Remember, it’s not an all-or-nothing situation, every step you take away from google helps. And you can always reevaluate later, and take time to figure out what works best for you.
I’m still working on it, but I’ve cut out quite a bit. Start with Chrome, and work your way down.
When you get to email, Gmail has a very convenient forwarding feature so you can forward all email to the new one while you change accounts and whatnot. I made a new account elsewhere, and I have a separate folder for email from my old Gmail and my new email. Every so often I’ll go fix an account or two, so I’m making steady progress.
For me, docs/drive is the hardest, so I’m doing it last. I’m playing with self-hosted options, and am still in an adjustment period.
Getting away from Google Maps has been a tough one. There aren’t many options there, it’s either Google, Apple, Microsoft, or OpenStreetMap.
I’ve been contributing to OSM for my local area as much as possible to update businesses and their opening hours, website, etc., but it’s not a small task.
Honestly, the live traffic information is pretty bad in my area anyway. It’ll say a road has high traffic or an accident long after the traffic has cleared, or it’ll say it’s clear when it’s clearly not.
So if that’s your hangup, try going without it for a week or two and see if it really impacts you.
Hello fellow OSM contributor! We’ve been doing driver’s ed at home and while I’m in the passenger seat, I’m poppin’ everything on Street Complete! The kid gets the required behind the wheel hours and I’m contributing to OSM.
Sync.com was my solution to replacing Google Drive. It was the only one I could find that actually did everything Google Drive did (and is less expensive). They’re honest and communicative, unlike Dropbox or Google.
What a pos company
I really need to start to de-google my life
Check out https://www.privacyguides.org, they have a bunch of useful info and recommendations.
Remember, it’s not an all-or-nothing situation, every step you take away from google helps. And you can always reevaluate later, and take time to figure out what works best for you.
Will do, thanks!
Do it!
I’m still working on it, but I’ve cut out quite a bit. Start with Chrome, and work your way down.
When you get to email, Gmail has a very convenient forwarding feature so you can forward all email to the new one while you change accounts and whatnot. I made a new account elsewhere, and I have a separate folder for email from my old Gmail and my new email. Every so often I’ll go fix an account or two, so I’m making steady progress.
For me, docs/drive is the hardest, so I’m doing it last. I’m playing with self-hosted options, and am still in an adjustment period.
Getting away from Google Maps has been a tough one. There aren’t many options there, it’s either Google, Apple, Microsoft, or OpenStreetMap.
I’ve been contributing to OSM for my local area as much as possible to update businesses and their opening hours, website, etc., but it’s not a small task.
I’ve been getting around quite well on OrganicMaps, but it does lack live traffic information
Honestly, the live traffic information is pretty bad in my area anyway. It’ll say a road has high traffic or an accident long after the traffic has cleared, or it’ll say it’s clear when it’s clearly not.
So if that’s your hangup, try going without it for a week or two and see if it really impacts you.
For Google Maps, what about a dedicated phone for just running Maps? It would only get internet from hotspot on your real phone.
You can run multiple user profiles on one phone to isolate apps like Google Maps.
Tutorial/explaination:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB01HHFitFA
Yup, that’s what I do.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=YB01HHFitFA
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The irony of posting a YouTube link to a comment thread that started with the person looking to degoogle is delicious.
Never considered something like that. Shame it’s only for GrapheneOS, which apparently only runs on Google Pixel phones.
Graphene allows more profiles but it should work on stock android
2 phones is a huge pain in the ass even when they have completely separate contexts like work & personal.
It’s a hard no if it’s just for maps.
Hello fellow OSM contributor! We’ve been doing driver’s ed at home and while I’m in the passenger seat, I’m poppin’ everything on Street Complete! The kid gets the required behind the wheel hours and I’m contributing to OSM.
Sync.com was my solution to replacing Google Drive. It was the only one I could find that actually did everything Google Drive did (and is less expensive). They’re honest and communicative, unlike Dropbox or Google.
I fully did it like eight years ago and I don’t miss it at all.
The biggest hurtle for me are Google maps, google photos and all the sites that i have signed up with google
Try OrganicMaps. It’s the best OpenStreetMaps backed app I’ve ever used, and I’ve tried almost all of them for 10 years now.
Yup, both are difficult. But you can at least use maps anonymously if you do it from a separate profile, which can help a little.
But just knock one out at a time and eventually it won’t seem as hard to switch to a competitor.