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degoogle

there is no cloud; only other people's computers

at one point, i realized how many different parts of my life were somehow

intertwined with google's services. while i don't deny their usefulness, as

they saying goes, if you don't pay for the product, you are the product. and i

started thinking more about how to actually move my data and usage off their

services. interestingly, this is part of a bigger grassroots movement: [degoogle].

i'm far from being finished - because some of the services still make

sense for me to use. but i am attempting to at least slowly move my online self

off of their services. if you have particular suggestions, please do [contact]

me for how to continue getting off of google's services.

there are lots of lists out there that go over alternatives:

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-

below, some notes on things i have and haven't switched off.

successes

gmail

i decided to start paying for encrypted mail at [protonmail].

however, after having used my previous email at gmail for almost two decades,

the switch is far from being finished. but getting started is half done! by

paying for it, i was also able to now use a custom domain when i give my email

out. this allows me to later decide to change off protonmail if i want, without

having to change my email.

google chrome

i use firefox for 99% of my personal browsing, but often am required to use

chrome for the occasional chrome-only website, or for work.

google drive

i started a [nextcloud] server - but i still need to set up

automatic backups. the server, as a whole, has a weekly autoback up that is

easy enough to use in the meantime.

google calendar

[nextcloud] also has a contact and calendar functionality

which i sync to phone using [davx5]. this has been

surprisingly easy actually!

google authenticator

i switched to using [aegis].

google reader

haha, google already killed this product. i use [feedly].

partials

youtube

youtube has a clear monopoly on content, as well as content creators.

while there are tools like [invidious],

or [NewPipe] (which i use) - they only partially

disconnect you with the youtube platform itself.

i'm aware of [peertube] but

have not really found that there is a ton of content that i am after there.

often when i do find a video, the speeds are so poor its hard to use.

however i am happy to see the development's that [framasoft]

are making towards a [decentralized search] across

peertube instances.

google search

for technical information, or hyper local information, i find that google

search is hard to beat. i'm ok with this for the time being. i also tried

using DuckDuckGo for quite some time, and still use it sometimes, but am

hoping that someday,

[we can do better than DuckDuckGo].

recently, i was suggested to give

[StartPage] a try. i did give it a try

but overall wasn't super impressed. another one that was recently brought to my

attention is [searcxng], which is a free

internet metasearch enginge. there are different providers of the same

software, and it searches over a handful of existing search engines like

google, wikipedia, and others. you can find existing servers that host this

engine at [https://searx.space].

google maps

i tried using open street maps for android, and frankly, it is far from

comparable. i still use google maps all the time. i would like to find a

reasonable alternative. while open street maps works to some degree, it

doesn't really have the business information i often rely on google maps for. i

don't think there is a simple solution here yet for me.

i am excited about [maps.earth] though!

failures

google android more generally

i used cyanogen mod for about 8 years before more recently switching back to stock

(pixel) android. i'd like to consider switching to something like

- [CalyxOS]

- [GrapheneOS]

or even the newer version of cyanogen:

- [LineageOS]

google fi

i use google fi for my phone plan. this one is easy to change, so i have been

putting it off. for some reason, i'm not exactly sure why, i kind of care about

this one the least. it feels like there aren't a ton of good alternatives in

general.

one recent one that i saw that caught my eye was PGPP:

- [INVISV: Pretty Good Phone Privacy (PGPP)]

google photos

google photos i think has been one of the harder ones for me. i've looked at

some alternatives but simply organizing photos is such a royal pain imo.

however, out of all the services, this is the one i'd like to tackle the most.

i set up a sync to nextcloud using the nextcloud app from my phone, but it

ends up failing quite a bit and isn't super reliable.

i've considered running [photo prism] but probably need to

rent or run an additional server in order to run something like that.

Gemini Links:

index and recent changes

directory of all pages

contact

Web Links:

degoogle

protonmail

nextcloud

nextcloud

davx5

aegis

feedly

invidious

NewPipe

peertube

framasoft

decentralized search

we can do better than DuckDuckGo

StartPage

searcxng

https://searx.space

maps.earth

CalyxOS

GrapheneOS

LineageOS

INVISV: Pretty Good Phone Privacy (PGPP)

photo prism