{"id":6767,"date":"2017-11-23T18:46:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-23T23:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=6767"},"modified":"2017-11-23T18:50:47","modified_gmt":"2017-11-23T23:50:47","slug":"google-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=6767","title":{"rendered":"Google Apps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> Regular Irreal readers know that I avoid Google and its applications as much as I can. I use <a href=\"https:\/\/duckduckgo.com\/\">DuckDuckGo<\/a> for web searches, use Org mode for writing and publishing\u2014and when I must, NeoOffice to interact with documents from the unenlightened\u2014and use <code>mu4e<\/code> and the Apple Mail.app for email. I still have a gmail account but for years have only used it for mailing lists and now even that has been migrated to <code>mu4e<\/code>. Now I only check it once or twice a week to make sure there&rsquo;s nothing else I should migrate. <\/p>\n<p> Mostly, I&rsquo;ve eschewed Google because of privacy concerns: I don&rsquo;t like the idea of Google, or anyone else, mining my documents for private information and selling it to anyone willing to pay. That&rsquo;s a compelling reason for me to stay away and I&rsquo;m always surprised when folks I consider otherwise sensible say they use gmail, gcalendar, and google docs. <\/p>\n<p> Now there&rsquo;s an even <a href=\"http:\/\/mashable.com\/2017\/10\/31\/google-docs-locking-people-out\/#ZCSwbVFSaaqF\">better reason to stay away<\/a>. It&rsquo;s bad enough that Google is reading through your &ldquo;private&rdquo; documents but completely unacceptable to lock your documents when they find something they think they don&rsquo;t like. As the story at the link reports, these &ldquo;unacceptable things&rdquo; are often false positives. Even if they aren&rsquo;t, mind your own business. You shouldn&rsquo;t be reading this stuff, Google, but if you are and stumble across something you think is illegal then call the police. Otherwise, as I say, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. <\/p>\n<p> But really, I don&rsquo;t feel sorry for the people who are losing their data. At all. Google has proved over and over again that you shouldn&rsquo;t depend on their apps. If you&rsquo;re using Google apps for your critical tasks, sooner or later you&rsquo;re going to get burned. Just ask <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newser.com\/story\/228188\/artist-loses-14-years-of-work-when-google-deletes-his-blog.html\">this guy<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Regular Irreal readers know that I avoid Google and its applications as much as I can. I use DuckDuckGo for web searches, use Org mode for writing and publishing\u2014and when I must, NeoOffice to interact with documents from the unenlightened\u2014and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=6767\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-6767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6767"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6769,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6767\/revisions\/6769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}