Basically, the title.
I've been building up the courage to transition since I started de-googling my digital life about three years ago. At first, there was the browser. It was the easiest — Firefox instead of Chrome, obviously. Then there was mail. I learned about SimpleLogin and started using them by routing all my aliases to a single Proton email address. This was long before their partnership with SimpleLogin. Next, I moved the drive and the documents stored in it. Lastly, there was the calendar.
Why de-googling
Everything about my life had been hosted within the Google's ecosystem. Personal documents, bank statements, you name it. But Google’s privacy practices have been increasingly concerning, if not alarming. I got tired of them using and selling my data for advertising — my browsing behavior, purchasing habits, and my email conversations. Google was, and unfortunately still is, everywhere. It is on my phone, in my bedroom, and in my friends' houses. The company's main business model is advertising, and so their revenue streams speak for themselves.
I did this years ago. I'm still making corrections. The only thing I really needed was family and friend's birthdays, anniversaries, etc, but proton mail made quite a mess.
I considered moving to another provider when I moved off Google but decided to do it myself and self-host Nextcloud. Really haven't had any issues with calendars. Got the fam on Nextcloud calendar. I really like owning my calendar
Nice. I have had a few false starts in that direction.
Yeah, I can imagine. Without a background in IT or software engineering I would expect that. That said, there are now tools that seem to make it easier.
I don't have a recommendation for turnkey selfhosting yet. I know there are companies that will host it for you for a price.
My best bet is probably a third party host.
Didn't these guys run an add on SN for a while?
Yes, and I was going to take them up on the offer, and then didn't. I have so many things going now that I will probably revisit the project in a few months.
They are advertising on the Tom Woods show now and that's a good fit for their product/service.
try Yunohost, it's very beginner friendly
Are you happy with Proton's services or still looking for alternatives?
I'm happy with it. Moving everything again is beyond my ambition right now.
Thanks. I'm also going to settle for Protonmail only because I don't think there are many better alternatives left out there.
Leaving Google is tough, and now they are making it even more difficult to leave their services. I use Tutanota's Calendar. But if people really want to do this (De-Googling), they can, but it would cost them convenience.
Maybe it's tough, but it is the right thing to do if you want to keep your information yours.
Proton has been good to me for a while; I have no issues with it; the longer you stay, the more space they give you, but all things considered, they are not that expensive. Remember you paying for you privacy, that is worth something to me. YMMV
How are they making it more difficult? It's a (lower level) priority for me to de-google. I'm already mostly off all google docs.
Nice post, the discussion on Hacker News was also interesting.
I recently came back to Proton for emails only. In the past I had issues with Proton Drive and emails because we can't use our own software and sharing with the outside world was not really user-friendly.
For Proton Drive I ended up using my own SSD shared in a Samba share in my local network or using Nextcloud.
Have you tried the calendar in Nextcloud? I use it to sync across devices. There is Qloud which provides such services with a free tier up to 5GB of storage I think.
You're leaving one silo for another silo.
Try hosting your own Radicale or Nextcloud.
Or you could even go serverless and sync p2p between your devices with EteSync + Syncthing.