General > General Technical Chat
Eradicating Google from my online life
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luudee:

--- Quote from: ataradov on November 10, 2023, 06:48:10 pm ---You will be paying no matter what. You may just prefer to pay smaller and more focused companies, of course. Nothing with ongoing running cost is free, or at free for a long time.

Also, for simple web servers, Amazon Lightsail is a great service. It is easy to setup and you just get a full SSH access to the machine with a public static IP. My bill for that ends up being $5-6/mo. But you do need to work with Amazon, which may not be ideal if you want to get rid of the giant corporations. Bit I moved to them after having horrible experiences with low end hosting providers. And Lightsail was awesome with no outages, it just works.

--- End quote ---

Alex,

I am not sure, moving from Google to Amazon, is a better move. I have read more
negative reports about Amazon than Google.

I do now however subscribe to YouTube Premium, since Spotify didn't want my
money any longer ... (long story, as companies get bigger, they also get more
stupid ...) And I must say, I prefer YouTube now ... bigger and better selection ...

Cheers,
rudi
ebastler:

--- Quote from: zilp on November 12, 2023, 12:40:23 pm ---I would generally recommend to separate domain registration and services, because that (a) makes sure you aren't limited to whatever your one provider offers and (b) you more easily can switch service providers if one fails/mistreats you/whatever.

--- End quote ---

I had similar concerns, but found that transferring the hosting to a new provider was trivially easy:

(a) Via your old provider's admin backend, request an "authentication code". The provider automatically requests that code from the domain registry and displays it within a couple of minutes. This is a one-time code which authorizes you (or a third party) to request changes to the domain.

(b) In your new provider's admin backend, ask them to transfer the domain to their hosting service. You give them the authentication code, which they in turn provide to the registry, with the request that DNS entries are switched over to their servers. The time until DNS actually got switched over was between 30 minutes and a couple of hours in my case, and it only happened on weekdays, so there is apparently a manual step involved.

Hence, I don't see the need to separate domain registration and hosting services. I have only tried this with .de domains so far, but the process is stated to be the same with .com, .net and many others. I will go through it with a .net domain next week.

One thing you should make sure: You want to be listed as the domain owner; the service provider only serves as the Tech-C (and maybe Admin-C) contact. All honest companies who provide registration services -- whether in conjunction with hosting or stand-alone -- should handle it that way. But apparently there were/are some black sheep who try to lock you in by registering your domain in their own name.
M0HZH:
For email you can use Zoho, they offer an extensive suite of services for business but most of them also have free plans. For hosting Amazon Lightsail is good, it can also host your email server but you need some skills to set it up. Alternatively you can host your own services entirely, something like Synology NAS + a UPS and a decent internet connection will go a long way. I've been using all these for years.

But if you're looking to move away from Google, it's not possible. They're a big part of the Internet, not just email and Youtube but DNS servers, email blacklists, largest search engine, largest mobile OS, you can find it in TVs, cars etc and it's only getting bigger. You'll have to "Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb", I'm afraid. It takes too much effort to avoid it, I rather pay for YT Premium and focus my energy somewere else.
zilp:

--- Quote from: ebastler on November 12, 2023, 01:27:04 pm ---I had similar concerns, but found that transferring the hosting to a new provider was trivially easy:

(a) Via your old provider's admin backend, request an "authentication code". The provider automatically requests that code from the domain registry and displays it within a couple of minutes. This is a one-time code which authorizes you (or a third party) to request changes to the domain.

--- End quote ---

Yes, but for one, that assumes that the old provider cooperates. And also ...


--- Quote from: ebastler on November 12, 2023, 01:27:04 pm ---(b) In your new provider's admin backend, ask them to transfer the domain to their hosting service. You give them the authentication code, which they in turn provide to the registry, with the request that DNS entries are switched over to their servers. The time until DNS actually got switched over was between 30 minutes and a couple of hours in my case, and it only happened on weekdays, so there is apparently a manual step involved.

--- End quote ---

.... that doesn't guarantee a seamless transition.

First of all, how long the name server re-delegation takes depends on previous TTLs. If the old provider has a 24 hour TTL for NS records, for example, the switchover takes up to 24 hours.

But also, there is a ton of stuff that can cause problems with that sort of switchover. For example, when you have transferred the domain to the new hoster, but some sender's outbound mail server still has the old MX record cached (again, depends on TTLs), and therefore connects to the MX of your old provider. What happens with that email? Does the old hoster reject it as undeliverable because they don't see themselves as responsible for the domain anymore? Do they accept it and put it in some IMAP folder that you can't access anymore because your account has been deactivated? ...

What about outbound emails? If the target mail server still has SPF records of your domain cached, they might reject your emails or put them into the spam folder because they come from a supposedly unauthorized outbound server.

And similar things for all other services that you might want to use.

If you have domain registration (and DNS hosting) separate, you can easily switch over the MX to a new email provider, for example, without even telling your old provider about it, so  that there is no problem with mails still arriving at the old provider, as you can just use both providers in parallel until all the old records have aged out.

zilp:

--- Quote from: M0HZH on November 12, 2023, 01:50:47 pm ---But if you're looking to move away from Google, it's not possible. They're a big part of the Internet, not just email and Youtube but DNS servers, email blacklists, largest search engine, largest mobile OS, you can find it in TVs, cars etc and it's only getting bigger. You'll have to "Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb", I'm afraid. It takes too much effort to avoid it, I rather pay for YT Premium and focus my energy somewere else.

--- End quote ---

But just because you maybe can't avoid *some* google product it doesn't follow that therefore you have to feed them as much data as possible and make them into more of a monopoly than necessary.
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