Moving Away from Google

By HenryDegoogle, Google

For privacy, security and ethical reasons, I have embarked on a journey to move away from Google as much as possible. This “moving away from Google” process is often dubbed as “degoogling” or “de-googlifying“. Why am I doing this? Well, Google is creepy and disrespectful to its users at a minimum, and some might even say it is downright evil.

Google does or did the following:

  • Tracks your activities – without you knowing.
  • Keeps your data.
  • Uses your data for its own profit.
  • Conducts in questionable activities with governments.
  • Avoids tax.
  • Hands out personal data to authorities.
  • Manipulates search results.
  • And many more.

Most big companies, if not all, conduct all sort of questionable activities, but Google is so ubiquitous and powerful. It was time to switch to other services and get some control back for my own data and privacy.

Not Easy

It has been a rather long and difficult journey to degoogle, for both sentimental and practical reasons. Like most of us, I have been using various Google services for a long time. Many of their services such as a Google Drive and Google Search are simply the best of the best. Gmail and Google Drive have been the centre piece for my personal data. I have used Google Calendar extensively. I have become totally dependent on Google Maps and I watch Youtube several hours a week.

Yet, despite all these, I wanted to protect my privacy and data. So I started to look for alternatives and researched around. As always, there are always pros and cons when choosing different services. I avoided the Big Tech, tried to self-host wherever possible, and preferred open source solutions.

Here are my choices of Google product alternatives so far. Note that I don’t use too many Google services; my requirements are not too complicated, and are for personal use only.

Google Drive

Going for a Google Drive alternative has been the most time-consuming task up to this point. Google Drive has amazing capabilities: it is simultaneously a storage system and a document collaboration tool. And there are so many other alternative choices out there such as Zoho, Kolab and Notion, but I am not sure how secure and privacy-oriented they are. In the end, I went with a self-hosted option with the following:

  • Nextcloud: This is the central hub of it all. It is a file storage and document collaboration platform, and comes with a fantastic Android mobile phone app. I couldn’t be happier with it.
  • Digital Ocean: This is the cloud infrastructure provider where I have a server hosting Nextcloud.
  • Cloudron: This service takes away all the server set-up and administrative headaches away. It made the installation of Nextcloud on Digital Ocean very easy.
  • ONLYOFFICE: This is the online version of document editing tool (similar to Microsoft Office). It comes with Nextcloud out-of-box, so I can edit documents and spreadsheets online within Nextcloud from different devices.
  • Sync: This is mainly used for backup. It has great reviews around the Internet and it has been good so far.

I have published a separate post here on how to setup the above services.

Google Search

I use a combination of search engines, depending on the circumstances.

  • DuckDuckGo: The most well-known and popular privacy oriented search engine. Initially created in 2008 to address the privacy issue specifically.
  • Qwant: Another no-tracking and privacy oriented search engine.
  • Startpage: Claims to be the most private search engine in the world.

Gmail

I spread my email accounts across the following:

  • Tutanota: Arguably the most secure email service provider, and there are nothing but positive reviews on the Internet. It is open source meaning anybody can scrutinise this product, making it even more secure. I am very happy with it so far.
  • Protonmail: Perhaps the most popular and well-known secure email service provider out there.
  • Posteo: Another secure email service provider, where the differentiating factor is it is also environmental friendly.

I also have a private email server setup with Cloudron which is used to backup my current Gmail accounts.

Browsers

Again, I use multiple browsers on my devices, depending on what I am doing.

  • Firefox: I tend to use this for the websites I trust, such as Tutanota and my Nextcloud server.
  • Tor: This is the world’s most private browser. Apparently even the NSA use it.
  • Brave: I tend to use this for general surfing on the Internet and researching.
  • Vivaldi: A Chromium based browser. I use this occasionally.
  • Opera: I use this occasionally as well.

Other Google Services

Irreplaceable Google Services?

OK, so I haven’t been able to replace these (yet).

  • Youtube: While there are alternatives out there, none of them are good enough as a replacement. At the moment Youtube is just too far ahead of its competitors.
  • Android phone: There are other alternative operating systems out there that can replace the Android operating system, but at this stage it appears to be experimental with limited device support.
  • Firebase: As a developer I use Firebase as the backend to develop my apps. There are some promising alternatives such as AWS Amplify, but I am yet to try these out.

Honourable Mentions

  • Mozilla Thunderbird: This venerable desktop tool helped me to migrate my emails from my Gmail accounts to my private personal email accounts. It is very stable even for handling close to 50,000 emails. It also keeps a copy of all the emails in my laptop. This way, when I eventually get to close all my Gmail accounts, I can still access my old emails.
  • Google Takeout: Yes, this is Google service make by Google that you can use to degoogle! This service basically exports all your data across all Google services. This is a must tool to use before you close any Google accounts.

Final Thoughts

The journey hasn’t been easy and I already miss the convenience and superiority of various Google services. I still have a few things to do, such as close off my Gmail accounts by the end of the year. It is highly likely that I will be changing and trialling other services from time to time, as better or more suitable services appear. One thing for sure though, always make backups!

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