For Next Week (Sep 29th):
Experiment: A week without Google
In the coming week starting from the end of this class we will attempt to make it through a whole week without using any Google service. Not Google Search, not Gmail, not Google Talk, not Google Video, not Google Docs, not Google Maps, not Google Earth, not Google News, not Google Groups, not Youtube, not Google Video, not Blogger, not Picasa, not Google Calendar, not Google Checkout, not iGoogle, not Google Translate,not Google Voice, not Google Chrome, if you have a G1 phone, you are not allowed to use Google services with it, talk and text only… you get the point.
It’s not going to be easy and hence we will not attempt to create an unfeasible challenge. We will keep a promise to each other to follow some rules:
- Whenever we are passively exposed to Google content (an embedded Google video, map, and so on…) we post that link to delicious.com (this is how to post to delicious.com) using the tags ‘tdmcc’, ‘weekwithoutgoogle’ and ‘ambushed’ (+whatever else you want to include)
- Whenever we break and use a Google service, we report about it to the blog, as a comment on this post.
- If we totally break altogether, we write a post about it as soon as we decide to pull out, summarizing the experience.
We will also try to support each other in the process by:
- If you use Gmail, please make sure to set a forward on your email to another email service (either on or offline). Please do that as the first thing you do after this class, and not later than 8am tomorrow morning.
- Every time you are about to use Google, and find a way around it, try to propose the alternative to the class by tagging the alternative with the tags ‘nmrs’, ‘weekwithoutgoogle’ and ‘dodged’.
- Share tactics on the blog. Work together to try to make it.
- Previous classes found the use of this Firefox plugin useful, so if you find you just can’t trust yourself use it to block any Google domain. In the options add the following urls:
*.google.* *.youtube.* *.googlegroups.* *.blogspot.* *.blogger.* *.gmail.* *.picasa.* *.google-analytics.*
(am I missing anything?)(I know I am)
This is trust based only, but those of us who will manage to take this challenge on and make it through the week will win the class’s medal of honor.
Good luck!
(we’re going to need it)
Possibly Relevant Posts:
- Who is the crowd building these cities, Google? (5) | Lauren Marie
- A Rough Guide to the WELL (2) | Alison
- We Built this city on Google (6) | Lauren Marie
37 Comments
I just realized I already failed. My other digital media class has a blog hosted on Blogger. Arg!!! Google everywhere!
Here’s Colbert Report writer Rob Dubbin on NPR’s Talk of the Nation about when he quit google for 24 hours.
And this is the story of his experiences on Washington Post (is that a credible enough source? =) ).
HELP: I need an email client I can forward my emails to that will let me reply to emails sent to a particular account from that account’s email address. just like gmail let’s me do. otherwise this will be a failure =(
of course, it has to be free.
yahoo sucks, and mobile me won’t let me do it without paying.
sava, what about something like Mozilla Thunderbird? or if you use a mac, the mac mail program is good.
i spent a ton of time last night trying to sync my google calendar with ical so that it can get on my phone, but it was too complicated so i just printed my google calendar out on paper. how primitive.
in the meantime, i have set my computer up so that my home page is just blank. it feels strange and empty, but also good. i guess these feelings are a part of the decolonization process. i need to purge a little in order to get reoriented.
thank you, ms. swamp. I wanted a webmail thing so that I could access it from everywhere, but then I caved and got thunderbird. I still feel like all my mail’s not coming in there haha.
I’m also going the primitive route with my calendar! in fact, I wrote things out on paper, believe it or not. but it feels kinda fun anyway, like being back in high school.
I think today I’m going to get ambushed a couple of times by settings that I forgot I had and other stuff, but I think today’ll be the only hard day. I’m feeling free off the shackles of google already!! huzzah!
(and I miss it SO BAD like the addict I am!)
slip up #1 – had a draft of an assignment in my gmail drafts. had to get it.
Q: should I post slip ups and such here? or create new posts?
Slip ups – here
Giving up – new post
Eep – my company’s press contact list is on google docs. Fail already!
it’s almost 3PM, and I’ve made 2 slip ups. I think I’m going to make a few more, so I’ll try and comment a couple of times with a list haha!
#2 gmail – had to go look at an important email. (I’ve not imported ALL my emails because it would be a giant mess if I did!)
difficulties I did not foresee when setting this up last night:
- my email addresses are all in gmail. I’m looking them up in alternative places for now, and hoping I don’t have to go in there to check.
- I have many ’starred’ emails in gmail that require my attention. not sure how I’m going to get around that one, but I’m hoping for a 1-hour reprieve from the challenge to deal with those or forward them or something. will I be forgiven?
- a friend pointed out that chatting through adium might be against the rules? is this true? a lot of my communication is through chat, and I don’t have other chat accounts, and I need to be accessible to some people. please tell me this is ok!
- I use safari and there is a google search bar there by default that you can’t get rid of! but I’ve been good about not using – almost did only once!
more tonight…
FAIL! Argh… I played a Youtube video on my Facebook feed and earlier today someone sent me a link through markkit.com that was actually highlighting text on a Google Code project.
Oh, if you’re using Leechblock, be sure to add:
*.google-analytics.*
(it would not change your user experience, but will block A LOT of the data you send to Google)
I accidentally clicked a YouTube link via Twitter. To be fair, it was a tinyurl, so I had no real way of knowing. And I may have checked my gmail account just to make sure everything got forwarded to my hotmail account.
FAILED!!! #1-2
I was doing so well all day, and then went on my laptop and accidently clicked on my Chrome browser which immediately opened up my Gmail account.
Possible suggestion, if you have any icons on your computer that you typically don’t think about when you click on them and they are Google associated, be sure to move them for now…
Google Docs tripped me up at work as well. We all contribute to an informal sales verticals spreadsheet, which is stored in Google Docs. I suppose I should have used this project as excuse to pawn boring spreadsheet upkeep tasks off on my co-workers, and asked someone else to add in my data for me, but I didn’t. Did my work myself.
Had to read and post on the class blog for my [other] Topics in Digital Media class. This included both posting and watching YouTube videos. Also, we had a “Google jockey” in class tonight.
Also, in a lapse of absentmindedness I used Google Maps. I felt instant gratification followed by gnawing guilt. I’m using Bing right now – I hope that counts as repentance.
Ambushed with nobody to blame but my routines. I was sitting in my department today and after writing a paper and reading 30 papers for the class I TA for, I mindlessly checked my gmail for no real reason. It’s so second nature for me…I think I will try to bring my computer with me for the next few days, so that all of my google avoiding tricks can save me from myself.
I logged onto google/gmail 3 times yesterday in the first hour of trying to quit. It creeped me out how ingrained google is in my brain, I’m not even conscious of when I’m typing in the web address.
I’m a very big gchatter, so decided to replace that with AIM. I haven’t signed onto my aim account in maybe 3-4 years, and all of these co-workers and people I was friends with in undergrad showed up on my buddylist. Ghosts of my internet past. So that was a weird phenomenon.
Turned my homepage to Bing (it’s not so bad!), turned my toolbar search to Yahoo, (makes me feel like I’m living in 2005…). Printed my Gcal for the next two months, and have been carrying it with me, and am forwarding my gmail to mac mail. It’s not the same, and I’m trying to just not check my email as much as I usually would through gmail.
My friend was trying to ambush me with a youtube video of a French Bulldog puppy. I’m happy to say I did not give in to the cuteness.
Oh, also I’m reading on Twitter that there is something wrong with Gmail – email contacts are unavailable. Maybe that will make some of us feel better.
I also read about the problem with contacts in gmail! and I’m freaking out a little about that… AND resisting the urge to go check my contacts haha.
so far I’ve been finding alternate ways to find peoples’ email addresses (thank you, facebook) and have managed to avoid going to gmail.
More work issues – had to access google docs again to do my job! Additionally, today I learned that bing news and yahoo news searches are seriously inferior to google news.
Haha Anu, you’re too responsible for your own good.
I had more casual trysts with Google Maps on Thursday evening than a late night Cinemax flick. Couldn’t help it – I went to the Rushkoff talk in Williamsburg, and then met up with some friends. I’m not too familiar with the area, so it was the only way. I’m holding strong today though, and there’s a solid possibility that I might actual make it through the weekend Google-free.
I was good yesterday!! =)
but 2 slip-ups today, I blame TimeWarner for both. there was an internet outage in our area and I had to access my email because I was expecting something from a professor, so I looked on my mobile phone. and then I had to coordinate a meeting for this afternoon, so did that from gmail on my phone as well =(
aside from that, it’s really not been that hard not accessing Google stuff. I’m also getting a support (and skepticism) from friends and family haha!
I also have failed at least twice:
1) I had to go to my sent mail folder on gmail because I had some important information there.
2) Huffington post link to “all the single babies” had an embedded youtube clip with it.
I failed with Gmail twice today. I had to look up an old e-mail to find the address of where a job interview was, then at the interview I had to look up some past employment info that was most accessible in an old e-mail.
I’m not too happy with my googless week, although i haven’t slipped up yet. I’ve been doing a lot of “asking people for information” and getting a bit more creative with my searching (I especially like using last.fm to search for audio and video rather than jumping immediately to youtube. I think I prefer this, actually!)
I’m having technical issues with the mac mail client (including, but not limited to, downloading every single email ever to my computer, which cost me like 10gb of space). i hate this mail client. it’s a horrible product, and i wouldn’t have chosen it. But, I’m a bit too lazy to research better options, because I expect this will be over very soon.
Can’t wait until this is over, though!
@harlo, this is a good point. Did any of you find a decent webmail replacement? I have Roundcube setup as a mail client for my @shual.com email server, but it is significantly inferior to Gmail.
My no-Google efforts have stabilized in the past two days, the first day is always the hardest, the following two days have been significantly less painful.
At Microsoft’s PR agency of record, Waggener Edstrom, someone had a T-shirt draped over their cube with the following message (in primary colors, naturally): Google Eats Kittens. Kidding aside, I want to offer my therapy services to all of you, as you hold out these last few days. I won’t even say the “M word.” Promise.
As an olive branch, I encourage you to try Yahoo mail. I used it even while I was doing the old empire’s bidding, and I still prefer it today. The editors at PC Mag think highly of it, too.
P.S. Bing rocks, right? C’mon, admit it.
@gorditamedia: I really did try to get a yahoo account – it was one of the most painful experiences of my life. within an hour, I had a yahoo account and then killed it. the user interface and user interaction left much to be desired and just the way in which one had to set things up was painful. also there were some things that worked in the ‘new’ interface and some that didn’t so one had to switch to the old interface.
I have to say, as much as I don’t like being dependent on things, Gmail is by far the most superior webmail I’ve ever used. ultimately, I caved and got Thunderbird, which is too much like mac mail which I don’t like, but it’s been way better than yahoo. the forwarding and account set up was easier, AND, most importantly, I could send email from my different email accounts while replying.
Bing hasn’t been bad, for sure. Yahoo search again is somewhat painful. I do miss google search though!
my calendar woes continue. I’ve been using screen shots of my google calendar pages, but I know that some of the things I need to have in there (I’ve written them down somewhere, I know) are going to slip through the cracks. ah well.
2 more days, 2 more days.
Q: do we have to wait till AFTER class to go back to our googledrugs?
my boyfriend is sitting right next to me and watching hilarious youtube videos. argh! I asked him not to, and he’s like ‘go somewhere else, these are really funny’ and ‘do you want to watch this one? it’s really funny!’ so much for support! haha!
@Sava: Yes. Keep strong. It’s only 36 hours away.
today, I miss Google Scholar. is there anything comparable??!!
I’m actually closing out my third consecutive day of no Google. As I predicted, the toughest part for me was Google maps. I can actually function pretty well without the Omnigoogle, aside from that.
hanging out with friends reminiscing about all of the tripped out kids shows from the 80’s and searching for them on…youtube…d’oh!
gah. opened a tinyurl and it turned out to be a blogger site.
I have not wanted to watch youtube videos as much as I’ve wanted to this past week. forbidden fruit syndrome?
oh, and I used google translator today, and I knew I was being naughty *sheepish*
I got friends in town so i have been spending like, NO TIME on the Internet this week, so it hasn’t been too bad! Today however, I had to translate an article for my job and the image linked was to Google…so close!
I couldn’t help but look at this (the link doesn’t take you to youtube, don’t worry!), but it’s SO COOL! please check it out after tonight’s class =)
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