I thought I would post my own journey to de-googling with challenges and wins along the way. I realise that this is a de-google community however I will also be mentioning some other replacements too. Hope this helps anyone but let me know if I can help answer any questions or discuss anything.

Why I de-googled?

Google has strayed away from its own rule of “don’t be evil” particularly in the past few years. To be fair, its not just Google, its all big US companies that dominates the market including Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia etc. This has happened for many reasons but one of them is because Trump has shown them that it is OK to break any laws/rules/ethical boundaries to dominate. All the “China is evil” talk had nothing major to do with security grounds, it was to eat the competition which ruined the market for consumers (and no I’m not Chinese or Asian). Anyways back to Google…

• Google products makes 0 sense to me: You pay for a product for example Pixel 10 which costs over $1000 but then they collect EVERY SHRED OF data they can about you and sell that to third parties. So the main money they make from you is actually your data as well as taking the $1000 you paid. Where are the days of paying for a product which becomes yours and does exactly what you want it to do?
• Monopoly and anti-competition: Constantly trying to kill any competition it can rather than embracing and appreciating a diverse tech ecosystem.
• Many Google services are “walled gardens”
• Government Surveillance Concerns
• Location Tracking Controversies: Even with location history turned off, Google has been found to track user locations
• Running controversial projects (ex Project Maven)
• Little innovation: If i ignore all of the above, have you ever noticed that their products have barely changed in years (Google Drive, Keep, Mail, Maps)? This is because they are no longer about technical-innovation but rather chasing money only.

The list goes on and on.

What Products have I replaced?

I think sometimes companies forget that CUSTOMERS are the ones who drive their business, Disney certainly got reminded of that when people started cancelling their memberships after the Kimmel fiasco. Luckily, massive thanks to companies who noticed this early and started creating alternative products and many of them are even open-source (these developers are the true legends that I respect).

Here are some of the products that I have replaced in my life over the past 2 months:

Google Drive > Filen + Ente Photos

Luckily I chose not to tie myself into Google Photos because I didnt like the tie-in from the start, all photos were just in the Drive folder. I chose to go with both Ente Photos and Filen for images/documents etc.

Why Ente photos? In my opinion they are a little overpriced but they seem to have the most complete feature set for photos like great zero knowledge, AI detection, maps, facial recognition etc and best of all it all happens locally. My photos total less than 100GB currently but in the future I will have to be careful about going over my 200GB limit. IMO 1TB option is far too expensive (I would rather switch to Immich self hosted at that point).

Cons:

• Super annoying not to have 2-way sync in Ente. They try to force you to treat Ente as the source of truth for your photos. I got around this issue though by: Watching folders locally and always editing/deleting/adding new photos locally on PC. I never make edits on Ente. If i take a photo on phone, i upload them into a “Ente upload” folder, pull those down and then copy them manually into the relevant watched folder.

Why Filen? You can easily get around 50GB by referrals which is very likely enough for documents and other files. However all other Filen options are so well priced particularly for zero knowledge encryption. I also LOVE how they did the drive mounting for all operating system with a nice dropdown to select: 2way sync, 1 way backup etc.

I will likely create another post detailing all the providers I compared in this space. I downloaded and tinkered with all of them!

Google Docs + Keep > Notion

Notion wont be my final stop however this is where some of my docs already existed so i just moved more non-private files into it. Eventually I would like to explore Obsidian more and convert doc files into MD files in Filen (particularly the private ones).

Google Maps > Organic Maps + Magic Earth for driving

This is probably going to be my biggest pain future point. This is still early days but when Im making small trips nearby, I am trialling both apps.

Google Youtube> 🥲

This is also a pain point, I have tried PeerTube however it is quite lacking aside from good privacy video guides.

Gmail, Contacts & Google Calendar> Mailbox .org

I tried many different email providers including Proton Mail, Tuta, Posteo but settled on Mailbox. Mailbox has recently updated their UI and it looks fantastic. They are a green provider, allow for very generous aliases number (and custom alias unlike Posteo). Their calendar and contacts are also fantastic and worked VERY well with Thunderbird. I found their instructions excellent to set everything up too.

Why didnt I choose encryption here like Proton/Tuta? It came down to my personal needs. What I care about the most here is that Google is NOT selling my email data. Germany has strict privacy laws, they would have to jump through alot of court hoops to gain access to my data (useless) and this would only be if I was of interest to them. If encryption is important to you, this probably isnt an option.

Again, I can do a detailed comparison of email providers in another post.

Google Gemini > Mistral and Duck AI

To be fair, I never really used Gemini too much so this was an easy choice. I do still find myself still using ChatGPT sometimes too.

Browser and Search Engine > Firefox and DuckDuckGo/Brave Search

I have been a loyal Firefox user since version 3 so this was easy (however I also use Vivaldi and respect their CEO for nice down to earth comments and being anti-AI in certain products). I opted for a combination of DuckGo and Brave because sometimes one is better than the other for results. Using both doesnt bother me. I really havent missed Google search and their AI that they FORCE down my neck…

Google Authentication > 2FAS auth

I chose 2FAS because it has a browser plugin to get the codes.

Google Lens > Flora Incognita

I thought about what I am really using Google Lens for and it turned it it was mostly to identify plants/trees etc so I tried Flora Incognita instead and its really excellent! I have hardly used Google Lens since installing this app.

Google Translate > DeepL

This replacement has been working very well however I do admit that I miss instant translations without having to take the photo.

Google Pass > KeePass> Bitwarden

Bitwarden is solid.

Google Pay > Garmin Watch Pay

When you pay with Google Pay, Google collects transaction details like merchant, amount, time, and payment method, linking you to your account to provide services and refine its advertising profile.

Garmin Pay collects a minimal payment token and transaction details needed to process the purchase, without linking you to a broader advertising/data profile.

Google Play Store > Fdroid + Aurora store

I really love Fdroid - so much love and respect to the open source community! Aurora is also great and keeps downloads anonymous. You dont have to worry too much about moving to a new phone too because you can export.

Facebook, Instagram etc. > 🗑️

I have been using Facebook (more than Instagram) for so long because I found it easy to get my news, keep in touch with friends overseas, interests etc. However their algorithms recently have gone mental, they are pushing more hate/far right propaganda recently and dont get me started on selling data here…

I made a really hard decision to close both accounts. I have been facebook free for 2 weeks though and somehow Im still alive… Instead, Im using Lemmy (WHICH IM LOVING!) and doing a thing called: Going outdoors/travelling more - The graphics outside are amazing.

Windows > Linux Fedora KDE

Im not a complete newbie to Linux but I have been on Windows for over 20 years now. When I was on holiday, I forced myself to use Fedora on a Lenovo Slim 7i (trackpad use - no mouse). Fedora is the one that worked the best perfectly out of the box (Ubuntu was second choice, others like Debian had alot of issues like Audio drivers). KDE vs Gnome, honestly I enjoy both but I chose KDE because I love the customisation.

Main cons: (again needs a seperate post)

• Maps tracking in the browser just wouldnt work accurately which made planning trips from my current location quite tricky. I had to really mess around with alot of things to finally get it working (some of the time).
• The window focus drove me nuts - This is a Wayland security addition which prevents window stealing so when you click on a link in VSCode, it wont bring Firefox into focus. You might think this isnt a big deal but you would be suprised how ANNOYING this can be when you end up with 20 links in Firefox that you forgot you clicked on. I did get around this by writing a KDE script.

Android phone

I have recently installed LineageOS with MicroG on my old Samsung S10e which was a headache but it was worth the effort. It’s actually FREEKING AWESOME!!! Im really jelous of it when I have a newer phone… Im going to be trying out more apps but so far its doing absolutely everything I need (including maps working flawlessly).

I would kill for a phone replacement to Google’s ecosystem, there is fairphone 6 (/e/os) however its specs are just too low for the cost and this is because of the greener aspect of the phone. There is a great market space right here for more privacy phones.

VPN > Windscribe

I like Windscribes humour and they gave me a generous amount of data when I signed up in the early days.

Conclusion

Honestly, it is much easier to replace Google products than you think but THERE IS A ROAD to go down to compare products to see what works best for you. I would recommend doing it one at a time so its not overwhelming (with a checklist). The most important thing is that it has not only been an educational experience but also a very fun rewarding one! I am looking forward to doing more in self-hosting in the future too.