Technology

Eventually I want to try and degoogleify my life but it's gonna be difficult. I've been a long time Gmail user, still have a lot in my Drive, and I have used pretty much all of their services at one point or another. Eventually I'll give it a shot...

Not including work, except for indirectly watching YouTube (i.e. through invidious and other frontends), I am 100% degoogled.

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...

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.

After hearing about the three strikes YouTube thing, I just signed up for peertube. Already trying to get my photos back from google photos, but takeout destroys the metadata. GOOGLE PHOTOS IS NOT A BACKUP SOLUTION.

Not much honestly. Still use Gmail and Drive

I'm not that degoogled now, but I am slowly working towards it; removed my Google Account from my phone, uninstalled or disabled all the proprietary apps I can, and am going to install GrapheneOS in a couple weeks.

I'm almost entirely degoogled, apart from an email I share with the Mrs for family and joint purposes.

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.

I use YouTube through freetube or newpipe. I use my old university google account as a free backup service using restic. It's all encrypted and free storage is free storage. I still have an old google account that I don't use, I'll probably delete it.

Other than that, no google that I can think of. I use DDG for search, with startpage as my backup search engine. I think it uses google search as a back end. I try to use FOSS stuff whenever possible. I don't think I have any non-FOSS stuff on my laptop besides firmware. My android phone is a different story as I can't put another ROM on it, but I'm not signed into google at least and use F-Droid mostly.

I've always used Firefox and my email is hosted on mailbox.org with my own domain. I'm in pretty good shape with not relying on large corporations, but there are always things to improve on.

Do you also know any resources that explain how to delete your Google data?

so far i've done:

gmail - iredmail

youtube - peertube for my stuff, invidious to watch yt google search - searxng

google news - miniflux

drive and photos - nextcloud

chat - matrix

google play music/yt music - funkwhale

there's probably others just can't think of them. i still have an android phone and still use maps, google play store, and google voice.

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. I consider Google to be one of the least offensive players in the category. Besides, using another provider to handle your data exposes it to new risks. Is the other provider actually more privacy preserving? How's their security track record? Do they have a sustainable business model that complies with providing better privacy? Is there anything preventing them to make a 180? Are you paying for it? Who are their investors? Etc. 🤔

Self hosting using open source software is a real alternative but it's far from trivial and therefore not available to most but the more knowledgable technical people. It requires significant work even when automation is used and security can be botched fairly easily. If the data leaks, privacy evaporates. I run a lot of self hosted services.

I can’t really do that. My home internet is Google Fiber because it’s the only fiber service where I live.

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.