DeGoogle - Canada

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/40292905

A small business owner in B.C. is demanding answers from one of the biggest companies in the world after his Google Business Profile was suddenly disabled without warning.

Jonathan Guy, a Navy veteran who has lived in B.C. for 17 years, is the owner of Chilliwack-based Veteran Heating and Cooling Inc.

Guy used his 15 years of experience in the HVAC industry to open Veteran in 2023, and things were going swimmingly until he received a message from Google on Feb. 6, 2025

“Google unexpectedly disabled our Google Business Profile without any prior warning or explanation,” Guy told Daily Hive. “We received an email stating that the account was disabled and no longer visible to customers.

“They hold an undeniable monopoly over online search and business visibility. Let’s be honest — show me a person who doesn’t use Google. The platform has become the ‘gatekeeper’ of customer traffic, revenue, and livelihoods. So, when Google makes an inaccurate or unfair decision, it can destroy businesses overnight. This affects not only owners but also employees, suppliers, and subcontractors who rely on steady work.”

“Approximately one month after submitting our appeal with all the required documentation, we received a rejection notice. We feel the suspension and the appeal decision were made by AI because a real person can easily research our company to see if it’s real. AI assumes that the business isn’t legit.”

If you are more tech savvy, you can use Nextcloud.

This is where I'm at with my deGoogling, and this is just the current state I'm pretty sure I need more adjustments with the services I gone with.

**gmail to Fastmail: **I went with Fastmail for the price (family plan 6 members). It is an AUSSY company unfortunately it's hosted in America, and privacy policy could do with some updated. However for the mail I'm receiving I'm not super bothered for the moment. It has an ios app for mail which I rather like a lot, great Calendar (with family sharing options), custom domain, 10g file storage (for nothing important, still handy), and notes. All accessible from the browser or ios app.

Google Authenticator to Ente Auth: EU based - Auth provides end-to-end encrypted cloud backups so you don't have to worry about losing your tokens. Our cryptography has been externally audited. Great replacement

Google Photos to Ente: Store, share, and discover your memories with privacy. ios syncs to their EU cloud, and it has a 1 button device clean up.

Google Keep to MS OneNote: This is temporary until I find something else.

Google Maps to OsmAnd Maps: Honestly haven't used it enough to decide for sure yet.

Desktop Chrome to Firefox: With unlock, on IOS I've been using the Startpage app.

Google Search to Startpage: So far so good.

Google Drive to Offline: For now I've taking my files off the cloud with thinking about setting up a NAS instead.

That about sums it up for now. Thoughts and suggestions are welcome, my current setup is very far from perfect just where I'm at. That said I haven't logged into anything google for about a month or so now. Not missing it.

Hey starting up a deGoogling Community here on Lemmy simular to you know that other site... I'll update the sidebar with alternatives and we can go from there.