I personally did the de-googling yourself a while back. Personally I found the desktop side the easy part: alternative browsers and search engines. Actively trying to block Google’s tracking scripts was more involved, and sometimes “broke” webpages.
The challenge was on the phone side of the equation (especially on Android). I installed lineage OS without Google Play. It was kind of refreshing and my phone’s battery life improved immensely. However, my phone just felt like a brick with a screen. Installing apps became a chore. I was not always successful finding non-google alternatives. I was sacrificing a lot of convenience, and for what?
The “for what” or the why is the interesting aspect of this discussion. The answer here is what is going to ultimately make your endeavor successful or not.
I am not trying to discourage you. At the end of the day I was unsuccessful because I wanted to use Google’s services (maps, Gmail, YouTube…)
I don’t think they ever have? Or if they did in the early days they don’t seem to now.
They use multiple sources, the big notable ones mentioned are yahoo, bing, their own crawler and 400+ “sources” for instant answers etc. (e.g. searching Nikola Tesla uses wikipedia as a source to give you an instant answer in the search. https://duck.co/ia/view/wikipedia_fathead)
I achieved this easy by going with Apple.
This is really important, people forget to think about this, and people here are no better than anywhere else. The why you want or need to determines how far you need to go in every aspect of your privacy etc.
They dont use google as a source by default. They do use Bing and others.
In my case I have an android phone so I have gmail. Nothing but android stuff goes to it all other email is proton
I have next cloud
Nextcloud notes
still use YouTube as Gruber and bitchute are not there yet.
Calendar is really the only thing I havent been able to ungoogle as all the apps use google cal in the background
I have used and use google chrome, google search, Gmail, YouTube, google forums, google drive, google office, project stream and soon will use chrome os and android.
I kind of get you, lineageos is not an option for me because of widevine and camera drivers… I partly got arround the data mining issue by using the apps i wanted to use in combination with NetGuard .
I’ve been using DDG for a few years now. It’s the default on all of my devices. I still use Google for email though, and you can’t really cut out youtube if you want youtube.
Not too hard, just learn how to properly search stuff, and the bangs are there if you want to see what the other engines’ results yield.
Switched from Google Search to DuckDuckGo on Android and PC
Switched from Google Drive to Nextcloud (Except for work, have to use Drive for that)
Switched from Google Calendar to Nextcloud CalDAV on Android and PC (and removed the Android app)
Switched from Google Contacts to Nextcloud CardDAV on Android and PC (and removed the Android app)
Switched from Google Keep to Nextcloud Notes and OpenTasks (and removed the Android app)
Switched from YouTube app to NewPipe app on Android (and removed the Android app)
Switched from GMail app to K-9 Mail on Android, and KMail on Desktop
Things I will be doing:
Switching from Google Maps to OpenStreeMaps (still some issues with OSM so right now I’m running both)
Switching from GMail to another email provider as my primary email (don’t like ProtonMail as they seem somewhat shady, so I either need to experiment with setting my own mail up, or find a better provider)
Possibly installing MicroG and seeing what that can replace
Things I have no idea how to do:
Stop using Chromecast
Stop using Android Auto
Stop using Google Play Store/Services
Stop using Google Play Music
Completely abandon YouTube (not just the app)
Stop using ProjectFi
Overall, I’m pretty proud of my progress. I was deeply embedded in Google services. Now I host my own Nextcloud, Bitwarden, VPN, etc. The really hard thing I know I will eventually overcome is ridding myself of using GMail at all. Google Maps, Chromecast, and the paid Google products I use may become too difficult to replace, unfortunately. My current strategy is trying simultaneous usage and seeing how much I can use non-Google apps for.
Good list of stuff. I would like to know more about a couple of things, not attempting to challenge:
Proton mail seeming somewhat shady? What happened here? I been using for a while, assumed they were the real deal.
Google Play Music: Download your purchased music, use another service? Spotify if you don’t mind paying? I have bought a couple of things of google music, mainly to support artists. I then download the stuff and stick it in an archive, and stream it from spotify or something. I tend to not worry so much about owning music, and mostly listen to genre playlists nowdays.
Now that @Eden mentions it, I do remember some reports of DDOS attacks. It didn’t stop me using the system though. The mobile app is pretty slow, that is a bit of an annoyance. But hopefully it is because of all the end to end encryption.
Installing Nextcloud on my FreeNAS and I think what is Open Street Maps on my phone… OsmAnd? Look at my wares? I think I get it now.
It seems like a lateral move. You have to use their proprietary IMAP/SMTP bridge, and you can’t use your own PGP key that I’m aware of. I’d rather encrypt locally and send encrypted than trust someone else. What difference does it make if I trust ProtonMail, or if I trust Google?
I’m not super happy with Spotify, or their business practices (censoring music/removing things they disagree with) and the app is pretty poorly designed. I know there’s a few other music streaming services out there, at some point I will get around to trying them out. The other option is just buying the music, but that really limits discovery.
Ah yes it is a closed ecosystem. I guess we have to take them at their word to a certain degree. The lack of regular protocol support is baked into it a bit, I guess the idea was to make it more secure. You could always do the L1T thing and roll your own on external hosting. Or even just host your own. That would be best. If there was a turn key solution here, I’d be into that.
I agree on Spotify. The app isn’t the best, and they don’t pay the artists that much. The days of rich ass musicians is long over?
If there is a better alternative to this, I’d be interested to know.
one reason I don’t use DDG is when I tested it on the Linux stable version of Chrome a few months ago, there was no predictive search, but on Firefox there was. Half the reason I google things is to spell them correctly and other times I don’t want to type in the entire term I need, ie _____ band if it’s a common name like Boston.
I’m not switching to Firefox, so unless that was just a bug with how Chrome handles search engines, I can’t use DDG.
I’ve been using Spotify specifically so I stay away from Google/Apple/Amazon, but I agree about Spotify. Their UI is sub-par and their ideology doesn’t make me feel much cleaner than if I were using Google. Downloading and deleting music is really confusing at first, and even though I’ve been using it for several months and I know how it works, I still don’t like the process. I think out of all the apps I’ve tried, I like Apple Music the most. I haven’t tried it on Android yet though. That was when I had my 8+.
The one thing where Spotify kicks ass though is if you have a student email you can get Spotify, Showtime, and Hulu (limited ads) all for $5 a month. I don’t even use Hulu or Showtime, but I might start using them as background noise once I catch up to the current L1 News and a few podcasts.
TLDR: I don’t like Spotify’s library management AT ALL, but if you have a student email you get a whole lot for $5 a month.
