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.

  •  xray   ( @xray@beehaw.org ) English
    4•1 year ago

    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.