Without Google

[ankurtulsian]

Hey,

I am new to this place. So thank you everyone for having me.

As a part of a research for an article, I was wondering how would life be without Google, it's products and other third party services it has collaborated with.

I personally love the whole online integration Google offers to its users but at the same time I feel there's a lot of dependency on one company, and putting all your eggs in the same basket is never appreciated, aye?

So, I was thinking of the major alternatives available that provide almost the same user experience?

Broadly speaking, I could come up with the following categories that most people rely on Google for:

1) Search: Including web, image, news, blog searches

2) Mail Services: GMail and Gmail based services for corporates:

3) Networking: Buzz, the promising Google Me, the almost extinct Orkut and Wave

4) Blogs and Feeds

5) Collaboration Tools: Groups, Tasks and Calenders, Documents

6) Maps and Navigation

7) Media Sharing: Picassa, Google Videos, YouTube, Google Music

8) Google Books and Scholars

9) Newly arrived and Upcoming services: Google TV, Chrome OS, Google Recipe


Have I missed out on anything? Please reply with your set of alternatives for any or all of these services that you think are equally good or have potential.

Cheers!
Ankur

 

[Ishu Gupta]

Off those I only use the search and GMail (a bit of Youtube, Docs, Maps and translate). There are not much worse alternates so my worlds not gonna end if Google disappears.

 

[Liverpool_fan]

Hey,

So, I was thinking of the major alternatives available that provide almost the same user experience?

Broadly speaking, I could come up with the following categories that most people rely on Google for:

1) Search: Including web, image, news, blog searches

Yahoo, Bing, among many others. Google is the best though.

2) Mail Services: GMail and Gmail based services for corporates:

There are plenty. Zoho would suit well as a replacement for GMail/Docs.

3) Networking: Buzz, the promising Google Me, the almost extinct Orkut and Wave

All these suck anyway. Facebook, Twitter are better technologies.

4) Blogs and Feeds

Wordpress.

5) Collaboration Tools: Groups, Tasks and Calenders, Documents

Zoho

6) Maps and Navigation

Yahoo Maps, Wikimapia

7) Media Sharing: Picassa, Google Videos, YouTube, Google Music

Flikr - Photos
Dailymotion - Media

8) Google Books and Scholars

Barely use them personally. Scribd is pretty good service though (not their replacement) but as a social publishing platform.

9) Newly arrived and Upcoming services: Google TV, Chrome OS, Google Recipe

There are many places for recipes. Chrome OS is still not really considerable , Jolicloud is a better solution IMO.

 

[skeletor]

Zoho's word processor is boss. Tried it out only yesterday.

Vimeo is another good service for sharing videos.

 

[Faun]

I like photobucket better for image sharing.

Also you may try blekko for slashtag search.
*blekko.com/

 

[nisargshah95]

Yahoo Maps, Wikimapia

Even Mapquest does fine enough.

So it seems life without Google might be just fine enough, excluding the very notorious (for innocent users) but helpful (for aspiring web developers) services like Analytics and Adwords

 

[mohityadavx]

1) Search: Including web, image, news, blog searches

2) Mail Services: GMail and Gmail based services for corporates:

3) Networking: Buzz, the promising Google Me, the almost extinct Orkut and Wave

4) Blogs and Feeds

5) Collaboration Tools: Groups, Tasks and Calenders, Documents

6) Maps and Navigation

7) Media Sharing: Picassa, Google Videos, YouTube, Google Music

8) Google Books and Scholars

9) Newly arrived and Upcoming services: Google TV, Chrome OS, Google Recipe

u forgot google sites better than any other competitor.


For Search Engine i like duckduckgo.com also.

 

[Krow]

IMO

Flickr > Picasa
Wordpress > Blogger

Google search really is the best.

 

[krishnandu.sarkar]

Well, yes, I agree..!! I'm really dependent on Google. Search, Gmail, Orkut, Youtube, Picassa etc. and many other services. Android got added to that list recently.

But yes there are other alternatives, but they are not even comparable to Google.

But exceptions like Workpress(Blogger), Facebook(Orkut), Twitter(Buzz) etc. are there.

But if I loose my Google A/c, my all contacts, mails and 60% of my Digital Data will lost.

Even the special moment pics are not with me, they are on Facebook, Orkut..!!

 

[@vi]

I don't think my world would end.

Even nowadays I am hardly using Google, for better results I started using DogPile

 

[ankurtulsian]

Even Mapquest does fine enough.

So it seems life without Google might be just fine enough, excluding the very notorious (for innocent users) but helpful (for aspiring web developers) services like Analytics and Adwords

Yea, had totally missed these, especially Analytics. Is there an equally good service available for free?

 

[urbn_geek]

Hey-Hey, You can never prove that Google is bad! I host my blog on Blogger (Google) and Here is my say why I like Blogger SOOOO Much - Why Google Blogger Is The Best Blogging Platform For New Bloggers ~ UrbnGeek: Tech Blog

 

[krishnandu.sarkar]

Well, no one said Google is bad, all we said is that Wordpress is much better than Blogger.

 

[urbn_geek]

Well, no one said Google is bad, all we said is that Wordpress is much better than Blogger.

Dude, Didn't you read my blog post? Blogger is much-much better than Wordpress! Read it here- Why Google Blogger Is The Best Blogging Platform For New Bloggers ~ UrbnGeek: Tech Blog

 

[gsmsikar]

i also want to explore ZOHO , need to know about it ..