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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!
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
I did. Because it was free with another service I’m already paying for.
Do you mean a media piracy tool?
That’s what he said.
Torrenting was blocked on it anyway, as far as I could tell.
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
Whenever Google launches a product or service wait at least 5 years before even trying it to see if they’re serious, got it
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.
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.
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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ProtonMail is pretty awesome and makes it very easy to switch.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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