re-googling

content/log/2024/re-googling.md

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+---
+title: "I have successfully re-googled myself"
+date: 2024-10-09T20:59:43-04:00
+---
+
+It is quite common across tech folk (at least the ones that I speak of) to
+"de-google". I.e. get rid of Google (or, in general, big-corp) services. As you
+can imagine, after running, say, e-mail for 15+ years, the process (and the
+result) isn't fun.
+
+I got rid of my Gmail account in the Christmas of 2023, so about 10 months ago.
+The result was rewarding, but only because I felt "de-googled". It took just a
+few weeks to realize that it is not the end of it.
+
+# Reasons
+
+I moved from Google due to a few reasons:
+
+- Google Docs lost a couple of important documents. I did not take backups,
+  because I trusted it too much. Logic: if it can lose a few documents, it can
+  lose everything.
+- Privacy: I did not want to be scanned by "default" on every step of my
+  e-life.
+- Possible account shutdown: an automated system may shut down my personal
+  account due to a false-positive, and I will have no recourse. In that case, I
+  would lose both my e-mail address (`desired.mta@gmail.com` at the time) and
+  all the e-mails from the last 19 years.
+
+Due to all of the above, I decided to pull myself out of Google's environment.
+I have:
+
+- Moved all my email to [migradu](https://migadu.com). This went relatively
+  well and easily: control plane is good, the open-source/free e-mail clients
+  are reasonable. I settled with
+  [evolution](https://help.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/) and [k-9
+  mail](https://k9mail.app/) for the phone.
+- Moved all the personal photos & videos to a directory in my file system. I
+  lost all the things that I expected to lose:
+  - indexing by location.
+  - face recognition.
+  - any preview of photos that are 3+ months old on my phone. I was not
+    generally previewing old pictures on my phone, so it turned out OK.
+
+    I installed [photoprism](https://www.photoprism.app/) to a computer in my
+    closet, which allowed grouping by faces: face recognition was rather poor,
+    but better than nothing, and I was able to see thumbnails.
+- Google Docs: I downloaded all the interesting files as `*.xlsx` and `*.docx`
+  and put them to the file system. This was not a big change, because after
+  Google lost a few of the old documents, I was already suspicious and careful.
+- Calendar. Oh, calendar. It brought warm and fuzzy memories and it was
+  much, much harder to lose or replace than anything else.
+
+# The Calendar
+
+See, calendar is the problem and the thing I missed most dearly. For the last
+15 years I was used to Google auto-creating calendar events from the e-mail I
+had received. With migadu's IMAP (for email) and CalDav (for calendar), there
+was no integration between the two, and it is painful.
+
+Because calendar and e-mail applications are decoupled on the phone, if I add
+an event attendee, they will not receive an invitation. If you think about it,
+it is intuitive: why or how would [DAVx⁵](https://www.davx5.com/) e-mail to the
+meeting attendees? Of course it doesn't, because it's not an e-mail client,
+it's a synchronization tool.
+
+Calendar frustration got me back, for the better.
+
+# Status Quo
+
+I moved all my e-mail (again) from migadu.com to Google, under my personal
+domain. I use docs, e-mail and calendar now, all under `jakstys.lt`. I have
+decommissioned my e-mail address of teenage years (`desired.mta@gmail.com`) and
+haven't opened it in months.
+
+Pictures are self-hosted using [immich](https://immich.app/). I receive
+location indexing, facial recognition and a full-fledged mobile app. Can't ask
+for more.
+
+Having a calendar again is awesome.
+
+I did not figure out the e-mail backups yet, but I am hopeful I will get to
+them by the end of the year, when my migadu.com subscription ends.