this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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DeGoogle Yourself

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A process that started roughly a year ago with just changing browser and search engine, now feeling that I got somewhere. The journey ended up being more than just degoogle, but also demetaing and taking more control over my data and privacy.

Before and after picture with notes:

Chrome -> Zen browser (Firefox on iOS)

Google -> Qwant

Gmail -> Proton Mail

NordVPN -> Proton VPN (I don’t use VPN very often, but have NordVPN through another subscription, now replaced with Proton across my devices)

Google Drive / Photos -> Proton Drive

Google Password Manager -> Proton Pass

Google Authenticator -> Proton Pass / Ente (Ente Auth is only used to store my 2FA keys for the Proton account, other keys are stored in Proton Pass)

Google Translator -> DeepL

YouTube -> FreeTube (Unwatched on iOS)

Google Maps -> Magic Earth (OSM on desktop)

WhatsApp -> Signal

Notion -> Anytype

Keep / Notes -> Notesnook

X -> Mastodon / Bluesky

Reddit -> Lemmy (Voyager on iOS, dreaming of an eventual complete migration)

Instagram -> Pixelfed

Facebook -> stopped using

Windows 11 -> Ubuntu (Only personal laptop, work laptop still windows)

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[–] brown_guy@lemm.ee 1 points 2 hours ago

Am I only one who doesn't like proton services?

For some reasons, I don't get the OTP emails in proton mail. Just the OTP emails..

[–] 3aqn5k6ryk@lemmy.world 10 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Isnt iPhone already degoogled?

[–] airikr@lemmy.ml -2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Yes, but iOS is even more closed than Android which makes all iPhones a small prison for open-minded and privacy oriented people.

Google is Big Tech, logs everything. Apple is Big Tech too, but only logs tiny less than Google. All Big Tech is a big no-no if you're privacy oriented. This applies to all services that uses Big Tech, too.

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I feel like my story is a lot similar to yours almost a year ago now I saw a YouTube video about degoogling. It caused me to switch to Firefox with betterfox on the betterfox github pages there was a new oil link which I read and followed ultimately leading me to all of this and so much more.

[–] joelvdc@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago

Wow, thenewoil website is great. Thanks for sharing.

[–] Randomgal@lemmy.ca -2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Imagine spending 1k USD and then Not using any what you paid for lmao

[–] joelvdc@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago
[–] Rhoeri@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

Saved! Good work and thank you.

[–] sonalder@lemmy.ml 4 points 16 hours ago

Try Impressia for PixelFed

[–] FreakinSteve@lemmy.world 7 points 18 hours ago

Saving this post. I have been deGoogling as much as I can but havent done the research to find some of these options. Thanks

[–] EuropeanPrimate@lemm.ee 31 points 1 day ago (8 children)

I want to use Signal but can’t convince everyone to get on it

[–] FreakinSteve@lemmy.world 16 points 18 hours ago (2 children)
[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 hours ago

Is that a good or bad? Could go both ways 🤭

[–] EuropeanPrimate@lemm.ee 3 points 12 hours ago

And they hand out invitations to group chats

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[–] pewpew@feddit.it 77 points 1 day ago (4 children)
[–] admin@sh.itjust.works 42 points 1 day ago (4 children)
[–] Jhex@lemmy.world 61 points 1 day ago (1 children)

an imperfect ally is not an enemy

[–] ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 22 points 1 day ago

This right bloody here, you have to make sacrifices for peace-of-mind otherwise you’ll live your life paranoid on the smallest of things.

One persons opinions don’t suddenly make a service unusable or unreliable.

[–] Biskii@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 day ago (7 children)

This is my thing. I've ditched all of proton for the obvious reason, but aside from that, I no longer want everything under one umbrella. Convenience has shown it comes at too great of a cost

[–] Psyhackological@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 hours ago

Yes but it can also give you extra cost. Bundled services cost less than individual ones. For example Proton offers better value with their email and cloud than individual ones.

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[–] Petersnowden@lemmy.ml 90 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Don't put all your eggs in one basket (dont use proton for everything)

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[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 42 points 1 day ago (10 children)

As predicted, here come all the purity tests.

I know there's no way to definitively prove it, but in my mind Apple is the safer alternative vs. anything Google. I know you can do custom roms and all that, but let's face it: It's a huge pain in the ass. I know, I know, "It's not really"... I beg to differ. I went through my purity phase with degoogled roms and all that. Due to driver inconsistencies, updates breaking things (even the phone part), and the inability to use a lot of "normal" apps, I gave up and went with an iPhone. Apple's business model is to sell you the thing at a higher price, thus reducing the incentive to sell your data or enshittify. Yes, that will degrade over time and I'll reach a threshold at which I'll reevaluate my options. Given the two major choices, I choose the less terrible ecosystem of the two.

I refuse to have any Google or Meta products on my iPhone. I know that makes me lame here, but we should also understand that any normie would never go to all the trouble of OS tinkering. The are a lot more people who want to degoogle vs. the people who understand how to do rom flashing. Criticizing a person's degoogle effort as "not good enough" does nothing but drive people directly into the arms of the very evil we wish to diminish. This is a community to banish Google, not everything backed by a for-profit corporation.

[–] const_void@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 hours ago

This sub is strangely pro Google

[–] Chastity2323@midwest.social 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Apple is the safer alternative vs. anything Google

Not really. Research has demonstrated that iOS and Android send very similar types of data even when users explicitly request to opt out. Apple was even so arrogant as to not bother responding to the authors of this paper when they reached out for comment (unlike Google which did reply).

https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf

iOS is also much more hostile towards 3rd party apps than Android, greatly limiting what they can do. This makes moving to FOSS options harder.

Due to driver inconsistencies, updates breaking things (even the phone part), and the inability to use a lot of "normal" apps

Sounds like you haven't tried modern GrapheneOS with sandboxed Google Play Services. Neither of these are issues for me and I've been using it for years after switching from iOS.

The are a lot more people who want to degoogle vs. the people who understand how to do rom flashing

Flashing GrapheneOS takes like 2 seconds and requires nothing but a desktop/laptop and a browser. If you can read, you can install GrapheneOS with minimal effort.

[–] Franklin@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

You know our lawmakers have failed when you have to be this concerned about privacy on your own behalf.

it's really shouldn't be this much effort in order to retain your data and I know the argument can be made that you just use services that respect it but without legislation it's incentivized to monetize data which makes it extremely hard to find alternatives that don't.

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 day ago

Agreed; unfortunately, this will always happen as long as money is allowed in politics.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Apple already proved they'll roll over for the EU on encryption backdoors.

If it comes down to them selling in the US or not selling in the US, they're going to roll over and do whatever the government demands.

They're all so holding all of your data, metrics, and browsing habits securely in their hands.

When the government demands baggacips data, they're going to hand it over, the same as Google would.

And none of this is ever a problem until the government goes kind of fascist. When browsing privacy subs on Lemmy becomes an act of treason...

Even if I'm not doing anything wrong or illegal, I sure as hell I'm not going to send my data through a VPN that logs and is known to comply with foreign court requests.

You can in fact drive yourself insane trying to stay private and secure, But I do know that trusting a single gigantic monolithic company that operates in a questionable regime to protect you from government entities is a losing battle.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Apple already proved they'll roll over for the EU on encryption backdoors.

Did they? They explicitly made a big deal about not doing that for the UK government's request.

[–] OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml 1 points 13 hours ago

They said they would remove all encryption rather than installing a backdoor.

It's good that this attracted some attention, but they still agreed to removed all the protections the UK requested.

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