkbun after Google domains shut down, very happy with the service so far.
With your recommendation and that of the others below it, I might give them a shot. I’ve been using Cloudflare in the meantime but don’t really need their other services anymore.
Edit: Hoping they support DNSSEC. I just woke up so I’m too lazy to look that up but I’ll get there.
For total clarity, I’ve never used Porkbun so I can’t vouch. But I like what I see on their website.
Namecheap and clouflare are decent, though you have to use cloudflare’s DNS hosting if you go with them.
Last I used Namecheap they still didn’t support Let’s Encrypt and were charging for DV TLS certs. Noped right back out.
The registrar doesn’t have anything to do with TLS. I use LetsEncrypt on my domains through NameCheap, no problems whatsoever. I get my hosting elsewhere (previously Vultr, currently Hetzner).
A company’s business practices are relevant regardless of which of their services you’re subscribing to.
I care if they have poor privacy policies or something in features I don’t use as that can indicate future impact on features I do use, but I don’t care if they have limited product offerings generally. So to me, it’s completely irrelevant.
You should probably separate your hosting from your registrar anyway so you can switch one without impacting the other. I did just that when I bailed on Vultr due to their unprofessional (IMO) handling of a TOS update (blocked access to my account, so I couldn’t close my account w/o accepting the terms), but I didn’t have to change my registrar and all that, I just spun up an instance at another host and redirected DNS entries. I also separated my DNS mappings from my domain registrar (they’re combined now @ cloudflare, which is a little unfortunate).
What happened to Gandi?
They ticked off a lot of customers by eliminating included email. Their email product was however fantastic and can be worth the price; while I’ve switched to Proton one thing I miss is the very accurate Gandi spam headers and the ease of writing mail filters.
So far the new owner hasn’t worsened things (from my view) but my experience is that whenever one company buys another, the purchased company’s products go to hell pretty fast.
Yeah I’m in the same boat. I haven’t used squarespace and I have no idea if I should stay with them.
They are not primarily a domain registrar, they are a website builder SaaS. So they will probably try to sell you on that product when you renew, but many registrars will try to upsell you, so that’s not uncommon. If you are planning to transfer away, I can certainly recommend Namecheap, I’ve used them for many years without issue
Whenever Google launches a product or service wait at least 5 years before even trying it to see if they’re serious, got it
It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy at that point. Like Netflix with new shows.
Netflix: here’s this new show
People: yeah you guys always cancel stuff after the first season or two, I’m not gonna get invested in something that will just get canceled
Netflix: man, these viewership numbers are low. CANCELED!
At this point, I’m surprised anybody (including myself) still buys/uses Google services, given how risky it is that you’ll become dependent on them and then they kill off the product(s). I really need to get off my ass and switch mail providers.
Google mail is extremely unlikely to get shut down.
But anyway, Proton Mail allows importing e-mails from Google.
grumbles about inbox by gmail
Inbox was absolutely stellar and I can’t believe they got rid of it.
“don’t worry the inbox by gmail features will be moved into gmail shortly”
Most people will use whatever the default on their device is. Most phones that aren’t iPhones come with Google apps and services set as default.
The only Google services I still use are YouTube and in rare cases Google Maps. But if YouTube continues to enshittify I’ll stop using that. I’ve been using Google Maps mainly to get information about places to eat/sleep in cities, not really for navigation.
If there wernt better YouTube frontends id probably stop using it altogether too. The base site is horrible and idk how anyone could possibly enjoy using it.
I think that YT should open up APIs to make a better frontend for third party apps, like what Reddit had, at least to premium users.
They would never do something like that without government intervention.
So maybe EU can get them moving one day.
I’ve found Grayjay helps me hate YouTube less
There was a time when the Google apps just worked, the applications were optimised for UX. Maybe I’ve just only noticed it now but the directions (and assistant in general) aren’t as useful, reliable, and filled with sponsored stuff.
what do you use for navigation and how does it compare?
Google Maps was a great app and service, it had decent navigation and always a lot of information on a lot of places. Nowadays it’s cluttered with features including a “news feed” with social network-like posts made by people on places in the area.
On iOS devices I can highly recommend Apple Maps nowadays. They completely overhauled their maps a few years ago and I got great results navigating with it. The app isn’t bloated, it’s fast, the map material looks great and their version of Street View is a lot more sophisticated.
For strictly navigating you can also check out TomTom AmiGO. It’s a free variant of TomTom’s navigational system. I wouldn’t really use it outside of car navigation though.
I used to use Sygic a few years back, but they switched to a subscription model and keep nagging existing “lifetime” buyers to subscribe.
Apple Maps also straight up gives objectively better audio guidance (e.g. “move to the right lane to turn right at the next light” vs “turn right in 300 feet”).
Additionally the “directions” portion of the screen has large font and is clearly visible compared to Google’s tiny font on a window the size of 10% of the screen to show you more ads. (Yes, the reason some business appear at all zoom levels while others only pop up at street level is ads)
What a fall from grace. I remember when Apple Maps would direct people to drive through halfway built overpasses with 500 feet of open air at the end because it’s not built yet.
Shameless plug for organic maps
I actually have it installed. Great maps app, but it doesn’t have turn-by-turn navigation as far as I’m aware.
Organic maps has turn by turn but does not route based on traffic.
For navigation, Magic Earth is based on OSM too, and has traffic available as a map layer. Not sure how good it works or where the (live?) data is coming from, but it’s there.
I hate sygic for this, i bought lifetime för my part of World, and now it mails me every day to get subscription. never i will get it, every time i need it i will use cracked one. It was one of the good company, but now its just a nag.
What do you use for navigation?
Hoping they answer. I try to use OSMAnd for navigation but it doesn’t know where things are
I can recommend Proton.
I use them but honestly having to run the bridge to use a normal email client has me pretty nonplused. I wish they’d support S/MIME too; it seems like all email is just encrypted on delivery and at least S/MIME would give you something end-to-end encrypted.
Yeah. I don’t mind that this is a paid feature, but installing the bridge on every device is cumbersome.
I’ve been trying to install Hydroxide as I run Tailscale on everything and don’t mind decrypting on one device then having all the others accessing IMAP/SMTP through the WireGuard tunnel set up by Tailscale, but I’ve only run into roadblocks with it (captchas).
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I’m surprised anyone uses Google services considering how they infiltrate your privacy.
A Google VPN is as private to me as giving a six year old a cardboard box and asking them but to look inside.
Google has really masterfully re-defined privacy to mean letting them look after all your private stuff.
Do you honestly believe that there is a mail service out there that does not record data on you?
Protonmail is encrypted and they literally cannot decrypt to record your data.
What is in your email isn’t the only data that sending one can generate. There’s the IP address where it was sent from and where it’s going, there’s the time of day it was sent, there’s a load of metadata attached they can read and glean information about you and your recipient. And there’s advertisement opportunities in the interface that many services use to collect info on you. There are so many ways to collect data on you through your interactions online it’s not even funny.
But yeah, keep pretending like you’ve found the only mail service that doesn’t collect any data on you at all if it helps you cope.
Maybe the services that don’t need to sell your data to be in the black.
Carrier pigeons.
I’m just now unravelling the last of the truly important bits of my life that are in their clutches, for that and other reasons.
Two phone numbers, a handful of documents I’ve shared over the years that probably don’t matter anyway, and a couple email addresses that I’ve been actively monitoring for months for anything important, and searches my password mgr for….
I should be free by 1 July at the outside, possibly a few days early if I don’t delay the actual deletion process. Feels fuckin great.
ProtonMail is pretty awesome and makes it very easy to switch.
I would recommend Fastmail. They have a fantastic app that I prefer over the iOS mail app.
The only reason I have a google account in the first place is android. You cannot use the fucking play store without one.
aurora store.
I know now but what was I to do when I was 13 and got my first phone and that was the requirement to use the play store
Google: people weren’t using it.
The People: you cancel literally everything you create, so why should we bother?
Remember when people were using allo and Google play music? Google doesn’t.
I loved Allo. I was really depressed to have to use Whatsapp after Google cancelled it. And one of my favorite things to do was use my Google rewards points to buy music.
And they wonder why no one invests time and interest in any of their new “experimental” products.
Allo didn’t ever make sense. What about Hangouts. Hangouts worked with imessage. And also works better than allo did And also works better than aloe did at any pointat any point.
Whats crazy is Hangouts is still going (in the form of Chat and Meet). I’ve had the same group chat going with a few buddies on it for years and years now. And it is still better than anything outside of Signal in my opinion for messaging.
hangouts just became notes eventually
edit: for me
Same for Google Inbox.
I’m legit still pissed off about that one
Google’s business model also doesn’t really fit to what VPN customers are looking for. They hardly would implement a zero log policy, for example.
Google is what the Fox network was in the 90s and 2000s.
Let the wind blow high, let the wind blow low
Google One was a pretty sweet deal on paper.
But unfortunately, Google’s superpower of making really cool things and then killing it off continues to exist.
half-arsing a product, people are hesitant to try it, due to other killed off products, google kills product. repeat
And the more they kill the more the reputation grows
Like when stadia was announced my friends and I took bets on how long it would last or if any stadia exclusive games would ever get to launch
Ironically, if Google were upfront about how it would handle the shutdown, it likely would have increased consumer confidence enough that Stadia may not have needed to be shutdown.
Honestly yeah that probably would have been the case
But if they were open about it then it probably would have gone over poorly with the shareholders and stock value by “openly planning to fail”
Everyone already anticipates new Google services to fail. Expecting people to spend hundreds of dollars on content that is locked to a service run by a company that is known for canceling services after a couple of years was always going to fail.
Stadia was essentially just a demo of Google’s cloud capabilities. Even if Stadia was a massive success, it would still be a drop in the bucket compared to Google’s ad revenue and have no impact on stock price.
fuck google
I still don’t understand how Google thought it had a chance at success. They had the same model as Onlive had 10 years prior. It ended up failing for much the same reasons.
Product launches are the vehicle for attaining promotions at Google, allegedly. Maintenance does not get similarly rewarded, nor does launching projects and having them live on to actually be successful.
When the launcher got promoted and moved on, they have to figure out whether to keep the thing around, and the answer is generally going to be no since few things can really compete with the infinite money glitch that is search ads.
And guess what , when I asked what is replacing VPN as part of services, they say they don’t know and tried to move me over to 20 eur a month plan. So reducing the service and staying same prices …
I get on my VPN to provide less data to Google. Routing my traffic through an advertising company always felt like a bad idea to me.
I’ve had like three primary email accounts since the dawn of the popular internet in the 90’s
The first was Hotmail because that was a big deal at the time.
The second was google because the interface was slick and it came with (what was at the time) a lot of free storage.
The third is protonmail specifically because after decade+ on Google I realized they pretty much have the keys to the kingdom on my life’s data. All my personal relationships and business being filtered through their inbox for a long-ass time. Just because they “know me” inside out for a significant part of my life doesn’t mean I gotta just keep feeding them data indefinitely.
How you finding protonmail compared to Gmail? The thing I like about Gmail is I can find shit in my endless history…I also love the calendar integration.
Protonmail is fine for searching old emails and they have their own calendar integration. I self host calDAV for my own calendar so I cannot comment on protonmail’s other cloud services but I’m happy enough with their email service that I subscribe yearly for it.
That’s the downside of not getting data mined, you need to pay for these services. Setting up a private cloud is not impossible for a derp like me but a private email server is definitely well beyond my skillset so that’s something I pay for.
Even having done professional mail hosting for years at one point in my sysadmin career, I still think paid email hosting is worth it even for those with the skills to stand it up themselves, at least for any inbox that might see actual important communication.
The reliable infrastructure, and the reputation management demands on a self-hosters time are a tough sell, when the cost to make it someone else’s problem is comparatively low. :D
Who would use that shite?
Or are you hiring VPN and MITM combo here?
Google: trust us, we can’t see your VPN traffic. Most users: No.
But how am I going to prevent someone from hacking my Google Glass if I click the wrong link in a Google Group now?!
So no one spoke up or no one listened to guy who said “this is a bad idea, no one really trusts us”
May as well call it “Google Drive Storage Plans” again then? Aside from some dysfunctional AI features that’s pretty much the only thing you get, no?
The photo ml stuff is nice but you basically have it correct.
RIP to the only VPN that reliably let you watch streaming services overseas.
Here’s to enabling the OpenVPN / Wireguard feature on your router.
If you don’t care about “moving your virtual location” using vpns, check your router settings, you might just find an option to enable a VPN server. It’ll be fast, and guess what… It’s free
Also did I mention that you control the data flowing trough it
calyx vpn is free, proton vpn is free with a subscription.
Nordvpn is free with a yearly fee.
fuck im bad at spelled sometimes
In Soviet Russia, GoogleOne VPN shut down you!
Didn’t they just come out with that recently?
They here for a good time, nadda long time
Surprised?
It’s like the first sentence, dude.
The VPN was unveiled in October of 2020
I don’t even think that’s right. It was a service you got for free for buying a pixel before they moved it to Google one.
According to the article “Pixel VPN by Google” is different. I really don’t care to try and keep track though, so who knows.
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