How much of your life have you degoogled?
How much of your life have you degoogled?
We're reaching the end of an era wherein billions of dollars of investor money was shovelled into tech startups to build large user-bases, and now those companies (now monoliths) are beginning to constrict their user-bases and squeeze for every single penny they can possibly extract. Fair or not.
Now more than ever, it's important for us to step back and reconsider whether we want to billboards for these companies anymore.
For anyone unfamiliar, some good resources to have when starting your degoogling are below:
Privacy Guides - A list of privacy-respecting services you can use.
Plexus - A crowdsourced information bank of service compatibility with degoogled devices.
This random PDF - A study from 2018 detailing data that Google tracks about its' users.
It's been a long time in the making, but I've finally degoogled and largely removed all proprietary software from my personal life. I know this topic is pretty well covered here and elsewhere so just to add to the list of others, here's where I'm at these days:
- OS: Fedora (Silverblue) Linux (w/ AMD Radeon GPU)
- Email: Thunderbird w/ hosted email over IMAP
- Calendar/Contacts: Radicale instance w/ DAVx⁵ on Android
- Storage: Syncthing
- Web: Firefox
- Search: Startpage and DuckDuckGo mostly, but still use Google and Bing on occasion
- IM: Signal
- Desktop productivity: LibreOffice when I need it (Collabora Office on Android)
- Notes: Vim, VS Code (Markor on Android); most of my "docs" are just plain text files written in markdown
- Passwords: KeepassXC/DX
- Code editor: Vim, VS Code
- GrapheneOS on mobile, with almost entirely FOSS apps
- Kindle e-book reader with management via Calibre
- Media managed by Kodi with a raspberry pi
- Proxmox hypervisor for Windows/Linux VMs and containers
Gaming under Linux has improved unbelievably these past few years, now that Steam is contributing with their Steam Deck platform. I used to have to dual-boot Windows to keep up with the latest titles, but I wiped it about a year ago and things have been great.
I still rely on Microsoft Excel and Adobe Photoshop for some tasks, but less so now than ever before. Unfortunately, my work will always be a Windows-dominated environment.
I used to rely almost exclusively on Google for almost anything online. Fortunately, I'm much less dependent on Google and their services now. I'm even self-hosting some of my own services nowadays!
- Search engine: Ecosia and DuckDuckGo
- E-mail: Protonmail
- File storage: Nextcloud (selfhosted)
- Online Office Suite: Nextcloud Office (selfhosted)
- Maps: OpenStreetMaps
- 2FA App: Aegis
- Translator: DeepL
- Notes and Tasks: Obsidian.md
- Calendar: An actual wall calendar :)
Every single one of these apps/services used to be provided by google, so I think it's safe to say I've come a long way!
Of course, things could be better. I still use Google Contacts for synchronizing my, hum, contacts. I also use YouTube quite a bit, but as a paying customer my experience with it is just fine. I also use gboard on my phone — for bilingual speakers there's just no good alternative, imho. And, finally, I download/update most of my phone apps through Google Play.
Just switched from Google photos to photoprism. It's pretty awesome! It only took 8 hours to index and label my 17500~ photos (not including the week and a half Google Takeout took). That was the big one for me. Not I am slowly working through all my other google/centralized services and seeing if there are self hosted or decentralized alternatives.
Outside of work I’ve degoogled with the exception of google calendar (shared family google calendar so that would need to bring everyone along with me!) and unfortunately the google Wi-Fi/nests.
I would like to swap out the google Wi-Fi but it just seems like such a lot of money to waste and they are working at the moment for the mesh Wi-Fi. I’ve just made sure to disable and opt out to as many of the google analytic tracking as possible.
Working on it
Had to give them some money for a Pixel 7, at least it was half off plus a trade-in on the old phone Installed GrapheneOS a couple of days ago100% degoogled. Everything is selfhosted, except for Telegram. Even at job :)
I moved off a while ago at this point... I still have to use some of it because of work being on G-Suites but otherwise my personal stuff has moved.
- Email: Hey & ProtonMail
- Storage: Dropbox
- Notes: SimpleNotes & Obsidian.md
- Chat: Telegram & Matrix/Element
- 2FA: ProtonPass (as of yesterday, Authy before that)
- Passwords: 1Password
- Other: Apple stuff mostly
I have started to degoogle bits and pieces. I self-host the majority of the services I need and really enjoyed the journey so far since I learned so much. I am approaching the stage in my life where I have less time to spend on personal hobbies so I fear this path may not be sustainable. In my opinions here are the pros and cons.
Pros:
- Full control of my data
- Pick the ideal tool from the open source community
- Learning experience
- Engagement with community
Cons:
- Technical knowledge needed to setup and maintain self-hosted tools
- Self-hosted tools have security risks (best to put everything behind VPN)
- Disparate tools don't connect together (requires additional automation configuration)
- Additional costs for services including and not limited to: domain name, email, backup storage, self-host server hardware, VPN, and donations to devs
- Higher personal downtime due to lacking features, server and service maintenance
- Time sink to learn, research, general devops of tools, maintenance of server
Key services to name a few:
- File storage - Nextcloud
- File sync - Syncthing
- Office- Nextcloud + Collabora
- Email - Mailfence
- Photos - Photoprism
So far there are more negatives than positives, but the positives still outweigh negatives. I do have to say degoogling is getting easier than before.
LineageOS for microg: degoogled android. DuckDuckGo: search. Firefox: web browser. Ublock origin: ad blocker. Proton: email. OsmAnd+: maps.
Only google product I still use is youtube, but I have made some efforts here:
On desktop pc I use firefox with sponserblock and ublock origin to hide ads and automatically skip sponsered content. I also have an addon called unhook, which hides recommendations, 'people also watched' etc.
I also use and recommend Odysee as a youtube alternative.
On my TV I use SmartTubeNext, on my phone I use revanced.
I host my own music server with navidrome (and my own video media server with Jellyfin). But when I dont have access to that, I also use ViMusic as a youtube music replacement for (degoogled) android.
Can absolutely recommend any and all of the tools I listed.
The biggest thing I de-Googled was gmail. I had my own domain already so it wasn't tough to move (to my web hosting provider's included email service).
I switched to Firefox+uBO from Chrome.
They de-Googled RSS for me (now on Newsblur).
Things I still use:
- Drive for backups (but have a local backup in case their AI bans me)
- YouTube Premium (I hate ads)
- Contacts (Cardbook addon for Thunderbird works well with this)
- Calendar (Thunderbird supports natively)
- Keep (Shared shopping list)
- Pixel phone (I don't really care for Apple, either)
pretty effectively!
I use a Searx instance for searching (with the engine it uses set to DDG), Tutanota for email and Piped/Invidious and Libretube for videos. meanwhile on both my phone and tablet I've used ADB to purge all of Google's malware, and Play Services is outright disabled on my tablet lmao (and contrary to what one might think, the only thing it impacts is I don't get app notifications)
and then I use Aurora Store to update Twitch and Discord, and I use alternatives from F-Droid for stuff like the calendar
The only thing I still hold onto my account for is YouTube. I pay for mailbox.org which covers email, calendar and cloud stuff. Their website could be better but the service is quality and their privacy policy is tight. When I was on android I used a bunch of custom roms with microg. My favourite ended up being calyxos but they all had a little jank here or there. I dearly miss NewPipe for android as a replacement for the official youtube app.
I deleted my google drive content so they can't arbitrarily decide something I wrote is worth banning my account over or use it to train their AIs, I made a backup, obviously.
Even though my content is safe, deleting it off of Google's servers felt like drowning my own children in a bathtub
Proton's services, Cryptomator, Invideous, GrapheneOS, a handful of apps from f-droid.
Also, quick plug - !privacyguides@lemmy.one is the official Privacy Guides community on Lemmy!
Currently the only Google services I use are accessed through open-source third-party implementations - in particular, Aurora Store, NewPipe, and SmartTubeNext! That said, nowadays I only use YouTube regularly and sometimes access their play store's servers on the rare occasion that I actually need to install/update a proprietary application.
90% of my life is degoogled. I'm using Google Play services for some stuff (It doesn't have network access 😶) it my normal profile. My work profile is completely degoogled.
Not much honestly. Still use Gmail and Drive
Basically outside of Youtube I don’t use any Google service. Started by migrating to Kagi search, and while it requires a subscription, its a price I am willing to pay for a search engine that actually work good.
Everything else I use a mix of FOSS and subscription services.
I used to be on GrapheneOS, but the drama with the developer plus mainly not being able to put my university ID on the wallet, forced me back on stock Android.
Besides Android, I use Google Play Store, YouTube, and Maps. For YouTube I've technically degoogled, using Invidious and NewPipe, but that's obviously still using Google services.
I really wish that digital payment didn't rely on two proprietary services (Google Wallet and Apple Wallet). It would be so much easier for phone companies to ship privacy friendly versions of Android if there was a FOSS alternative directly integrated into AOSP. I also wish apps didn't have to use Google service framework just to function, it seems stupid af. I don't think this will ever improve, so I'll probably end up on a true Linux phone whenever those catch up (2030 YEAR OF THE LINUX PHONE???)
We also need open collaboration on mapping. There is the OpenStreetMaps and Overture maps from Linux foundation, but those aren't really there yet unfortunately.
Google still runs a good chunk of my life and some of it I know I could use some of the great alternatives that others have mentioned but some of it I'm not really sure about.
Namely:
Maps
Messenger (web browser access to my texts)
Contact sync and backup
Google voice
And all the various services that let my phone operate...I was degoogled until late last year. Then 2 things happened. 1, I got a Fitbit watch, and 2, I started a delivery gig job where I needed play store and google services. Fortunately I might be getting another job soon (got a conditional job offer yesterday) and quitting the delivery since I'm making less money now. Also, looking at getting a different watch. When these things happen, I'll probably reinstall LineageOS without play services and delete the fitbit account (which is soon going to require switching to a google account.)
I have hosted email and nextcloud that I use for storage, calendar, etc. I've lived without google before with no inconvenience and I can do it again.
I'm still in the Google android stuff just because of convenience but I have ditched Chrome and Google search. Eventually I would like to do more.
Since the start of the year I have degoogled my life by about 95%, only thing left is YouTube
(sigh) Probably not enough. I was enthusiastic about Google when I first started using it in 2002 (twenty years ago, it really was a cut above other search engines) and had intense loyalty to the brand, which hasn't entirely evaporated. I still use the search engine from time to time, still use Gmail, still use Android phones. There's a lot Google was doing right at the beginning, but eventually, they cast aside the façade of "don't be evil" and revealed themselves to be only slightly less sleazy than Microsoft.
I still use Microsoft products, too. Just could never get used to the taste of Linux in my mouth.
Definitely a continuing effort, not enough people care yet
I’d say I’ve like 70% degoogled.
- For search, I mainly use DuckDuckGo, but will use Google if I can’t find what I’m looking for on DDG.
- I do watch a lot of YouTube.
- I use Apple Maps primarily, but I use Google Maps to check reviews and to see how busy a place is. I also use Waze occasionally which is owned by Google.
- I use E2EE iCloud - Files, documents, spreadsheets, photos, notes. But I do have some Google Docs from years ago still in my Google Account.
- I use a combination of iCloud Email and ProtonMail primarily for email, but I still have my Gmail for receiving random things that still have that email attached to it.
- I use Safari and Firefox primarily as my browsers. Only use Chrome if I’m forced to, and I don’t login to it.
As far as my PCs, I use a subscription service for email (
fastmail.com). I'm still using the Chrome browser, but at some point I may have to go to Firefox for the sake of my uBlock Origin extension which I rely on heavily. Functionality of that extension on Chrome may be reduced at some point by the forced migration to Google's new extension platform (Manifest V3).I have to have a Google account for my Android phone. I don't think I'll ever be able to get away from that. I mean you have two choices with phones, Android or iOS. I'm not going anywhere near Apple so Android is it. I've audited all my privacy settings in my Google account to minimize personal data, whether they actually honor those settings or not, who knows.
Lemmy definietly got me into degoogle and foss. Or rather latest reddit situation interested me in these concepts :p
I always liked the idea of decentralized web a lot but it wasn't until the reddit fall that it stopped being abstraction and instead there is a real platform it seems with a future