Tuffy's take on DeGoogling - My guide on how to DeGoogle

[Tuffy!]

Why I think it is important to DeGoogle: Whenever someone tells me that there are no bad intentions involved, an alarm siren goes off in my head. Google first made use of this slogan in 2004 by mentioning it in their IPO. Google has removed all mentions of their "unofficial" slogan: "Don't be evil!" from Google's Code of Conduct in 2018. So should Google be considered evil now?

IMHO Google has just amassed too much power. It is too intrusive. The enshittification of their services, in particular their search engine and YouTube, has driven me to the conclusion that I don't want to support or use google services anymore. Whenever there is an alternative present, I'm trying to make use of it and if there is none, I think twice before I would even consider to make use of their products.

While I don't think that Google in itself as a company (part of Alphabet) and all of its employees are evil:
"Google is just too big to be considered harmless at all."

This is why I started the process of DeGoogling my life and in order to share my experience with you, I started writing things up.

Big Tech Detox
I'm writing on an article series named Big Tech Detox and I already have put in an uncounted amount of hours. I'm still far from being finished and I shouldn't keep working on my articles, because I'm broke AF and there is no revenue coming in from writing these articles but I can't help myself. I need to continue making the world a better place. Everybody should, am I right?

Currently I'm working on the part of DeGoogling and want to share with you, what I came across when trying to DeGoogle my online life. The article already is very long and I don't have the time to summarize it for you. Regarding this, I hope it is okay to only share the link here:

Tuffy's take on DeGoogling: The ultimate guide to DeGoogling - How to DeGoogle for real


I would also like to see this thread being used to discuss your stance on Google and the services offered by Big G.
I think the majority of users in general isn't aware how deep entangled Google really is in the world. Here on Melonland the percentage of knowing people might be higher. I would like to hear your opinion.

• Are you addicted to YouTube?
• Are there other services offered by Google that you can't live without?
• What do you think about the enshittification of search results and Google's other efforts to keep people on their websites for as long as possible?
• What do you know about 3rd party web services like ReCaptcha, Google Tag Manager, Google Fonts etc. that make you connect to Google servers unknowingly?
• What keeps you continuing using Google products?

Your feedback regarding the content is very much appreciated as well. Don't judge me for typos/grammar. I haven't proofread my article and it is unfinished. I published this thread here by mistake (too soon). I would as well like to hear your opinion on what I could improve. Any suggestions for alternative services that might fit my list as well as alternative front-ends that I haven't mentioned already are welcome.

I was already thinking of splitting and reorganizing the whole article. Maybe I will split it in several parts like DeGoogling your Browser, DeGoogling for Webmasters, DeGoogling your Smartphone.


Edit: I wanted to save this as a draft and publish it when my article is in a more finished state but it seems like I have mistakenly clicked the wrong button or made use of the shift+alt+s shortcut. I dunno, it happened and as I'm not able to delete my own post on this board and Melooon isn't online, this thread is now online. Fuck it!

from Tuffy with ❤️

 
UNITED WE
    STAND

[lakes]

this is a good guide thanks for sharing :)
i personally am addicted to youtube. it's probably the one google service i still use even then it's indirectly

[Dan Q]

Great thread! I've been gradually de-Googling for years now and I'm slowly winning. Key victories:

• Dropping Google Search for DuckDuckGo: I initially did this about 10-15 years ago, but I found that about 10% of the time I'd return to Google to find something I felt was "missing" from DuckDuckGo (and maybe about 25% of the time, that helped)... but nowadays Google Search has gone downhill so far that I don't ever miss it; this was definitely a win!
• Dropping GMail for ProtonMail: I'd long had a free ProtonMail account but I bit the bullet and moved my domain/workspace account over about 8 years ago. There have been some headaches: e.g. it turns out that if you had a domain associated with a paid Google Workspace then when you stop paying Google will forever ban email addresses at that domain from ever being able to access e.g. Google Docs... so now people can't even share a Google Doc with me at my primary email address, sigh! But apart from that, it's all good, and I love ProtonMail.
• Not using YouTube like normal people: There are a handful of YouTube creators that I follow, but I barely ever open YouTube's website or (heaven forbid) app: instead I've got a script that runs once a day that fetches their RSS feeds, then yt-dlp's all their new videos and puts them onto my Jellyfin server. As an upside, I also see no ads, give no meaningful metrics to Google, and get to keep videos even if they get deleted by YouTube (or their creators). As a downside, creators might get a smidge less revenue, so I try to support the people I like in other ways. Incidentally, I pull Nebula videos in the same way, but that's mostly so I'm equipped to watch them online: I pay for Nebula anyway, so I figure I'm not harming any content producers in the same kind-of way.
• Dropping (and blocking) Google Analytics: aeons ago, I used to use this on my blog, before I realised that it meant I was pandering to what "got hits" rather than what I wanted to write about. It also made me feel dishonest, because I was blocking it on other people's sites as a privacy go-to. So I dropped it about 15 years ago.
• Degoogling Android: I can't escape that so easily, for now, but I run a de-Googlified distro (Lineage; I used to use Cyanogen back in the day!) and that helps a lot - what I really want is Ubuntu Touch to reach critical mass! I run Debian on my Cosmo Communicator.
• Never really using Chrome in the first place: I never really got on with Chrome in the first place! Well, except for the brief period that its debug tools were better than those in the other browsers I used when it first came out, Opera and Firefox. Firefox remains my daily driver as it has... basically since it came out!... and I love it not only because it's the best browser for me... but also because using a non-Chromium-based browser is an important protest against Web monoculture. When I absolutely need a Chromium-based browser, my go-to is Edge.
• Not "logging in with a Google Account": I never "log in using Google", anywhere (and avoid doing so with any third-party service, where there's any other option: I'd much rather use a username and password!). If a service requires "Log in with Google" (and or one of several other horrible OAuth providers) I just don't use that service.
• Selfhosting Google Web Fonts: again, this one was no problem, because I practice HtDTY.
• Insidious Google embeds: I keep uBlock configured to block all third-party scripts by-default, and only allow sites to load such scripts on an opt-in basis anyway; if any Google ones get through, Ghostery's there to catch the worst of them. When I positively, absolutely have to load a Google service, my cookie-blocker isolates them from any other Google cookies and deletes any cookies they set 15 seconds after I navigate away or close the tab.

Things I haven't yet escaped from, but am looking to, include:

• Google Maps: I use (and contribute heavily to) OpenStreetMap, but sometimes if you just want to know "what's the opening hours of the nearest convenience store", Google Maps sadly wins. Would be delighted to hear your favourite suggestions!
• Google Calendar: Proton Calendar's not "there" yet - it's still pretty clunky and I can't get it to reliably sync with Thunderbird very well. So I've still got quite a lot of data in Calendar that I'd like to liberate. I'm happy to wait while Proton Calendar improves, or I'm open to suggestions. The key reason I can't just use Thunderbird's built-in calendar is I need to be able to share my calendar with others... I briefly tried selfhosting Radical but it was really slow.
• Google Remote Desktop: there's no excuse for this, but I've still got some boxen hidden around my house that this is the best way to remote-control. I'll swap them out for VNC when I can, but it's a drag!

[BlazingCobaltX]

Nice guide. Good reminder for myself to switch away from Google Fonts and just host all of the fonts I use. Slightly pedantic: Saying "get rid of Android" is a bit contradictory because alternatives like LineageOS are based on the AOSP. In theory, people can get rid of all Google services on their phone while still retaining the Android version their phone came with, but it is much easier to go with an alternative OS that doesn't have these installed. I know there's also some Linux OSes but I'm not very familiar with them.

Oh yeah, as a Pixel user, I'd say that getting a used Google phone and installing an alternative OS on there wouldn't miss the purpose, because you are repurposing pretty good hardware. But that's my bias.

In the past two years I've been able to DeGoogle in most ways. The biggest thing was cloud storage, which I've now fragmented in multiple services. That said, some things are a bit hard for me to move away from:

• Google Maps: Unfortunately still the most reliable map service out there. Everything else I've tried was missing key features or didn't have enough information for my area. I could support a new service but I don't know which to choose.
• Gboard: I've tried viable alternatives like FUTO, but they all significantly impeded my typing. The multi language typing support (which I need constantly) seems quite unique to the Gboard. I really hope FUTO continues development.
• Google Camera & Photos: Did you know that if you use Google Camera you can only view newly taken photos using their own Photos app? This is just me needing to take time to find a good camera alternative.
• YouTube: I honestly forget this is a Google service sometimes. I modified it on both the website and the ReVanced app so that it only shows me things I am subscribed to, but that probably doesn't change shit on the backend.

I am also hosting one spreadsheet on my website from Google Drive (the only file on there) because I currently lack the technical skill to do this any other way. To be continued.

[Tuffy!]

this is a good guide thanks for sharing :)
i personally am addicted to youtube. it's probably the one google service i still use even then it's indirectly

Thank you! Before you had edited your post, you had written some interesting stuff about alternative services (If I remember correctly). Do you still have this text around? You mentioned some things that I wanted to include in my article but I didn't take notes 

I too had a very strong youtube addiction. After I realized that it keeps me from doing important stuff, I stopped the excessive use but I still feel the need to bombard my brain with those videos fitting my bubble. It's really hard to resist the ongoing flood of new content. And of course, there are some fantastic content creators out there. Didn't found a solution to this yet so I still consider myself being addicted to youtube.

Nice guide. Good reminder for myself to switch away from Google Fonts and just host all of the fonts I use.

Oh yeah, as a Pixel user, I'd say that getting a used Google phone and installing an alternative OS on there wouldn't miss the purpose, because you are repurposing pretty good hardware. But that's my bias.

Reading this makes me feel good. I'm glad that I inspired or at least reminded you to get away from another one of the centralized services of the net. Self-hosting is just the best option    I'm glad you like it. My article is far from being finished yet and I had some similar thoughts to yours regarding the pixel phone. I'm with you as long as a used device gets repurposed. Thats a good thing. Less impact on nature & you don't support big tech with your money. However, I heard that google makes use of self-developed and proprietary chip designs in their Pixel phones. So I think you can't fully DeGoogle a pixel phone. But I would need to dig deeper into that topic.

Google Maps is just too convenient for many to stay away from. To me it is superior because of all the info you get when using it like opening hours, phone numbers etc. Even the reviews can come in handy from time to time so leaving Google Maps behind really is something you only do, if you really stand behind the idea of DeGoogling.

Suggesting this feature to FUTO's devs could be a good way to make them work on a feature like that. This could be of use to a lot of people IMHO.

Not "logging in with a Google Account": I never "log in using Google", anywhere (and avoid doing so with any third-party service, where there's any other option: I'd much rather use a username and password!

I just feel the same about the log-in with "xxx" service. If you lose access to that one and registered several accounts by using this kind of service, you end up losing access to all accounts. I really hate websites that don't offer an alternative and I just boycott these.

Thank you for sharing what you have achieved so far. Your list inspires me to update and extend my article even more.

You mentioned self-hosting radical was to slow. Could you please elaborate on this please?

[Dan Q]

You mentioned self-hosting radical was to slow. Could you please elaborate on this please?

It's probably something I did wrong, TBF! But here's the skinny:

I installed Radical on my NAS: it runs Unraid, so I can just put Docker containers on it pretty easily. Then I connected my phone (which took a little work - needed an app called something like DAVx) and Thunderbird to it, and tried to run it in parallel with my current Google Calendar, which I access from the same devices.

Sometimes I'd find that Radical was exceptionally slow to hard-push updates. I'm confident they'd have synchronised eventually, but if I added something for later today from my desktop then I'd want to be able to "force update" and get it near-instantly on my phone... but if I'd do a "force update" then I'd see a progress bar for ages - like 45 seconds plus - before the calendar sync completed.

Also, I ultimately wasn't happy with hosting it on my own box. Electricity supply in my neck of the woods is sometimes ropey (although it'll apparently improve soon) but this meant that I could end up in a place where my NAS was down or offline and the phone app would crash if it failed to connect for an extended period... and I wouldn't notice, so everything would get out-of-sync.

I have a grandfathered-in Proton connection that's really good so I'd like to switch to ProtonCalendar. Last time I tried it (a few years ago) it had some showstopping quirks, like difficulties with recurring events, but maybe it's better now. I'll try it again in 2026.

[lakes]

Thank you! Before you had edited your post, you had written some interesting stuff about alternative services (If I remember correctly). Do you still have this text around? You mentioned some things that I wanted to include in my article but I didn't take notes 

Knowing me, I might have mentioned: Freetube (a FOSS youtube frontend/app that saves everything locally), Tubular (another one but for mobile and based on Newpipe), Peertube (youtube alternative), Tuta (gmail alternative), Protonmail (gmail alt), OrganicMaps (google maps alternative) or BreezyWeather (weather app).

I too had a very strong youtube addiction. After I realized that it keeps me from doing important stuff, I stopped the excessive use but I still feel the need to bombard my brain with those videos fitting my bubble. It's really hard to resist the ongoing flood of new content. And of course, there are some fantastic content creators out there. Didn't found a solution to this yet so I still consider myself being addicted to youtube.

Yeah I'm trying to other activities more often like read or exercise, but I feel out of the habit due to external factors. Hopefully I'll get more into it again. But it's a slow process.