• toastal@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    Google services I still use before being unGoogled:

    1. Voice: I have to make like 1 or 2 calls within the US a year & not worth a SIM
    2. Maps: for when OSM isn’t cutting it & I’ll contribute the missing data after I found it
    3. Translate: for when Yandex Translate doesn’t cut it (everything ‘free’ only works with European languages)
    4. YouTube: no real alternative here that isn’t limited to just a piece of its scope, but viewed thru Librewolf+uBlock Origin+SponsorBlock or PipePipe

    … and the last one is just basically every employer I have worked with puts all their company data on Google & it can’t really be avoided with them >:(

    • Allero@lemmy.today
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      5 months ago

      Can’t help but mention Yandex is 100% as evil as Google is.

      Out of popular choices, DeepL is probably least evil. Reverso is often a nice pick, too, especially Reverso Context.

      There are also things like LibreTranslate, though the quality is generally lower (but can absolutely come in handy for simpler requests)

      • toastal@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        Yandex might be the same as Google, but spreading your footprint across services still has value as a technique for mitigation. The only other thing I use Yandex for is the occasional image search since it can sometimes do a better job than others.

        • Allero@lemmy.today
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          5 months ago

          Fair enough; however, to me it’s only optimal when there are no alternatives.

          But to each their own.

    • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      Not relly true, eg YT, there are still several scripts to gut out ads, tracks and nags from YT (take a look in Greasyfork or OpenuserJS) (for YT naturally filter the newest and recent updated scripts), if one of the front-ends dont work.

      Well, OSM and forks or Here maps don’t have the features of Gmaps (eg Street view) but are way enough for the most use.

      For translations, OpenSource isn’t sinonimo of bad, eg, CrowTranslate for Desktop or the Linguist extension for the browser are FOSS and maybe the best you can find out there, multiengines for more than 120 lenguages, they use the APIs of Google, Yandex and others (customizable, Linguist use also the Bergamot Translator(At the moment still in developement and only EU languages, but they’ll add more soon)), similar to the front-ends for YT, so Google isn’t a problem.

      Yes, naturally if you are an Google user for your work, few you can do, but there are alternatives to use Google only the minimum needed.

      • toastal@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        A YouTube alternative client doesn’t change that all of the infrastructure is Google’s. Even this video shows you need YouTube to reach the audience you want for this style of content.

        I hadn’t heard of new translators options in the last two years, but only Lingva listed the two non-English languages I actually use. The rest are all European-based languages. I may have some time to check it out, but it looked like quite a bit of tooling to set up.

        • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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          5 months ago

          Both translators mencioned, Crow and Linguist are full customizable with cusom translators, Crow include, among others, also Lingva by default nd both can traduce more than 120 lenguages, depending on which engine you activate, posting even in Sanscrit if you want