Last week I wrote an apparently controversial article on how I do my work completely online and why the operating system I use is no longer relevant: Firefox OS: Why My Hard Drive and Software are Obsolete.
In the many comments that followed, I was accused of being a Google fanboy, because I use so many Google apps: Gmail, Gcal, Google Reader, Picasa, Google Homepage and more. The truth is, I use those apps because in my experience they are the best online apps in each of their respective categories.
But it’s true that it’s never good to be under the thumbs of one company, and so by popular demand, here are the best alternatives to those Google apps. While it’s too late to save myself, perhaps you guys can get free from the Google stranglehold!
Top 10 Alternatives to Google’s apps
1. Thunderbird. As I noted in the previous article, I’m a fan of Firefox … and Mozilla’s open-source Thunderbird is right behind it in terms of usefulness, functionality, speed and extensibility. Thunderbird, although not an online app, is a great alternative to Gmail. If you add Mozilla’s Lightning or Sunbird, you can replace Gcal too.
2. 30 Boxes. Although the simple and fast Gcal meets my needs perfectly, 30 boxes is just as fast and easy, and is loved by many. If Gcal didn’t integrate with Gmail, I would probably be using 30 Boxes.
3. Netvibes. Although I love the speed of Google Reader, Netvibes can not only hold all of your feeds in an organized way, it can replace both Reader and Google Personalized Homepage. A great way to organize all your favorite services in a personalized way, Netvibes was my homepage of choice until I discovered Reader.
4. Zoho Office Suite. Perhaps the best online alternative to the Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Zoho has just about everything you’d ever need: a spreadsheet, word processor, presentation program, project manager, notebook, wiki, web conferencing, mail, chat, database and CRM. This might actually be my choice of the future.
5. Peepel. This new offering takes my online OS model almost literally — it offers a desktop environment from within your browser. This service contains office apps, accessible anywhere online, including a word processor, spreadsheet and more. I haven’t actually given this a spin yet, but I intend to. It’s limited in its current beta release, but it has potential and plans to expand in the future. Replaces Google Docs and Spreadsheets
6. Bloglines. If Netvibes or Google Reader isn’t for you, Bloglines is another popular and excellent choice.
7. Zimbra Collaboration Suite. Yet another online office suite, Zimbra started out with email/calendar functionality and has since launched spreadsheet and word processing apps. I haven’t tried this, but have heard excellent things about it, and I love that it’s open-source with an API that could have many uses. Another alternative to Google Docs and Spreadsheets
8. ThinkFree Online. Billed as the “best online office on earth,” ThinkFree aims to ween people from Microsoft Office to is web office suite. It has spreadsheet, word processing and presentation apps, online storage, document sharing and more. Unfortunately, only some of that functionality is free, but it’s still an interesting suite. Replaces Google Docs and Spreadsheets.
9. OpenOffice.org. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention everybody’s favorite open-source office suite, OpenOffice. It’s not an online app, but it offers everything Microsoft Office can give you, but for free, and without all the bloat. This is definitely worth a try, especially if you’re not only trying to get free from Google but Microsoft as well. Replaces Google Docs and Spreadsheets.
10. Flickr. An obvious choice as a replacement for Google’s Picasa web photo service, Yahoo’s Flickr is actually much more popular. My free Flickr account wasn’t good enough for me, but it’s a great service loved by many.
Can you get free from Google’s grip? Yes, I believe you can. As I said before, I’m more than willing to try out the alternatives, but Google’s apps are the best I’ve found so far. For those of you who aren’t fans of Google, there’s a lot more out there.
Leo Babauta blogs regularly about achieving goals through daily habits on Zen Habits, and covers such topics as productivity, GTD, simplifying, frugality, parenting, happiness, motivation, exercise, eating healthy and more. Read his articles on keeping your inbox empty, clearing your desk, becoming an early riser, and the Top 20 Motivation Hacks.
The new version of Thunderbird [2] should be out some time this week; so keep an eye out.
Rumored improvements include better integration with Gmail, so that’s a no brainer.
[...] Getting Free of Google’s Grip: The 10 Top Alternatives – LifeHack [...]
Why not Google apps
Why replace ?
Google is all that I need . I’m also G Fan
nXqd
I like goowy.com. Email (a goowy.com email address as well as access to your other email accounts), calendar, online file storage, widgets (called minis on goowy) all in one place.
Y’know – I loved that original article so much – it made me sign up for a googlemail acct (UK based user y’see). I’ve incorporated Docs, Calendar, Googlemail, Reader, Groups and the online bookmarks storage thing into my personalised Google homepage. I love it. Now if I could just figure out Adsense…
I agree with you. Google’s apps are, for the most part, just better.
Where were you Google fans last week, when I was torn apart for being a google fanboy? :)
Thanks for the comments, guys. I’m still using Google apps, for the most part, but I’m checking out some of the above to see if they work any better. Always keep an open mind, right?
Yes, Lots of alternatives are available. But user at some sort of time stick to big corporate applications. User prefer single login feature. I would say, all sites should allow the email ID as user name. And in that case its easy for the user. Suggest Usability !!!!
~ http://www.suggestusability.com
I liked your original post (Firefox OS) as it affirms my own thoughts on that matter.
Very strong alternative for photos is sharpcast. It is much better than picasa or flickr (unlimited storage, seamless syncing, organizing etc.)
I would recommend a nice alternative to Google’s spreadsheet to put on list as well, that is EditGrid, a feature rich and robust spreadsheet.
Our free alternative to Picasa is KoffeePhoto, a free and unlimited photo hosting and sharing solution featuring ubiquituous access to pictures.
I use Flickr and 30boxes since the beginning. Never found Google Calendar and Picasa as a replacement for those.
I use Talk, Gmail, Docs and Reader from Google since I haven’t found other services better than these.
Or you could get free of Google, Microsoft and the internet with PortableApps Suite; portableapps.com
Why bother? MS got big; Everyone started screaming they were evil incarnate. Sorry, but Word and Excel have changed my life for the better. For the relatively small cost (compared to previously spent work hours) I save a tremendous amount of time. Google has gotten big; Every is starting to scream they are evil incarnate. I’m not joining the screaming hordes.
Isn’t anyone concerned with the massive amount of personal data that Google is compiling. Here’s a list:
# Google search: any search term a user enters into Google;
# Google Desktop: an index of the user’s computer files, e-mails, music, photos, and chat and Web browser history;
# Google Talk: instant-message chats between users;
# Google Maps: address information requested, often including the user’s home address for use in obtaining directions;
# Google Mail (Gmail): a user’s e-mail history, with default settings set to retain emails “forever”;
# Google Calendar: a user’s schedule as inputted by the user;
# Google Orkut: social networking tool storing personal information such as name, location, relationship status, etc.;
# Google Reader: which ATOM/RSS feeds a user reads;
# Google Video/YouTube: videos watched by user;
# Google Checkout: credit card/payment information for use on other sites.
Check out the article here:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2147350,00.asp
I’m going to use services that have better privacy policies than Google’s.
@Privacy?
Your internet access provider logs EVERY SINGLE byte and you are concerned about Google? C’mon…
When you are concerned about privacy… dont use google.. you can live without it…
But can you live without an internet access provider… who maybe logs lots more than Google?
:-|
You know…I’m not really that concerned with my privacy with Google. If they want to know that I search for anime with their engine, so be it (ok, so I search a ton of stuff, but nothing that I just CAN’T let other people know).
If they want to know when my baseball games are, but not where…and when my school days off are, they are free to spy on my gcal to their heart’s content.
If they want to read all my receipts and mailing order emails, they can spy on my email.
Maps…ok, so they have my home address…then again, how do they know that it’s my home address? They don’t associate names with the addresses.
Reader- dammit, they know that I read video game, tech, and anime news! I’m screwed.
Youtube- well, I guess I’m busted for watching Charlie the Unicorn!
Seriously, I really do not care if they spy on my stuff. If they want to, that’s their own time that they’re wasting.
As for my reason for going to google for everything: It’s easier to have just one account then 15 accounts, plus it’s really easy to integrate Google apps with each other.
well, I liked Google’s apps but I’m not happy with the relation between Google and China so I’m looking for alternatives.
[...] Lifehack.org: Getting Free of Google’s Grip: the 10 Top Alternatives [...]
Thunderbird is an app, not a service. So it doesn’t quite make sense to offer it as a possible alternative to Gmail.
That being said, I’ve been sitting here this evening wondering what it would be like to live in China, and want to write about human rights abuses, and then have some big ugly US company block my site from appearing in their search results. Not very nice, I think. So much for “don’t be evil”.
So I’m planning to get rid of my Gmail address. inbox.com is looking good – and they assist with migration.
[...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerpt [...]
[...] Getting Free of Google’s Grip: The 10 Top Alternatives [...]
[...] For those that aren’t Google fanatics like myself then there are lots of other opportunities to use online applications for just about anything. A good post about options can be found here. [...]
icloud is a much better solution, its everything that peeple claims to be but in a better interface with drastically improved usability íf you’re keeping an open mind look at icloud.com eventualy a utility like this will either replace google or microsoft (or be bought be google/microsoft)
Thanks for the list, Google is growing just a little too much for my taste, and they aren’t very secretive with the data they collect from their users!
I’ve been weening myself off of Google for a while now!
anytime you can do multiple tasks under one company is usually never good. when google provides everything a user needs, a monopoly begins to unfold taking down little companies that try to stop it. and with all that data collection, you never know who is watching you…
opengoo
http://www.opengoo.org/
Thanks for the alternatives. My co-worker and I used Google Docs for a year or so and liked it quite a bit. But the “improvements” they’ve made over the last six months seem to have added an incredible number of bugs. At this point I would cheerfully pay big bucks, out of my own pocket, for a replacement. Google Docs continually changes our font size, deletes what we’ve written, renders one of us incapable of typing, and makes one of us (and our typing) invisible to the other. Google docs used to work fine for us; now we spend almost as much time fighting with it as we do working.
I think we’re missing a point here. What about alternatives to Google SEARCH? That would be the main thing to let go of. Good alternatives for the minor applications, though. Thanks
http://search.yippy.com/
[...] ever need: a spreadsheet, word processor, presentation program, project manager, notebook, wiki, web conferencing, mail, chat, database and CRM. This might actually be my choice of the [...]
You should try SSuite Office for free office software. They have a whole range of office suites and business software that are free for download.
Their software also don’t need to run on Java or .NET, so it makes the software very small and efficient.
You can try these links:
http://www.ssuitesoft.com/index.htm
or
http://ssuite5element.webs.com/thefifthelement.htm
i used google search to get here. Seriously. I think G has overstepped with the new find anyone anywhere software. Screw them.
http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS
“11. Content licence from you
11.1 …By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”
People should start taking notice of Google’s literally evil ethics when it comes to customer relations (fraudulent business practices etc)
Microsoft is like an old chum compared to Google. People don’t realize this if they only interact with Google passively. Google employees, shame shame. I would not trust such an ethical nightmare with my privacy. And yes, Google search is the elephant in the room. We all use the internet, we should be P2P indexing the web like Seti/Folding@home by now. Not Google’s server farms and black cable. Google is already a dinosaur in it’s thinking here.
Google AdSense/Words is the worst of the lot. Though all of it’s programs that involve business relationships are unbelievably evil. Evil is just the only word to describe it. It’s very easy to block Google ads with Firefox, even in your Gmail etc (like if your ISP mail switched you over to Google)
Put Google out of business. It deserves it.
HI, its me zeeshan …. Dear frndz……. any one wants to share Adsense Revenue……? then contact to me at my msn id… zshan1…. thanks Regards, zee
[...] wonder if I could wean myself any other Google Apps? Seems I’m not the only one either as this lifehack.org piece will testify. I can’t see me being drawn away from GMail, the Calendar or My Maps but [...]
I’m so angry at Google. Like a giant octopus they have extended their tentacles to all areas of the web. They own YouTube, they own ad companies (and pass your information to them). It’s appalling.
Google have become too big.
It’s time we put them in their place. It’s time we boycotted them!
There are great alternatives to Google and its products/services out there.
Research it! Use the Bing search engine until you’ve found something better. Use a different video site. Stop using Google and its products.
Google are a corporation. They are legally REQUIRED (like all corporations) to make profits – profits before anything else. They don’t care about your privacy – not if they can use your personal details to make money (profits)!
BOYCOTT GOOGLE!
lmao, boycott Google in favor of Microsoft (Bing)? No thank you.
God help anyone who has a problem with their Gmail account. Mine was arbitrarily blocked due to “suspicious activity” – I asked what THAT was but got no details, I still don’t know what the problem is – perhaps the account was hacked and used for phishing or spamming. I only ever used it for ordinary email tasks.
Whatever the problem was, I can no longer access my account because I can’t supply sufficient proof that I am indeed the account owner.
What kind of proof? The “secret question” info wasn’t sufficient, and neither were the requested “5 frequently used email addresses” that I supplied. Although I made my best guess regarding the “MONTH and YEAR of opening the account” (who remembers?), I could not cite the titles of its FOLDERS (???). I attempted this verification FOUR times, but Gmail in its wisdom explained:
“At Google, we take your privacy and security seriously. We’re committed to returning accounts only when we’re sure we’re giving them back to the accounts’ owners. Unfortunately, based on the information you provided, we were unable to verify that you own this account. To ensure that we are not compromising the security of the data, we can’t return the account at this time.”
My biggest gripes are that although Gmail easily offers accounts to any and all, it doesn’t advise users to keep details in case of future problems – and by the time you discover such need, it’s impossible to retrieve the info.
A word to the wise:
- remember when you opened the account (MONTH and YEAR!)
- remember the names of your folders
- remember 5 of your most frequently used email addresses
- pray to God that it’s enough!
you replace gmail with thunderbird? but you still have a gmail address?
Some people need an e-mail address more than they need a pretty web user interface. It’s hard to beat Gmail’s spam filtering, you have to admit.
[...] sähköposti- ja muita googlevaihtoehtoja kuten [...]
Yes, google needs to be banned to short now. It’s now misusing its power. We made it powerful so we will make it it’s place to right where.
Why not Google Apps? Because not everyone is a twenty-something urban male who thinks its funny that all the ‘widgets’ categories are predominantly “hot and horny” ‘russian’ chicks. Seriously, I don’t know what to do, GoogleApps is a great suite of tools, so I foolishly recommended it to two non-profits, one involves mentally handi-capped and their parents, the other is an all-ages group, from 7 yrs to 70. Neither yet knows that if they click on the “Add Widgets” button they will get a real eye-opener, especially in the ‘Tools’ category!! And yet Google seems uninterested in fixing this. Probably because their real target demographic finds it all very funny. It would be funny, if it wasn’t so sad.
So what are the alternatives for free and brandable portal pages for non-proft orgs?
Roll-up your sleeves and use a CMS? :)
Some nice alternatives but to be honest. Google just does everything i need and more.
“Getting Free of Google’s Grip” with ads by Google – LOL!
How ironic! Yet another parasite website ramming ads down our throats. Who are you trying to kid? And you talk about Google? You can all rot in hell. Money Money Money.
Adblock, PostmanPat. Adblock.
Flickr is certainly not an “obvious choice”. Especially when compare the two free versions. They are skies apart!!
http://www.beekbeek.com/ did you tried ?
An alternative to Gmail is http://www.vxg.com – using the same platform. It’s the professional version of Gmail with business cards, unlimited support, extended storage ++ (it’s not for poor students thought)…
However, you’ll still be in “Google’s grip” as VXG is hosted by Google…
Just a note on Peepel – this would now seem to be focused on enterprise clients and may not be within the price league of mere mortals.
Thunderbird is only a mail client. There are several alternatives for Mail servers but are there are any which give a facility like google apps which enables me to use my own domain name in my mail address??
Whatever.. you are suggesting almost-certainly-doomed Flickr to replace Picasa Web.. Seriously?
you don’t answer the question “Ten alternatives to Google”
new site cheap software do you want try?have office 2010 suite products,adobe software,and UGG Boots!
I am really annoyed that I can’t any longer type the first letter of an email address and pull up a list to click out of when composing a letter Google doesn’t seem interested in repairing auto complete. Maybe they have grown so big they are arrogant and don’t care about their clients anymore. I guess I will try my luck with one of the others
Thunderbird is an email client not an email service like gmail. that isn’t an alternative at all.
Lol. Tried to sign up for Bloglines but the form just flashes and then disappear, both in Chrome and IE tab. Adblock off did not help. Gotta find something else then
I don’t know if it’s still worth commenting on this article, but I have to say something somewhere. It’s time to do a post like this again, acknowledging that Google continues to jump the shark. Just wtf is up with Gcal these days, for example? Bug-gy. So is Google Chrome. Might it be that Google’s own Gcal is, gasp, buggy within Google’s own Chrome?
It’s starting to get ridiculous how writers spend all their time on the attention grabbing headline.
Thanks Google for another worthless result!
This one of those retarded “pros” who can’t even tell a difference between desktop mail app and online email service
This one of those retarded “pros” who can’t even tell a difference between desktop mail app and online email service
As stated before, you are not answering the question ’10 alternatives to google’. Instead you are posting some software which is good at one point but together in no way matches Google. Starting with thunderbird, how does that work without having an active e-mail account?
Mozilla Thunderbird is an alternative to Google apps as the fake leather camera case I received from eBay is to my Canon G12.
Let me suggest another: Feedstripes. It's much more than the others, measures social activity for every article and let you monitor by search term! http://www.feedstripes.com/about