How much of your life have you degoogled? (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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 be billboards for these companies anymore.

For anyone unfamiliar, some good resources to have when starting your degoogling journey 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.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

DuckDuckGo got a shoutout from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds this week. Much smoother than Hawaii Five-Oh's "Bing it."

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I degoogled by switching to an iPhone 😅 DuckDuckGo is my default search engine.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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...

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

For Maps there's an alternative on FDroid called GMaps WV which is actually just the Google Maps website wrapped in a tiny webview app. It can't spy on you if you run it that way.

Or you can install Hermit and add Google Maps as one of its sandboxed light apps.

If you're interested in things that aren't Google Maps you can look at OSMAnd, a great app with tons of features and my go-to app when traveling because you can download offline maps and info about local stores, restaurants, attractions etc.

On the lightweight side there's Map Marker which can use map tiles from a dozen different map services, and you can place markers on the map and group them in collections.

[-] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

Right, I can't use my phone without it and I'm not buying into Apple. I also really like the user reviews on Maps, it's like Yelp and TripAdvisor before they both fell to enshttification. I've also got a Voice number that I pay nothing for and I give it out when businesses demand a phone number. I don't see myself switching to anything else for those.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I was thinking about it; Google offers a number of useful services, and I realise the hardest to get out of will be Maps. I can sort of replace the others with workarounds (Photos will probably be the second hardest to move from), but Maps, there's nothing good enough to replace it for me as far as I can tell.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

You can if you have the right phone, namely pixels. Ironic because its the Google phone, but the Pixel line has the most custom firmware development.

LineageOS for a more stock version of a de-googled ROM. Works on a number of Android devices.
GrapheneOS for a completely de-googled firmware that is tailored for privacy. Snowden said if he were to use a phone it'd be a Pixel running Graphene. Only works with Pixel.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I've degoogled my life as much as I can, but it's almost impossible to completely ditch Google Maps, YouTube, and Android. So I'm not even sure I've done anything significant, because I assume they get pretty much everything from my phone.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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)

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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.

Edit: I also pay for Kagi for search. The price is a bit steep but I have found it justifiable in terms of the value I get from it. Whoogle and Searx are good options too

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I download YouTube videos to my Plex server via yt-dlp for viewing at home. For online viewing I use piped, and on my phone LibreTube. No need to stick to Google for YouTube.

[-] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

Not much honestly. Still use Gmail and Drive

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this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023

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