Enough of the Google Arrogance

I wrote in my previous post that I had reached Nirvana with Kontact and my Google accounts. Well, not so fast. I had to re-add my Google calendars and that triggered Google’s persistent security permission alerts again – every three hours! This time I couldn’t get them to stop. I tried everything I did before, rechecked everything, and exhausted Google’s online help system. I’m a Google One customer, so I chatted with their tech support. A very patient young lady worked the issue for almost an hour, but in the end had no answer. I filed a comment with the Google engineers, but remained frustrated by the persistent alerts. The email accounts still work fine, but not the calendars.

That was it for me. I only use two calendars – my personal one and a shared one with my wife for joint operations. They are both Google accounts. I determined to free myself from Google’s arrogant labeling of non-Google programs as “less secure apps.” The good news is that I already had the resources required.

I moved to a new website/email host, Hostway, earlier this year because of their superior inbound and outbound spam filtering. They also use Open-Xchange (OX) Suite for online access, which is pretty slick. I simply had to upgrade two of my email accounts to Collaboration level to get CalDav capability for their associated calendars.

For KDE and Kontact, I added my CalDav account to the Online Accounts. To obtain the CalDav link, I simply looked in the Properties on the OX web app. I then added my calendar to Kontact. I created the joint email account and shared that calendar with my email account. When Kontact put the primary account in the Calandar Management window, it included the shared calendar as well. So far, so good.

I then exported the contents of both Google calendars to .ics files, then imported them to their respective new homes in OX Suite online. It took a few minutes to import my larger calendar, but then all was golden. I disabled the two Google calendars in Kontact, and no more permission security alerts! After ensuring proper operation with the new setup, I deleted the Google calendars from Kontact.

That left the Android phones. Following the Hostway help page here, I added both my primary and the joint account as Exchange accounts. In the calendar app, I simply deselected the Google calendars and selected mine. Bingo! Piece of cake.

Now I have control of my calendars and associated security. We have full function access in Kontact on my desktop, web access on my Chromebook, and in the calendar app on our Androids. It isn’t free, but it’s not much and well worth it. I’m in control now.

We still use the Google accounts for some email, and they work fine for now. If that ever goes south, I can drop them in favor of my own email accounts on Hostway.

As the Who sang, “I’m free, and freedom tastes of reality.”