It took a few months preparation but I deleted all my google accounts today, and it feels good.
Well done!
I ended up keeping mine for occasional things like leaving YT comments or subscribing to Firebase-distributed apps.
Any suggestions on starting this process? I have a Raspberry Pi and was looking into self-hosted Google Drive/Photos/Gmail replacement. Best FOSS replacements?
Look up Syncthing and then never stop trying to replace closed source and paid software/services. Like any time you launch something ask yourself “does this hit the same way as when I swapped to Syncthing?” If the answer is no you then put “[name of thing you want to replace] foss alternative” into your search engine of choice. You’ll end up down so many rabbit holes, but you’ll come out the other side a whole lot better at making your technology work for you, not the company that made it, and with a suite of free open sourced tools you are in complete control of.
Here are some tools I use that are super easy to get going.
- Syncthing (cloud storage replacement)
- KeepassXC or Pass if you’re a command line person (locally stored password manager, coupled with Syncthing you have your own private cloud password manager
- Tailscale/wireguard (private VPN that allows you to easily connect all your devices without exposing any of the traffic to The Internet)
- PiHole (a DNS sinkhole that blocks a lot of ads and tracking on your entire network, bonus points if you set it as you Tailscale DNS provider to give all your devices ad block no matter where you are as long as the device was a connected to Tailscale)
Those are the ones that got me going and I personally believe act as a solid core. Most people will find all of those useful. Other services are more user specific, but that’s a lightweight bundle of software that your RPi will handle well. Much more and you might want to look at beefier hardware.
It’s a bit newer, but Immich is a very promising Google Photos replacement.
I recommend setting up a NextCloud server.
It’s a nice journey, and you can also start to look into proxmox for self hosting things. It really feels amazing to have your own little lab of stuff rather than using the public web for all services.
Welcome to the club.
Anyone have any alternatives to Voice?
I moved my number to VoIP.ms and while it’s not nearly the same service wise, SMS do come to my email and I can call and receive calls via any VoIP app I want.
Thanks. Looks promising. Will def look further into.
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but i don’t want to lose my ability to play minecraft
(yes i know about minetest)
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I feel like Amazon would be easier than MS and Google, wouldn’t it?
Yep, after you realize the majority of the stuff you can buy of Amazon is mass produced trash with zero quality. It was easy to remove.
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This is a daunting proposition, I’m admittedly massively invested in Google’s ecosystem. Gmail and Google calendar, I have a pixel phone, watch and buds and have YouTube premium. I feel like the time I switch is when I have a homelab and am able to find open source alternatives to everything heavily use and be able to do so with all devices I use.
Use newpipe anad install grapheneos on your pixel. I wish i had a pixel to install grapheneos.
I wanted to but my pixel bootloader is carrier locked. Supposedly you can call and ask them to unlock it if you own the device but not sure if that’s true.
I think it is true. At least it was last time I checked. Give it a try.
I have one and do so. It’s pretty great. I will admit I still have some google services on it, but I’m working on not needing those.
Do you have any guides or tips?
A lot of (all?) email services will allow you to forward your mail from Gmail. My advice would be set that up, have all of them going to a specific folder, and only use your new email moving forward. No harm in allowing some email forwarding while you adjust for the next 6 to 12 months. But that way you can also immediately stop using Gmail itself.
Gdrive unless it is really baked into your daily life in a complicated way, it’s pretty easy to replace. Lots of great services out there.
Proton mail allowed me to export my Google Calendar over with just a few clicks. So that was pretty painless. I’m sure there are other calendar services like that. YMMV.
Google maps is tough lol
For the google maps, it helps for us to contribute to Open Street Maps through recording with Mapillary or making edits in our community.
Is the app itself ready for prime time yet? Can I use it daily? I live in a small but major city.
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Congratulations! That’s awesome! I’ve been Google-free for 2-3 years, but I haven’t been brave enough to finally delete Gmail. I keep worrying I might need the message history one day?
Regarding Maps: I use OrganicMaps as my main, & I reflex to Gmaps WV when something isn’t in OrganicMaps. I feel this is a reasonable privacy-friendly compromise.
You can transfer your entire Gmail email history to your new service very easily
Oh yeah? I didn’t know that. I’ll have to look into it, thanks!
A guide? Sure! Go to the account settings and click “Delete my account”
I didn’t, but I did all the other privacy things and as a result Google locked me out of my accounts so its basically the same thing
Hi,
Trying to do it myself but I’m stuck with YouTube.
I mean, I need a gmail account to pay for the Premium sub. And then, most creators are still using YouTube not the few alternatives… How do you guys do?
Try Invidious, FreeTube, NewPipe,… All allow you to watch regular youtube content without ads. You can also create instance local accounts to “create playlists” and “subscribe” to people.
Do they support casting to Chromecast etc aswell?
I can’t answer that since I don’t have any cast-enabled devices.
I want to delete mine too, but I use GMail and I have not found a good alternative yet. Tutanota doesn’t have Thunderbird support and ProtonMail has, but only on paid accounts. I really want to use Thunderbird because it is such a great email client.
If you’re reasonably tech savvy and on linux you can use hydroxide to bridge a free protonmail to thunderbird. I’ve been doing it for ~a year, I suspect they don’t kill it for ratings, but I only have free protonmail on my GrapheneOS phone with forwards from thunderbird for specific things, works great…
If relevant, ask me how!
OK, thanks, I will check it out
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I’m considering it. Youtube just removed a comment of mine calling an elon simp a cracker for “harassment”
Really it’s just about the last straw, they passively protect billionaires but will let outright hate speech stay up. They also advertise nazis.
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Would you prefer I call you a gringo, then?
Jokes aside, Youtube doesn’t consider cracker to be a slur (because it’s not) I didn’t break the rule for Hate Speech I broke the rule for Harassment because I was mean to a billionaire. This is a repeated behavior on the site, where they’ll peckerwood for rich people.
No, cracker, you are not the victim of racism.
Welcome to the degoogled fold 🤗
Serious question; what do you use for OAuth?
OAuth? Do you mean 2FA? OAuth just requires you to be able to open a URL so all you need a browser. (see the OAuth flow)
No I mean all those web services that only allow you to use OAuth to sign in and don’t give you the option of creating a username/password combo.
I haven’t encountered such a service that I cannot live without --> I don’t use it. To be honest, I can’t even remember such a service.
I’m only keeping mine to be able to pay for YouTube premium.
My brother. Use Piped.
