I’ve been meaning to minimize Google’s ability to track me and my visitors for quite a while now, but this post about Google+ which I stumbled across recently came as an appropriately timed reminder.
I’d like to announce that every site I remember running (it’s conceivable I forgot ones on free hosting similar to GitHub Pages) is now free of Google Libraries API and Google Analytics (I use a private Piwik install for stats now and I can assure you I’ve dialed data retention way down). I’ve never had a need to use reCAPTCHA even back when they weren’t owned by Google.
I still need to find alternatives to FeedBurner, FriendFeed (owned by Facebook), and Google Docs and find time to replace GMail and Google Talk with stuff I host myself, but it’s a good start.
(You never really realize how much Google knows about you until you start migrating yourself off them)
In the interest of full disclosure, here’s an up-to-date list of all 3rd-party dependencies in my sites which could theoretically be reworked for abuse:
- blog.ssokolow.com
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- ProjectWonderful Ad
- FriendFeed sidebar widget
- Flattr buttons (Live counts require external requests)
- FeedBurner feed analytics
- Vanished FanFic Archive
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- Fic downloads are currently served separately from Dropbox.com
- FeedBurner feed analytics
- GitHub Pages: QuickTile
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- Ohloh Button
- Flattr button
- GitHub Pages: The Procrastinator’s Timeclock
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- Ohloh Button
- Gender-Bending Index
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- FeedBurner feed analytics
- Fanfiction Story Ideas
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- FeedBurner feed analytics
This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Hi Stephan,
I’m on the same path as you, regarding moving everything away from Google.
As part of that process, I’ve been using the open-source RoundCube client (http://roundcube.net) as my GMail alternative. It’s been up and running for a while now and I’m very happy with it.
I installed the latest Beta (0.8) and am using the new ‘Larry’ skin. There are quite a few 3rd party plug-ins available and I expect it’s straightforward to create your own.
Good luck with the ‘cleansing’ process.
Kevin
Thanks. It looks interesting and making sure it meets my needs will probably be a lot simpler than either squashing down Thunderbird’s memory usage or writing my own IMAP WebUI.
By the way, if you need a replacement for Google Reader, Tiny Tiny RSS looks promising and it also runs on the standard LAMP stack.
That just leaves either a web based NNTP client for talking to GMane or a plugin for RoundCube to make it at least an order of magnitude better at dealing with mailing lists than any other e-mail client I’ve ever seen.