
Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life - ra7
https://degoogle.jmoore.dev/
======
fossuser
I dropped all google services and it wasn’t that hard.

The most tedious part is moving accounts from your gmail to your new email (I
switched to using my own domain backed by fastmail).

Even with a password manager and a list of all my accounts this took me an
entire day. You also learn how terrible most non-software company account
management is.

On a lot of sites changing email is impossible. On some it lets you do it, but
doesn’t actually delete the old one on the backend so you get emails to both
(and it becomes impossible to turn off notifications on the old one).

One site couldn’t handle custom email domains, one site told me to create a
new account and ignore the old one. One site changed my email, but still makes
me login with my old email as the user, etc.

I ended up using an alias for the less trustworthy sites and filing as many
CCPA requests as I could to the companies to delete accounts (naturally the
sites bad about accounts are bad about this too).

The only google service that is really relevant and hard to replace is
YouTube. I plan to delete my old google account and have a fresh one with
everything turned off that I only use for YouTube.

Other than that though, it’s been a lot simpler than I thought it would be.
Google is starting to feel like Yahoo to me, a company without clear vision or
purpose.

They better hope their ad revenue doesn’t decay.

~~~
submeta
Same here: Migrated all my gmail accounts to Fastmail. Took me two days.
Migrated Google Docs to Dropbox. And replaced Google Sheets and Doc with a
Microsoft subscription (MS Word and MS Excel).

Then there‘s the search engine. I tried hard to replace Google Search with
DDG, but I have to admit that Google gives me better search results. Still I
would love to leave this also behind.

Finally there is youtube for me. Ain‘t no alternative I know about.

It‘s hard to leave google completely behind.

Edit: Replaced Chrome first with Safari, then with Firefox and never looked
back.

Edit 2: Moved all my photos from Google‘s cloud solution to iCloud when I
migrated from Android to iDevices.

Edit 3: Fastmail (although a rather smallish company) do a phantastic job with
their mail service. Their contact management and calendar are also superb.
Fastmail + MailMate on MacOS are a dream-team.

~~~
the_af
Out of curiosity, what's the benefit of replacing Google Docs with Dropbox? I
seem to remember HN's readership is occasionally hostile to Dropbox. Myself, I
use it but the same drive that would have me ditch Google would also make me
ditch Dropbox... (I haven't reached that point, though)

~~~
submeta
My first impulse was to move away from everything google. I don‘t know much
about any wrong-doings of Dropbox. Maybe I need to do some research.

~~~
gurkendoktor
This did it for me: [https://www.drop-dropbox.com/](https://www.drop-
dropbox.com/)

But if it hadn't, then probably this: [https://help.dropbox.com/installs-
integrations/sync-uploads/...](https://help.dropbox.com/installs-
integrations/sync-uploads/filesystem-integration)

Dropbox was such a great and conceptually simple tool, having a kernel
extension for smarter syncing feels like a step into Enterprise lala land.

~~~
rootsudo
Interesting, thanks for the link!

~~~
the_af
Of particular interest, if you're someone who's ditching Google services out
of concern about privacy issues, is that Condoleezza Rice voiced support for
warrantless wiretaps during Bush Jr's administration, and was also involved
(to what degree is debatable) with the authorization to use "enhanced
interrogation techniques" (aka torture). Whatever you personally think about
these issues, if you're concerned about privacy, that she is in Dropbox's
board of directors should be a big red flag.

~~~
rootsudo
Agreed, 100%.

I also wondered why she dropped out of public for a while, for current events.

------
throwaway5752
If only Google were my 10th biggest problem. Try to get Exxon, Shell, et al
out of your life who aren't violating abstract principles but are literally
killing the planet. Then let me get unethically farmed or raised foods out of
my life (which, thanks to the US preoccupation with corn and the nitrogen it
requires, are frequently overlapping with petroleum). Then let me get Oracle
and Microsoft out of my life. Then let me get the Murdoch empire out of my
life. Then let me get Facebook out of my life. Then let me buy a consumer good
that isn't designed for obsolescence. Then let me get intermediate middlemen
in the healthcare system in the US out of my life. Then I'll take an eye at
Google.

~~~
twicetwice
Why Microsoft over Facebook and Google? Recently I've been thinking that MS is
the FAMGAN/whatever that I'd be most willing to work for, so I'm interested to
hear your case.

~~~
throwaway5752
Because I saw how they behaved in the 90s, see how much passive telemetry they
collect with their share of the OS market, how much they push Windows logins
with antipatterns, and because they own Github (when now controls npm).

edit: Let me say some nice things about them. I put them towards the end for a
reason, and they probably don't belong with Oracle. I don't think they are a
big problem in the world, if at all. They aren't the company they were in the
90s. Gates has become one of the worlds most staggeringly successful
humanitarians because of his direct effort and indirectly from the giving
pledge, and it has redeemed him many times over again. Nadella seems like a
decent person and truly great executive, and they have improved enormously as
a company under him. I would probably work for them. But I don't have any
problem with Google, either. What Microsoft does have is a vastly greater
potential for abuse.

------
freediver
I genuinly wonder - what does go through the heads of those 100,000 very smart
people that work at Google, many of them reading this forum, when they read a
thread like this? Do they think 'oh it is HN again', do they discard this as
irrelevant noise, do they know something that all the people posting here
don't, do they still strongly believe in their mission, or do they get a gut-
wrenching feeling that one day it may be all over? If you work at Google,
please throw in your 2c.

~~~
faanghacker
I'm just stashing cash until I reach FIRE. Don't care about the mission.

~~~
FBISurveillance
Realpolitik.

------
kej
I like the irony of hosting this site on a Google-operated TLD.

~~~
techsupporter
Especially one that Google weren't even going to let the rest of us use (an
entire "generic" top-level domain to use as a globally-routable in-house
domain...) and only capitulated after it seemed like the pressure on ICANN
might cause them to Do Something About That.

~~~
judge2020
Have context? Algolia search isn't working well for me, or I don't know which
keywords would lead me to the story.

~~~
techsupporter
Here's a story from The Reg in 2015:
[https://www.theregister.com/2015/03/13/google_developer_gtld...](https://www.theregister.com/2015/03/13/google_developer_gtld_domain_icann/)

They quote from Google's application for .dev in 2013: "The proposed gTLD will
provide Google with direct association to the term 'dev', which is an
abbreviation of the word 'development'. The mission of this gTLD, .dev, is to
provide a dedicated domain space in which Google can enact second-level
domains specific to its projects in development."

Google finally opened it to registration in 2019, four years later:
[https://www.theregister.com/2019/02/21/google_launches_dev/](https://www.theregister.com/2019/02/21/google_launches_dev/)

(Google also added .dev to the HSTS preload list so browsers expect names in
that domain to only be reachable via HTTPS, thus breaking in-house uses of
.dev.)

~~~
SahAssar
> (Google also added .dev to the HSTS preload list so browsers expect names in
> that domain to only be reachable via HTTPS, thus breaking in-house uses of
> .dev.)

Anyone using .dev for that was already broken per the spec. There are TLDs for
those cases, they are .test, .local and .invalid.

------
neilv
That's what I'd consider way too many extensions. For one reason, browser
extensions with user bases sometimes get sold to malware/spyware companies, so
even if they started out as good for you, they can become very bad for you,
without you knowing. (There's a few browser extensions I'd be surprised if
ever got sold, like uBlock Origin, but I don't know as much about most of the
rest of them.)

Another thign to be aware of is that unusual combinations of filtering and
other privacy-seeking behavior on the Web is usually detectable, and can
permit you to be fingerprinted better than if you'd been using more common
combinations. Though presumably most parties don't care enough to put the work
into detecting that, I'd guess some subsets of users probably are targeted for
at least experiments in this regard, such as Tor users. (I have this "problem"
myself now, since I've been building a training/familiarization set of 10K+
Web request filtering rules, which I dogfood with uBlock Origin in Tor
Browser, and the set is pretty unique to me. If I cared more about my
immediate personal privacy, rather than on ongoing understanding of practical
Web privacy&security, I wouldn't do all that counterproductive work, but would
instead pick some popular stock stuff to run.)

~~~
neop1x
It is pretty bad that they started Degoogle page with largely Google-unrelated
privacy-focused extensions which break websites and sometimes do more harm
than good. For example ClearURLs by default disables ETag header which is very
important for caches to work. Yes, ETag can be used for tracking but there are
many many more ways to "track" people and many definitions of tracking,
installing such extensions won't fully protect them from all kinds of
tracking. Instead, by installing extensions like this people end up with lots
of websites broken and slow browsing experience and blame Firefox for lagging
and unresponsiveness. How do I know? I have gone through all this. And I ended
with only a few extensions - uBlock Origin, Neat URL, I don't care about
cookies, ViolentMonkey, Stylus, Cookiebro, User agent switcher.

I especially don't recommend ClearURLs, Privacy Badger, Decentralays. Users or
these are begging for problems [1]. Look at how bloated their code is. Prefer
smaller extensions focusing on one thing only.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/g2dett/firefox_75_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/g2dett/firefox_75_slow_with_many_tabs_browser_issue_or/)

------
awestroke
The list of alternatives just makes me lose hope of cutting out Google. They
are lightyears ahead of the alternatives in so many categories.

~~~
chongli
I use DDG for search full time and I’ve found that I need to use !g less and
less often. For the times I do use !g I am finding myself increasingly
disappointed in the results. I think Google is losing the war against
spamdexing [1] and I think the search industry is ripe for disruptive
innovation.

I have seen and participated in a number of discussions here on HN about the
potential for a new search engine that eliminates a lot of spam and commercial
sites to allow users to find small sites made by real people, just like in the
early days of the web. I hope it’s not just a nostalgic impulse. I’m going to
investigate it myself after I graduate.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamdexing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamdexing)

 _Edit: forgot to add the link for [1]_

~~~
actuator
Even after using DDG for the last 5-6 years, I find myself always using !g
with it. So much that, it has become a muscle memory thing and sometimes I
type it involuntarily.

Sure, if I just care about US specific results and I am doing an exact term
search or maybe StackOverflow result is my target, DDG comes close but Google
gets context of things much better. I keep finding much better search results
that had more context with my search. I don't know how to quantify/measure
this but to me Google Search is still much better.

~~~
maps7
> it has become a muscle memory thing and sometimes I type it involuntarily.

Same. I sometimes even type '!g' into Google itself by mistake

~~~
jabirali
I ended up with the same muscle memory. That’s why I eventually just switched
to StartPage.com instead, which is basically a Google proxy.

------
7tsfmCAusrQ
I would love to see a similar list for de-Apple-ing. Apple's anticompetitive
and monopolistic practices with the App Store, the terrible direction MacBooks
have taken, its price gouging on hardware... the list goes on. Google is
saintly by comparison.

~~~
afro88
There's no need for a list. To de-Apple, in the context of those 3 examples,
is to not buy or use Apple hardware. That's it.

Apple is saintly by comparison.

~~~
tgvaughan
Apologies for running slightly off topic, but there's another way to look at
this. The fact that Apple services like FaceTime and iMessage are restricted
to Apple hardware means that those of us who haven't bought into this
ecosystem encounter a fair amount of pressure to do so. So I think Apple's
"saintly" behaviour is also self-serving.

------
flanbiscuit
Personally I'm not looking to stop using their services completely but I am
trying to make sure they can't cripple my life by locking me out of my Google
account. The chance is low because I haven't personally released anything on
any of their platforms or don't depend on any service of theirs for my
livelihood, I'm just your normal passive Google user.

My plan:

\- use a custom domain for my email (actually done this already)

\- switch to Fastmail instead of Gmail

\- update all services I have signed up for

\- remove any important docs off of Google drive and either switch to sync.com
(they have E2E encryption) or use syncthing

\- I've already started using syncthing to sync my keepassxc DB between all my
devices

\- start monthly backups of the rest of my Google drive but still continue to
use it (this includes all my Google Photos as well) onto a local NAS (which I
have yet to buy, suggestions welcome)

\- I've already switched to FireFox on both desktop and Android as my main
browser but I still use Chrome as well, just more for work

I still plan on using Google products but I just want to make sure if they go
away or if their algorithm mistakingly decides one day that I've violated
something and locks me out without recourse that I'm not totally screwed.

------
plexiglas
Several months ago I took small steps towards this direction.

It started with downloading Firefox on desktop and web. I love Firefox mobile.
It's performant and supports multiple tabs. Also comes in Dark Mode.

Next came email, which was difficult. I'm still transitioning. Protonmail was
my pick because of the price point and ProtonCalendar (currently in beta).
Gmail and Gcal are deeply integrated and wanted an alternative that could
offer a similar experience. The only con here is that ProtonCalendar is web
only (please support on mobile soon, Protonmail!).

Duckduckgo is a solid search alternative. Results are quality. Between these
services, browsing is a joy again.

~~~
efreak
The easiest, laziest way to remove google from your life is too simply stop
using services as they shut them down. Instead of transferring from play music
to YouTube music (play music is shutting down sometime after October,
according to an email I got yesterday), I'm looking at setting up funkwhale or
some other self-hosted music service (maybe just nextcloud? Not sure yet).

------
dt3ft
I read a story where someone lost access to their google account and had to go
through living hell to get the access back. Reaching a human for support was
outright impossible.

Privacy was not that big a deal for me, but if I had lost access to my email
for any reason, I would have had zero rights to demand what is mine - because
nothing is really mine, as I have never paid for the service, so I was never a
customer to begin with.

I moved off gmail last year after using it since 2004 (I remember getting an
invite and using the service even before it was launched).

~~~
chapium
Recovering a gmail account is pretty impossible, at least that story had a
happy ending.

~~~
jackson1442
I mean honestly, I don't mind that as long as it isn't a problem concerning
recovering your account after an account takeover. If a potential hijacker
can't get into my account through social engineering, great.

~~~
chapium
Why have account recovery at all then?

------
wintorez
I tried. I failed. I returned. Google is like Gravity. It would be awesome to
escape it, but it’s expensive, impractical, and sooner or later, you will be
back where you where. :(

~~~
nuker
> Google is like Gravity.

Great comment :) What beats one body gravity is bigger body's gravity. I
escaped to Apple few years ago, except search. Safari should have custom
search engine setting, though. Is it missing because of the deal with Google
for default engine?

~~~
wintorez
My solution is to put my eggs in different baskets as much as possible. Using
Chrome on iPhone, backups on Dropbox, etc. Although to be fair, not a lot of
baskets has remained these days.

~~~
nuker
You think that all baskets are equally bad, hence the approach to separate
data. I say follow the money. Apple gets its money from consumers buying
devices, Google from businesses buying ads, MS from businesses, buying MS
because, well...

Now, who has the best incentive to protect consumer's data?

------
aj_nikhil
I have been using Duck duck go for few months now. Never missed Google. Slowly
I will shift other services as well. It's a matter of societal good that we
degoogle. Else Google will become strongest company ever created by mankind.

~~~
e40
I've been using DDG for more than a year. Just switched back a day or two ago.
I just got sick of the terrible results. I don't know if Google got better or
DDG/Bing got worse. A few months ago I started comparing search results and
the Google ones where better and the other day I just couldn't handle doing
double searches anymore.

Really sad to me that it came to this.

~~~
exlurker
You can !g google in DDG when you need to. I often have to do, and hopefully
DDG picks this up and improves their search.

------
aftbit
Google Voice is the hardest service for me to replace. I don't see any
alternatives on this list. I appreciate that they let me seamlessly send and
receive calls and texts from my Android phone or my desktop. I have a hard
requirement that my phone should be optional for all parts of my communication
workflow.

~~~
Zak
Google Voice also works if you have internet access, but not mobile network
connectivity, and it works while overseas to provide a fully-functional US
phone number (you do have to use a standard paid US mobile number to set it
up, but do not need to retain it afterward).

~~~
efreak
> you do have to use a standard paid US mobile number to set it up, but do not
> need to retain it afterward

If someone else registers Google voice with that number, you're going to have
a hard time. It'll be removed from your account, and you can't use Google
voice without a US phone number.

~~~
beagle3
Don't know if it is still the case, but for $25 one time fee (much less than
one month of average phone bill) you could port your number into Google Voice,
and keep it forever, at least until Google shutters Google Voice (which they
likely won't, because it's _such_ an incredible spying device).

------
petjuh
Am I the only one left in the world who actually likes Google and has a
positive opinion of them?

I remember switching from AltaVista to Google and thinking they're much
better. I remember a friend forwarding me an invitation to join GMail on its
first beta day and how impressed I was with the 2.2 GB storage. I remember
switching to Google Chrome when I read about its beta release on Slashdot. It
was much faster than Firefox.

Personally, the company I loved to hate was Microsoft, and for me Google was
the good guy.

Question to those who hate Google - are you old or young? Have you used the
Internet in the 90s, before Google came? Have you used email where you lose
your emails once you exceed the 20MB capacity, and you need to pay money to
increase it? Have you used Internet Explorer because it was everywhere?

Have you seen what Google replaced?

~~~
patd
Most of your positives are more than 10 years old. In the meantime they've
remove the "Don't be evil" motto, their Android/Chromebook support is very
short lived, they've killed countless services people relied on, ...

I don't think Google is evil like Microsoft was in the 90s but I don't blindly
trust them as I might have done in the past.

~~~
Crash0v3rid3
It's really sad how much this misinformation gets spread...

Don't be evil is literally the last line of their code of conduct:
[https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-
conduct/](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/)

~~~
volongoto
Yes, but it is no longer their "motto" (the guiding principle for the
company). So, it appearing in the CoC does not mean that it's the guiding
principle.

But I think you are raising a good point. Why is this piece of
"misinformation" being spread so much? What do you think? I think it is
because it corresponds to people's experience with Google: "an entity once
liked by the users and did good deeds has quit doing those." So, it may be
"misinformation" as you put it, but I don't think it bears no value.

~~~
Crash0v3rid3
No longer their motto? Can you please provide a source?

"Why is this piece of "misinformation" being spread so much? What do you
think?"

Because of multiple articles spreading this misinformation a few years back,
for example:

"Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code of Conduct" \-
[https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-
do...](https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-
from-1826153393)

Then the article literally mentions at the end that it's still in the code of
conduct...terrible reporting from multiple outlets.

~~~
volongoto
What sort of a source do you need? Is Google's current slogan/motto still
"Don't be evil"?

~~~
Crash0v3rid3
You said in your last comment: "Yes, but it is no longer their "motto" (the
guiding principle for the company)."

Where exactly did you read that?

------
M0r13n
Dont just drop Google and switch to another large company or service. Take the
chance and set up your own infrastructure!

One reason why our web became so successful is Decentralization. But, in
recent years I feel like we are heading to more and more centralized web,
where only a few big companies control the entire ecosystem. Take email and
instant messaging as an example. Everybody can maintain it's own, independent
mail service, but everybody can still communicate with each other. On the
other hand there are very few messaging services that are totally incompatible
to each other. Depending on where you live, you might only use iMessage,
Whatsapp or WeChat. Even tough it may be technically possible to use other
services like Signal or Threema, you are most definitively going to experience
a lot inconveniences. In my personal bubble only very few use these apps and
as if that were not enough, these few users are also distributed across a wide
variety of different services. If it were like mail, everybody could use
his/her preferred messaging system and still talk to each other.

Thats only one example and I dont want our web to be like Whatsapp in a few
years from now. So I encourage everybody to try and use his own
infrastructure. You are also going to learn quite a bit while doing so.

If you are unsure about where to start, here is a nice list of awesome self
hosted services, that are relatively easy to deploy:
[https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-
selfhosted](https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted)

~~~
StreamBright
>> Take email and instant messaging as an example. Everybody can maintain it's
own, independent mail service, but everybody can still communicate with each
other.

It is easier said than to be done. I was hosting my own email for a long time
and with the current state of play it is not as easy to provide the same UX as
Gmail or Outlook. Even AWS struggles to provide an email solution that is
worth switching over.

~~~
M0r13n
Yes, thats definitely right. But you could also switch to a paid service, that
is caring about you and your data. Then you still need to trust that service
and the people behind it, but it may be better than Google and co. I use
Protonmail with a custom domain (my name) for example. I pay a few dollars
every year, but in return I get state-of-the-art encryption for all my mails,
data protection, more privacy and I also trust the people behind it.

------
tarasmatsyk
Perfect timing, was just about to start migration.

My plan so far: \- Gmail -> Fastmail + custom domain \- GDrive -> Nextcloud +
openoffice (it's really nice, includes notes and libreoffice) \- Chrome ->
Firefox (FF made a tremendous progress in last 5 years) \- Google ->
DuckDuckGo

No disrespect to Google, the whole platform is very convenient, but it's going
to be a fun experiment to use services that are dedicated to one goal (email-
only, storage-only b2, search only etc)

The only one I look to stop spending time at is YouTube, hard to replace,
however bloggers have to start protecting their value and own their things.

------
helij
I use Zoho mainly for email but some other services as well. I like it very
much but it cannot rival G suite or Office365 yet. Website states that it can
though so their experience might be different. Text editor and spreadsheet app
are way slower than both Google and Microsoft solutions.

------
nickelpro
Genuinely, why should I care? What harm is likely to happen to my life by
sticking with Google, a service provider I find convenient?

EDIT: I don't want to be accused of fan-boying or astro-turfing. I just see
"Avoid Big Company X because they collect your data" a lot and I just can't
give a damn about companies collecting my data. Be my guest, if it means I get
free stuff. My data is boring tech nerd data, use it to deliver relevant
vacuum cleaner ads, I don't care. I block them anyway.

~~~
strangescript
People have been raising flags about this for literally decades now and the
other shoe has yet to drop in any kind of meaningful way. Everyone is tracking
you online, but for some reason we only care about it when its companies that
make good products that we like to use. Would you rather they not target you
with ads and sell google searches for a nickel each? Meanwhile, I had an ad in
my gmail yesterday for Google Fi, sign up today, its super easy! Except I
already have google fi. Google's ad service literally couldn't check my gmail
account against google fi accounts (apparently).

~~~
pydry
>People have been raising flags about this for literally decades now and the
other shoe has yet to drop in any kind of meaningful way.

The threat model I work off is "fascist government seizes power in the United
States and sequesters all data for all citizens from the top 15 large
corporations". Then they get to work weeding out undesirables. This would
happen, I'd estimate, in the space of about a month although if history is
anything to go by, the signs will have been flashing for a while.

You could just switch at that point, I suppose, and hope that something in the
last 15 years of emails, chats, your entire contact network and your location
history doesn't incriminate you along with the fact that you _just_ switched.

~~~
gkoberger
Sure, but if that happens... I think we're fucked either way?

I think any providers would be just as susceptible (maybe more so; Google
ostensibly has the means to protect data, legally and technologically), and
your data would already be on Google's servers unless you only emailed or
chatted with other non-Google users.

~~~
pydry
No, you're not fucked either way. In fact, if you're white, middle class, etc.
you're probably better off than most and will be given the most leeway.

If your data on google/facebook/microsoft/amazon servers is kept to the bare
minimum (& kept innocuous), if you self host and if you keep your data on
smaller services your chances of getting caught up in a dragnet operation are
minimized. Your chances of having an elevated "risk" score because of some
stray data point (e.g. some people you emailed once, or some guy's house you
visited) is minimized.

They're not going to keep track of everybody personally, but they will be
running machine learning models all up and down every data point you left to
pick out anything suspicious.

~~~
granzymes
Or they go after the people who have tried to hide themselves ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.

I think this is a very odd thing to structure a life around, but then again
I've never understood any kind of doomsday prepping.

~~~
AndrewThrowaway
I totally agree with you because things just don't work like that.

When Nazis came my grand father was a teenager. A lot of local chads believed
in them and joined SS and did all the dirty work. Then when soviets came these
chads were afraid that they will be prosecuted for murdering Jews so they did
the only logical thing - joined soviet milicija. What basically made them
untouchable.

My grand father's brother ran away to US. These local chads then could
"prosecute" all the family for "joining partisan movement". It was not soviets
from Moscow that were counting every head. It was local supporters who knew
each other from the high school. If there was some brother missing in family,
they could send all the family to gulags, take over the land, take over houses
by accusing family joining partisans. So my grand father spent his teenage
years hiding in neighboring villages.

It is not Google who will give you out. They will have upper hand if anything
because they are big and etc.

It will be your employer who will comply. It will be your local mailman (what
was all these packages you were receiving from China?). It will be your
neighbor who likes to shoot guns and doesn't like you for one reason or
another.

What people should understand that this "fascist government" will be sitting
in DC. They will not be sending somebody from DC to Minnesota because "someguy
at gmail dot com" wrote something against them. How inefficient that would be.
It will be local people who will be supporting "the new great government". And
they have much more compromising information about you than your emails.

When the doomsday comes you will not be hiding your baked beans in your bunker
from zombies. It will be your neighbor whose three kids are starving. Or just
your other neighbor who likes guns and to eat. And he is hungry, pretty hungry
right now.

~~~
pydry
>What people should understand that this "fascist government" will be sitting
in DC. They will not be sending somebody from DC to Minnesota because "someguy
at gmail dot com" wrote something against them. How inefficient that would be.

It'll be easy as pie. The data is there in an easily consumable format. The
tools exist to categorize and find undesirables. Tools exist which can be used
to rank you in terms of desirability.

DC won't sent somebody to Minnesota because of what you wrote in a gmail
alone. However, what you wrote in gmails would likely contribute to a "social
scoring system" which would be used against you.

~~~
AndrewThrowaway
I both agree and disagree with you at the same time.

Yes, social scoring would be easy to implement. However for it to work you
would need critical mass of people believing in it.

If you live in Minnesota and somebody in DC says that your score is low you
can kinda just ignore it.

When you local milkman stops selling you milk because of it, then things get
dark.

However your local milkman can already have "a score" for you which is even
worse than that one from DC. E.g. not selling you milk because you are gay or
have a green mohawk.

HN attracts specific technical audience who tends to see things from very
technical (hard, logical) point of view. However what I want to stress here
are "softer" things - how society works, how people interact, how they sell
out, what they want to achieve with this etc. It is much harder to define and
is much scarier TBH.

It might be a good idea to be nice to your neighbors, demonstrate only mild
opinions, basically just "hide in a gray mass of people" before you start
setting up your own email servers, degoogle yourself and etc if you are
thinking about fascist government taking over.

For technology or corporations to betray you, you most probably be betrayed by
society before that.

~~~
pydry
>If you live in Minnesota and somebody in DC says that your score is low you
can kinda just ignore it.

Did you ask the Chinese citizens in Chongqing if they can "just ignore" their
social score coz they're not in Beijing?

The answer may surprise.

~~~
AndrewThrowaway
My thought is that if fascist government takes over, Minnesota at first would
be something like Hong Kong. It is not like social scoring could/would happen
overnight. At first you would need a lot of people to believe in it, a lot of
people to support it and etc.

I understand that things would not so simple of course.

My main message is that technology is only a tool, it is still people, society
doing the act.

------
blendergeek
If a company is based in an "X eyes" nation", but the product is A) self-
hosted and B) open source, does it matter that the organization the develops
it is based in an "X eyes" nation?

~~~
petronio
The risk is much lesser, but there's the possibility of poisoning the binaries
or release package.

There's also the whole "just because open source allows people to review code
doesn't mean that they do" problem, but I don't expect that attack vector to
be used by state actors because it would make the beneficiary of the attack
too obvious to the public.

------
aitchnyu
I never considered a Gmail alternative since Gmail has
primary/social/promotion/updates tabs and proper threading of replies and
almost perfect spam protection. What services do the above things as good?

~~~
sosborn
I’m with you on the SPAM protection, but I find the tabs and threading to be
god awful.

~~~
ehsankia
Tabs work flawlessly for me. It takes a little bit of time to get used to what
goes where, and you can only use a subset of them, but in general, I love
promotional emails being separate, so i can unsubscribe from them all in one
place, that's my favorite.

------
EduardoBautista
Does a service being part of the “5-eyes” really mean anything? I mean, this
list makes it sound like being in China is a better alternative than being in
Canada.

~~~
vmception
No, it doesn’t.

There was a time period where people were trying to use/put services in
Iceland or Switzerland because they weren’t part of a known default sharing
arrangement and people completely relied on poor interpretations of laws
acting like the government took a completely hands off approach to data. The
reality is that absent a treaty, these places can all choose respond to
foreign warrants and often times do.

China and Russia being notably separate from the rest of the world, and also
large areas.

~~~
SahAssar
> The reality is that absent a treaty, these places can all choose respond to
> foreign warrants and often times do.

The question shouldn't be if they "can" the question should be if they "can be
forced to and be legally required not to disclose it".

There is a reason American companies have tried to hack around the law with
warrant canaries.

~~~
vmception
In your mind, how was the last paragraph relevant to the other country thing?

But the answer is yes they can be forced, absolutely. All countries have more
to lose with the US (not that there is an ideological line in the sand,
countries willingly cooperate with FBI, which is instructed by Congress to
handle foreign investigations as well) and this is exactly what has played out
in case after case after case.

------
Santosh83
The _real_ promise of the semiconductor revolution which made it simple for
almost every human being to literally own computing machines which are more
powerful than supercomputers of a few decades back is the promise of entirely
owning ALL your data and performing your own computations locally and merely
communicating with other peers by means of dumb pipes.

Just changing from Google to N does nothing towards this goal, and we're now
even further away from the promise of a decentralised Internet than ever
before I believe.

Wake me up when a non-tech user can spin up an email server the same way they
can open a browser and and send emails to any other person on the net. And
with phones being powered on 24x365, one would think the dream of being a home
server would be easier than ever...

But of course this way promises no money/profit for businesses in general. Or
at least less so, since vendor-lock in and data monetisation would be much
more difficult if not impossible.

------
_emacsomancer_
Organising contributions about de-googling on a Microsoft platform seems
rather like out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire to me.

------
CameronNemo
I am currently running a degoogled Android phone. Hardest part has been
mapping -- OsmAnd lacks many points of interest as well as Los Angeles street
numbers. I am not looking forward to having to go by cross streets and looking
up points of interest in a separate app (Acastus Photon).

~~~
carlinmack
if you don't already, contributing to OpenStreetMap from your phone is easy
and feels very rewarding. I recommend StreetComplete for beginners and OSM Go!
once you want to start editing features

~~~
aembleton
I can't find osm go! on the play store. Have you got a link?

------
zelly
The author of this should start with the root name server for his domain

~~~
simplehuman
Rome wasn't built in a day. Take small steps at a time, nothing wrong with it.

~~~
hu3
That is a really small step to have missed.

------
tzfld
All these self-hosted platforms would definitely not help an average person in
de-googling himself. And these are like 99% of the users.

~~~
simplehuman
So there is no room in this world for niche products?

------
loph
I use duckduckgo for search, I have the DuckDuckGo privacy extensions
installed in Chrome, along with EFF Privacy Badger. I'm not that worried about
Google.

I did de-facebook myself. IMHO Facebook is far more invasive, far more harmful
than Google.

~~~
coronadisaster
> I'm not that worried about Google.

doesn't look like it since you are using Chrome...

------
marianov
Android google maps is what keeps me going back to Google. No other service
has all local shops, phone numbers, schedules, etc.

------
playpause
I switched from Gmail to using my own domain via ProtonMail. I persisted about
6 months with its terrible UX. Tried Mailfence next, same problem, lived with
piss-poor UX for a few months before giving up. (I used Mailfence mainly with
Apple Mail via IMAP, which was OK, but I frequently had to log in to their web
interface to tweak settings etc, and it’s awful.)

Looked at a few others, but my need for a reasonable UX pushed me back to
Gmail last year, this time with my own domain on G Suite (I figured paying a
fee means I’m marginally better protected from account lockouts and other
Google shenanigans, and at least I can take the domain with me when I leave).
It’s so nice not to be constantly battling with email these days. But... in
the back of my mind I do still want to get my email off Google. For privacy,
control, and because I think getting off other Google services will be easier
after that.

If I’m going to put the effort into switching again, I feel it might as well
be to a somewhat privacy-focused email service (preferably not located in
Australia or any jurisdiction that could force the company to break their own
privacy guarantees without telling me). It doesn’t need to replicate Gmail’s
feature set perfectly — I’m willing to put time into learning a whole
different approach to email if necessary, but only if the UX/design is
coherent and inspires confidence. Has anyone with similar requirements got any
recommendations?

~~~
lowkeyokay
So the argument here seems to be: ‘I want to ditch google because of privacy
concerns but, I will not compromise on usability’. Bad UI should not be that
hard but google has many popular feature because they can analyse user data.

I hear the same argument with search and maps. Yes, DDG and Apple maps is not
quite as good as Google’s. But, if you want privacy you will have to sacrifice
something. Google has so many resources to put into their core product. Off
course they will be better. And they use user data for some features which
privacy focused companies just can’t provide. You just can’t have it all.

~~~
playpause
I’m not making any argument. I’m stating my personal needs and asking if
anyone has any recommendations so I can move off Gmail.

Edit: I’m OK to sacrifice some UX quality btw, just not as much of a sacrifice
as ProtonMail and Mailfence. And my love of Gmail’s UX has little to do with
any creepy features that rely on data or fancy algorithms. It’s mostly stuff
that any competitor could offer. Coherent design language across platforms,
and generally well designed features that don’t compromise between flexibility
and ease of use.

------
SllX
There are plenty of YouTube alternatives if you’re looking to just host a
video somewhere; but if you’re looking to grow an audience or have eclectic
tastes, then there is not a reasonable alternative to YouTube yet. You can
have every single other video service’s app on your iPad or Apple TV or
bookmarked in your browsers and all of them combined will not match the
selection and breadth and discoverability of YouTube. They’ve had some
controversies and even personally annoyed me a few times, but YouTube is still
one of the web’s jewels.

------
y2bd
Any recommendations for email providers that support wildcard addresses (e.g.
I can just give someone foobarbaz@y2bd.email without having manually set it up
beforehand and it works)? I currently use ProtonMail which does support this,
but PM is still lacking in terms of usability. I looked at some of the other
well-known mail providers and was surprised to see that this wasn’t as
supported as I’d expect (or, at least, they don’t prominently advertise this
in their docs).

~~~
itzael
Fastmail supports regex and wildcards off the top of my head, as I have them
set up with my own personal domain. My financial accounts for example are in
the format of “bank+xxxxx@domain.tld”

~~~
y2bd
Do you know if they’re required to use the +alias format? I’ve been burnt in
the past by bad contact forms silently stripping out special characters out of
email addresses.

~~~
y2bd
Verified for myself that it does, thanks! Given how popular FM is I don't know
why I missed this prior.

------
fareesh
Toughest ones for me would be Search, Android, YouTube. The rest should be
easy enough.

------
nrev
It’s interesting to see this as #1 just now. It’s a little tangential, I’ve
actually been doing a lot of researching on the recent changes to Search and
fallout that users have reported + some further research into my own anecdotal
change in experience of Search results for the better part of the day; plus
it’s something I’ve been researching on and off since the beginning of 2020
when I noticed a significant change in the quality of search results I was
getting (I.e. trying to search for web pages, published resources that I know
are on the web and that I’ve located with Search, prior, and unfortunately,
having a harder time with that. Plus there’s some other UI/UX changes in that
time frame, too). That said, I have essentially come to the conclusion that I
need to pivot away from Search and find/use one of the other search engines or
risk further diminishing return within a number of research tasks. :(

~~~
drivebycomment
Do you have examples for "trying to search for web pages, published resources
that I know are on the web and that I’ve located with Search, prior, and
unfortunately, having a harder time with that" ?

------
Yc4win
If anyone is struggling to replace specifically Google's search, may you check
out SearX. It's FOSS, ability to self-host, no-logs, and does a wonderful job
if you have set it up correctly.

A working instance to test before hosting your own:
[https://searx.info](https://searx.info)

Let me know how you liked it.

------
manigandham
My biggest usage is Chrome profiles. I use several for various personal and
work accounts which means passwords, history, extensions, open sessions, and
everything else are all nicely contained under separate Chrome windows.

Nothing else comes close to this kind of convenience and UX, and it's more
secure since accounts are not co-mingled.

~~~
iimblack
That sounds the same as Firefox profiles, plus Firefox has containers for more
sectioning of data within a profile. Is there something Chrome has here that
Firefox doesn’t?

~~~
manigandham
Chrome profiles avoids having to create another (Firefox) account to manage
the sync and data. Also Chrome has an easy menu for switching profiles and
creates desktop/taskbar shortcuts for them. Firefox requires going to the
about:profiles settings page to manage them. Also chrome profiles are
integrated with G-Suite including security and organization settings.

Overall Chrome's version is just smoother and easier to use compared to
Firefox. Mozilla should add better UI/menus and SSO for Firefox Accounts to
get closer.

~~~
commoner
Unlike Chrome profiles, multiple Firefox containers can be used in the same
window. Containers are different from profiles:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-
account...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-account-
containers/)

Containers are also extensible through add-ons. For example, the following two
add-ons automatically isolate Facebook and Google into separate containers to
reduce the impact of their tracking:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-
cont...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-container/)

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-
contai...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-container/)

Temporary Containers goes further by allowing the user to create disposable
containers either automatically or on demand:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-
con...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/)

Firefox's two-tier approach (profiles and containers) to data isolation is
much more flexible than Chrome's profiles. Containers handle many common use
cases (e.g. logging on to the same site with multiple accounts
simultaneously), and are very easy to use.

~~~
manigandham
I don't want to mix usages in the same window though. The container features
are nice, but they don't make up for the fact that Firefox profiles are still
harder to use in general.

------
amelius
I wonder why more big corporations don't ban Google.

Through search alone, Google knows exactly what other big corporations are up
to (perhaps even better than the corporations know themselves). That is
something that should scare companies. I know GMail has been banned for this
reason in a lot of places, but search is just as important.

------
flurdy
I also blogged a fortnight ago about the same degoogling process.
[https://blog.flurdy.com/2020/08/degoogling.html](https://blog.flurdy.com/2020/08/degoogling.html)

My problem as I mention is that I am at the same time regoogling...

~~~
dorchadas
Yep. I'd love to degoogle my personal stuff, but my work stuff has to be
Google (I'm a teacher, and all our stuff is run through Google). Plus, my
university alumni account is through Google, which would be annoying to change
as that's how I've gotten in touch with a lot of useful contacts I've made.

------
major505
In the process of doing the same Gmail -> Kolabnow

Android -> Iphone (more expensive, but can last longer with reasonable user
experience and I can resell for better prices)

Contacts and calendar -> Apple icloud

Google Maps -> apple maps (still have to use waze sometimes, traffic
information works best in Waze in Brazil)

Search -> Duck Duck Go

Web -> Firefox (The multi account containers in Firefox is to good to stop
using)

Google Drive -> Ondrive (I had to buy an Office 365 licence to my dad. End up
buying the family licence, and 1 TB cloud storage endupd being very usefull).
A shame I really dont use office, but, is there in the cloud if I ever need to
open a word doc.

I still havent found a viable alternative to Youtube videos, but, I think is a
matter of time for an alternative product reach enouth users)

------
mikece
The hardest service to part with is Google Analytics. Sure, there are some
awesome and open source alternatives but you’re either paying a lot for them
or you have to set up/maintain servers/VMs/VPS for the app, the databases,
backups, etc.

------
shivenigma
I am not really married to google but I am not sure if it really pays the
effort of moving my google account to a different provider.

I know that my data is used to make me an advertising target, I am going to
get advertising anyway because we haven't found a better business models yet.

I don't use google search and chrome. But not sure if I will be able to switch
to another email provider and will be able to spend the time and energy
required to update my email everywhere.

------
toastal
For me, I think the biggest Google crutches I have left are: Translate and
Voice. I run Havoc OS with microG, use Firefox, and everything else people
suggest, but I can't shake these two.

Living in foreign countries it's obviously useful, and I would have been
royally screwed in Vietnam without the offline translations when I crossed the
border and no place was accepting my ATM card. Related usually to financial
institutions, I don't keep an active US phone number and my Voice account is
basically a 2FA front for places not using TOPT or FIDO2 for security or I
couldn't access my cash or credit.

------
gorgoiler
One of the top entries in this article is a browser extension called
_minerBlock_. It’s there to stop rogue websites using your browser’s
JavaScript runtime for cryptocurrency mining.

I don’t know much about mining, but in the era of ASIC miners, how much dollar
value does a minute or two of JS mining in Firefox get you? How many visitors
do these rogue sites get?

It seems like a lot of effort to get a couple of cents for free, but I assume
I’m hugely underestimating. I’m also still puzzled by why my partner’s MacBook
was overheating last night, and wonder if I’ve just found out why.

------
Obsnold
I would be happy to pay Google a monthly fee for all their services. Mainly
just so I feel like a customer instead of a product and to give me the peace
of mind that if something goes wrong I can talk to a person that can help me.

At the moment I'm looking out for whatever service provider will let me have
the equivalent of email, drive, calendar, docs and sheets all in one place.

Does anyone know of any that might have slipped under my radar?

Edit: anything comming up that is I can't see anything on the list that does
everything. My best bet at the moment is proton will come up with something.

~~~
dontblink
Then why don't you? GSuite is a thing.

~~~
Obsnold
Huh I guess I assumed that was only for businesses and not personal use.
Thanks I'll take a look!

------
maletor
This is funny having come from a Google TLD.

------
erdaniels
Ignoring reasons why I try to avoid Google, the following has worked well for
me:

Mail - FastMail (spam detection not great but still works)

Search - StartPage (still google but proxied since DDG results are inferior in
my experience)

Browser - Firefox (syncs to all my devices)

Maps - keyworded bookmark on Firefox to go to DDG maps powered by Apple Maps.
Otherwise on phone it’s Apple Maps

Storage - Dropbox

Docs - local files synchronized to Dropbox

Last remaining service: YouTube. I’d love for the content providers I consume
from to start posting on other platforms but that’s just not the case. For
that, I use a google account for just YouTube.

~~~
wpdev_63
dtube is an interesting alternative to youtube. It's a youtube clone built on
ipfs. The only problem it doesn't have the same amount of content as youtube -
nobody does.

------
md5person
To people using custom domains (for email, etc): what is your plan in-case you
end up losing the domain name (either temporarily, or otherwise)? How do you
prepare for this, reduce the risk, etc?

Losing your domain name can happen due to any number of reasons: hacked
account (at the registrar), social engineering, etc. There can also be issues
with registrars going bankrupt, increasing fees (see dot-org case), laws
changing (especially with ccTLDs - see the dot-EU case with British citizens
post-brexit) and much more...

------
mjollnir
This is a really useful resource overall.

Some of these alternatives, however, offer low content moderation compared to
their corresponding Google products.

I see no disclaimer, for example, that bitchute is known for harboring
conspiracy theories, often after they are banned from youtube:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitChute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitChute)

It is worrying to see it presented as an "alternative" to youtube without this
disclaimer.

------
jimbob45
The problem with de-googleifying is, to me, best summed up by Google+. When it
was released, we were all extremely eager to leave Facebook’s abusive policies
and needless redesigns for _anything_ better. It was only one we discovered
that Google+ really didn’t solve any issues at all that we moved back to
Facebook.

Sure, Google steals your data. However, we have no guarantees that these new
companies won’t steal just as much once they get a big userbase too.

------
einpoklum
My biggest problem cutting out Google from my life is with Maps.

Now, I can do just fine with OpenStreetMap (and such) as a physical or even a
road map; but there are just so many venues and businesses that are listed on
Google Maps... with their opening hours and links to websites.

Also, a lot of municipalities transfer public transport data to Google, which
you can't quite get anywhere else (ignoring Google-reliant apps).

Search, browser, email - I don't use them.

------
VLM
You can put the effort in on your schedule to degoogle, or wait for them to
discontinue services where you have to degoogle on their priorities plans and
schedule.

You'll note the list doesn't have solutions to replace Google Reader, or
Google Music, or G+.

Someday I'm sure I'll have to replace Google Domains and Calendar and YouTube.
Maybe I should do that on my schedule instead of waiting for google to decide
for me.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
That's how I got rid of my Google+ posting history for sure.

------
lazyeye
Note: For password manager root accounts its better security to use a gmail
address with 2FA as nobody is going to be able to hijack the gmail domain.

------
asix66
I'm assuming those moving to fastmail from gmail are not concerned about mass
surveillance.

Fastmail is an Australian company, a 5-eyes country, subject to the Assistance
and Access Bill [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_Australia...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_Australia#Assistance_and_Access_Bill)

------
zackmorris
Looking at this list, I would propose that it's easier to regulate and tax
Google than it is to free ourselves of it via the private sector.

~~~
dan1234
That’s a possible solution if you’re in the US, and trust the regulators, but
what of the rest of the world?

------
anta40
I work as an Android app developer. Is there any significant disadvantages if
I wipe Android off my phone and install LineageOS instead?

------
rootsudo
I enjoy while reading that page on extensions to use, it's a list of what can
be normally accomplished by browser settings.

Are you expected to run 25 extensions? Many which do similar things and can be
done by forcing the browser to delete cookies upon quit/exit/restart?

If the idea is a buffet, then what's the point? You're going to have a gap and
DNS is going to be your weakpoint.

------
mastazi
For me the hardest part of avoiding Google is AMP, especially on mobile, where
apps like Twitter redirect all links to their AMP equivalent by default.

Does anyone know a good way to avoid AMP reliably on mobile? What I currently
do is pretty convoluted (see below).

On my iPhone, I use a DNS-based ad-blocker[2] and I just associate amp.* to
0.0.0.0 so most amp pages will fail. When the page fails to load, in the
address bar I edit the URL manually and remove the "amp" portion, and finally
I'm redirected to my news article.

Needless to say, sometimes this gets annoying so when I'm in a hurry I might
disable this DNS rule temporarily.

On desktop, on the other hand, it's much easier because I use an extension
that blocks AMP automatically[1]

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/amp2html/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/amp2html/)

[2] the app AdBlock for iPhone/iPad can import "PiHole compatible" lists (such
as the ones at [https://firebog.net/](https://firebog.net/) ) and it does dns-
level content blocking (in addition to that, it also works as a standard ad-
blocker within Safari)
[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock/id691121579](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock/id691121579)

~~~
bepvte
On twitter, im fairly sure AMP links are not hosted by Google. They use a
standard developed and pushed by google but I believe the pages themselves are
not served by them unless they are accessed from google search.

------
efitz
I dropped Google about a year ago, with two exceptions: (1) none of the
YouTube replacements are even in the same ballpark (2) Google Translate still
gives me the best results for the Thai language.

My big problem with Google is that they are evil and in denial - they want to
slurp up all the data about everyone and monetize it, but they honestly don't
get why that is bad.

My list:

-ProtonMail

-Firefox

-DuckDuckGo

-iCloud

-Visual Studio Code

(edited format only)

------
pkamb
At the very least, turn off Google account creation pop-ups on every other
random site:

[https://superuser.com/questions/1414410/how-to-disable-
pop-u...](https://superuser.com/questions/1414410/how-to-disable-pop-ups-for-
google-yolo-one-tap-sign-up)

------
firebaze
Our company is degoogling by switching from angular to react, but of very
profane causes: we don‘t trust them anymore based on their sunsetting history.
Maybe that‘ll be the driving force.

We’re a (by far) market leading B2C & B2B company in a “non-shithole” G7
country.

Yes, Facebook is not a real improvement, but at least they eat their own dog
food!

------
GlenTheMachine
Still no replacement for Google Voice. That’s my one indispensible service.
Having a single phone number not connected to my carrier that a) can ring all
my numbers and b) transcribe voice mail is incredibly convenient. I would pay
a monthly fee for that service and do it gladly. But nobody offers it.

------
brainless
Why not take this the way we should, as consumers:

Cut all big cos out. The Internet already gives us tools to run everything as
a community, yet we are not doing that.

We can fund open source software/hardware, crowdsource their continued
development. It takes leadership, like the big cos have. But we can get it
done.

------
newsat13
For those into self-hosting, there's some really up and coming options these
days - Cloudron, Yunohost, homelabos. Sandstorm also seems some activity again
these days (come on guys!). Honestly, it really is not that hard to degoogle
these days especially if you are a techie.

------
dawnerd
I've got almost 12TB stored in my Google Drive so that alone makes it
basically impossible to switch. There's no other provider I'd trust with that
much data for the price (G Suite). As much as I'd love to switch, it's just
not worth the headache IMO.

------
tjbiddle
Whenever this topic comes up, it's always all or nothing.

If you're looking to detangle yourself from the Google ecosystem, you can do
so one tool at a time over any period of time.

Maybe you'll get all the way off it, maybe just 80% - either way, you will
make progress.

------
wiradikusuma
For those who want to cut Google but still have to use AdWords (you advertise
your product), AdSense/AdMob (you earn from ads), Play (you publish Android
apps), and Contacts (integrated with your Android phone) -- what's your setup?

------
zzo38computer
Other than the Google web search (which I don't always use; sometimes I use
other web search engines, and often I don't need any web search at all), the
other Google product I use is V8 (although not Chrome or Chromium, I do use
V8).

------
warabe
When I tried to change my gmail address of Firefox account, I realized it is
not possible, because email address is the ID of the account. Dear Mozilla
folks, please let me change my email address of Firefox account.

------
corobo
Just calendar automations to go!

Edit: aww, they bought nest didn't they. Dammit Google you weirdo Borg creep.

Oh yeah people use their DNS to resolve my domains.. and every site that uses
them for hosting.. and my work email..

oh wait youtube

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shrimpx
What’s a strong alternative for admin.google.com? Most importantly, making an
org with a custom domain and managing users with email addresses on that
domain.

------
beilabs
Suggestion, I've a small business with 10 employees. What's the best email
solution that won't cost an arm and a leg other than Google Apps?

------
tarun_anand
If anyone is interested in a commercial alternative to Google's Premium
Analytics services, please PM me.

If you are a startup we have generous free plans for you.

------
LockAndLol
Just in case, there are other projects creating lists like these:

\- [https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/alternatives](https://degooglisons-
internet.org/en/alternatives)

\- [https://prism-break.org/en/](https://prism-break.org/en/)

\- [https://www.privacytools.io/](https://www.privacytools.io/)

At least prism-break and privacytools have a community-process for suggestions
and evaluations. I don't know how this project does it.

------
jshc
The moment you have your data in the hand of a cloud based service, it's no
longer under your control. isn't it?

------
maps7
I switched to HEY earlier this year for email and so far so good!

Google maps is probably the product I am most dependent on.

~~~
simplehuman
It's risky.. hey does not have custom domains

~~~
twicetwice
Yet—as soon as they do, I'll probably jump to them. I'm using Zoho right now.
That's the nice thing about having your email address at your own domain—I can
move freely from provider to provider while using the same address!

~~~
simplehuman
Totally agreed

------
major505
For e-mail I use kolab. Nothing special. But covers email, calendar and a
little storage for a fair price.

------
jakobmartz3
I agree with doing this and have started too, theres many alts to google and
google drive

------
beprogrammed
Some really good add-ons there I had never heard of, decentraleyes for
example.

------
ROARosen
The .dev tld is “owned” by Google. Pratice what you preach...

------
simonkafan
It's interesting to see how Google turned from a respected company everyone
wanted to work at to a "persona non grata" within just a few years. I wonder
what were the main reasons for this change?

~~~
gerash
Perhaps heavy negative campaigning previously by Microsoft (Scroogled?) and
still by Murdoch's media outlets had at least some effects. Their fail fast,
watch growth metics and bad product leadership also don't help

~~~
liability
Google has the lion's share of the blame for their negative reputation, not
microsoft and fox news.

------
balthasar
The peer-tube recommendation was really embarrassing.

------
didip
This list looks closer to r/selfhosted and that is not what most people want.

To de-google quickly, you can just pay a different vendor like iCloud or
FastMail or whatever Microsoft offering is.

------
HIP_HOP
Interesting article. Thanks for sharing it.

------
matthewfelgate
Try cutting Microsoft out of your life.

------
minton
Good luck finding an alternative to YouTube without trash content. I can’t
imagine any competition anytime soon.

------
hank_z
Just simply move to China.

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baidoct
The link seems down to me.

------
nhoughto
ironic that this is on .dev, of which google runs the TLD =/

------
slater
the suggested swisscows.ch seems to have Russian connections

------
systematical
What about amazon?

------
w0mbat
I am old so I have worked for various big and small tech companies, including
most of the ones being discussed here.

Google is the one I would trust with my data.

They know how to do hosting at scale (unlike some really quite large and
famous companies who suck at that), although not perfect, they have a humanist
moral compass in their culture, and I don't expect them to go out of business.

I would not make myself reliant on a niche Google product (like Google Reader)
as those tend to vanish, but a mainstream Google service like GMail or YouTube
is a great reliable thing. If you think other companies are more moral than
Google, you are fooling yourself.

------
Casereads
I don't think it's easy to change that. Must be interesting to experiment in
the countries where Tech options are available, in some countries, Google is
the only thing known.

More education is needed to implement something like this.

------
tomerbd
Would you prefer a world without or with google? do you use an android device?

------
29athrowaway
You may not have gmail, but if most of your recipients are on gmail they got
all your mail anyways.

------
AtomicPlayboy
It's becoming increasingly difficult to avoid Google with the upcoming Fuchsia
OS designed to work everywhere and replace Android and also Google's upcoming
SoC.

~~~
junon
I will never, ever install Fuchsia if I can help it. Replacing one Google
Spyware OS with another doesn't solve anything.

~~~
hu3
I will keep using Google products for as long as they keep being great.

Life's too short for extreme measures. You gotta pick your fights.

What I did stop using was anything Apple related and that fight was easy to
pick. Their repair-hostile-by-design hardware actually harm the environment.
Plus it proved trivial to replace their crap with superior tech.

~~~
AtomicPlayboy
Whether their products are good or not is beside the point.

They do everything they can to have your PII and this is something people
should care about.

Things like 'accidentally' collecting your BSSIDs for Google Maps or providing
Google Fonts not because they want a more beautiful Web, but to have a tracker
on your site.

~~~
hu3
None of that affects me negatively, they can have all my info for all I care.

Plus they make our lives easier on a level that was unthinkable not long ago
with Best in Slot free products like youtube, maps, search, email, open source
browser and accessible smartphones with open source OS.

My only complain to Alphabet is that they like to toy with us by keeping
Mozilla alive on a feeding tube. That's just cruel, I expected some mercy.

------
gerash
I think the mistake Google is making is not charging high prices a la. Apple
for their products. It'd result in a big drop in user base initially but over
time people will respect it more and stop writing up articles on how to stop
using a free ad supported product in favor of a set of random toy projects

~~~
simplehuman
If anything it will help people realize they are being toyed around by Google
and there are better products out there

