Is Google Docs bad? Do you know of a good / safer, free, word processor? Thanks!
All Google products are bad!
There is an EXCELLENT free desktop office suite called Libre Office that you can download and install by clicking here: https://www.libreoffice.org/
If anyone reading this is a college student and thinking about purchasing microsoft home and student or an office 365 subscription please just install Libre Office instead. It is WONDERFUL.
If you’re looking to do something browser-based you should check out CryptPad, which is a zero-knowledge, encrypted online office suite with document storage and a spreadsheet maker and a complete boner for security. It allows for collaboration like gdocs does but it doesn’t track your data or store information about you because it *can’t* because all of your work is encrypted. Check out cryptpad here: https://cryptpad.fr/
And, as usual, if you want to ditch gmail check out protonmail.
Also maybe the best, easiest, and most important way to cut Google out of your life is to stop using chromium-based browsers because people using non-chromium browsers are the only reason that Google isn’t setting every single modern web standard and the fact that MOST internet users use Chromium browsers means that Google is de facto setting every single modern web standard.
Here’s how to migrate from chrome to firefox: https://www.howtogeek.com/333047/how-to-migrate-all-your-data-from-chrome-to-firefox/
(and yes, Opera and Brave are chromium browsers and I think it’s worthwhile to stop using them because SERIOUSLY everyone is using fucking chromium and Edge just switched over to chromium and please, please, please just install firefox)
ALSO REMEMBER FIREFOX CAN BE INSTALLED ON YOUR CELLPHONE.
Android users install Firefox and add the ublock origin extension; iOS users install Firefox Focus.
And reset your default search option in your browser. Other search engines do not return the same results and sometimes that’s frustrating but if you get used to just using duckduckgo as your first option and Google if that doesn’t give you an answer as a second option then you’re still doing a great job (because seriously, how many of your searches are just for basic information like spelling or history that will pop up on wikipedia or dictionary.com - DDG will totally do that even if it isn’t ideal for current news searches)
BTW the reason I’m recommending *most* of these things is because they’re open-source, which is one of the reasons I prefer LibreOffice over WPSWriter, but another reason is features.
Here’s what you can get in LibreOffice:
whereas WPSWriter has only the equivalent of those first three features (which in both products are “Word” “Excel” and “PowerPoint”)
Yo! Do you know of a decent online collaborative document editor?
CryptPad! CryptPad is collaborative, it’s basically a zero-knowledge version of google docs and I love it.
Collaborators don’t even need to have an account to edit.
(cryptpad currently has a free version with a small amount of storage and a few paid tiers with larger amounts of storage, they are a tiny, open-source project, give ‘em a whirl and if you like it donate if you can)
Damn. What to do if your institution of higher education forces you to use an Office account and Google products???
Use two browsers and use the office account and the google products in one browser (or if you’re using firefox you can use account containers and create a specific “google” container that you use google/microsoft/facebook/whatever weird privacy violating monopoly is hosting your meetings in and keep it separate from the rest of your online life).
What would you recommend for a search engine? And what was the email host going around that everyone should be switching to? (If you don’t mind answering these).
I like the idea of not being constantly tracked. As it is, I’ll be resuming using a written grocery list and leaving my phone at home (Android)
DuckDuckGo and ProtonMail!
You can find a lot of what you need wrt privacy with privacytools.io
