I'm (slowly) Moving My Life Off Of Google's Servers

Posted by on October 24, 2009 in Blogger, Facebook, Google, Internet, Opinions, Technology, WordPress | 1 comment

bartsimpson

I love Google! I really do! Never has one company had so much impact upon my life (for the positive) and I doubt I’ll find another that will.

So why am I migrating away?

Answer: it isn’t wise for me to put all of my eggs in one basket.

On the rare occasions when Google was down/inaccessable, 90% of my geek life suffered sending me into nerd panic mode.

After much internal debate I have been slowly moving my life off of Google’s servers & choosing alternatives.

Here is my list thus far (with reasons to boot):

Blogger.com –> WordPress (self hosted)
• Reason: wanted anti-spam comment protection minus the word puzzles. Also plugins & pages were a plus.

Picasa Web Albums –> Facebook
• Reason: Much more interaction with friends, plus the fact that Facebook is much more mobile friendly (at least for the iPhone, Blackberry & Palm Pre).

Google Voice –> Skype
• Reason: Skype is an actual stand alone phone service, where Google Voice just rediects. Both are cool though!

Google Checkout –> PayPal
• Reason: PayPal is a lot more flexible. & I like their guarentees better.

Picasa (Destop Software) –> Paint.NET
• Reason: Paint.NET has a lot more features. Microsoft really needs to hire this guy.

That is it thus far, but I am going to be seeking out more alternatives (as the competition has drastically improved in the last few years).

Other Google services I’ll probably never leave (like YouTube, Gmail, Google Chrome, Google Reader, Google Earth, Google Calendar, Google Analytics, AdSense, Google News, etc.) while others I might consider (replacing Google Docs with Zoho, & Google Search with Bing).

And for you Android fans out there, I’m probably not going to use those phones (& before you whine about openess, the iPhone is only a jailbreak away).

If anyone has other suggestions for Google alternatives, feel free to let me know in the comment section below.

– Posted from my iPhone

  • http://talesovercoffee.blogspot.com Brad F.

    I'm eventually planning on moving my blog to a WordPress self hosted when I can afford to register my own domain name. (Times are tough right now). Blogger is fun and all, but their 10th anniversary goodies were mostly a load of crap that should've been there to start with. I'd also like pages support so I can categorize the stuff in my blog better.

    As for better comments, I've been using Disqus. That seems to work really well for me and has anti-spam with Akismet, as long as you use your public key from your … WordPress.com … account.

    I don't like Picasa. I don't like Google Voice. I've never used Google Checkout.

    I think the biggest problem is that while Google's works well it doesn't feel friendly. It doesn't feel like it was made with end-user enjoyment in mind. And, in cases like Blogger, there are just too many features lacking because they don't take it seriously.