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Andrew Marder

Goodbye Google

/ 3 min read

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I’ve decided to start breaking up with Google. The prospect of big tech collaborating with an authoritarian US government freaks me out. So, I’m working on moving my data from Google to other providers that will better protect my privacy.

For most of my searches, I use DuckDuckGo. When DuckDuckGo isn’t finding what I want, I fall back to using Google. I played around with Kagi but didn’t notice a major improvement over DuckDuckGo.

Browser

I’ve switched from Chrome to Firefox. I’ve written about customizing Firefox for improved privacy here.

Email

I’ve switched from Gmail to Proton Mail. I set up my Gmail account to forward a copy of incoming email to my Proton Mail address and delete Gmail’s copy. Proton Mail has great support for custom domains. For instance, I set up a public email address at andrew@andrewmarder.net. I used their Easy Switch feature to move old emails from Gmail to Proton Mail. In retrospect, I might have preferred using Google Takeout to export all my emails and then manually import them, but I’m not going to worry about that now.

Photos

I’m in the process of switching from Google Photos to Immich. I’m self-hosting Immich on a small, energy-efficient server at home. Maybe I’ll write a separate post about my Immich setup because it does take a bit of work.

I also played around with digiKam but decided Immich would be better for me.

2FA

I switched from using Google Authenticator to Proton Authenticator.

Works in Progress

These are the places where I’m still relying on Google:

  • Calendar: I’m still using Google Calendar because it makes it easy to coordinate events with family members, and I value being able to see my work and personal calendars in a unified view.
  • Android: I would like to switch to GrapheneOS, but the prospect of messing up my phone makes me a little cautious.
  • Contacts: I like having my contacts easily synced with my phone.
  • Docs: I still have some random documents on Google Docs. Eventually, I plan to delete these documents. It isn’t a tool I’m using regularly to collaborate, but I have used it in the past.
  • “Smart” Home: My family uses Google Home to control thermostats and lights. It’s a good unified interface that works. I have played around with Home Assistant, but I think our Nest Thermostats are always going to send data to Google, and I appreciate how Google Home requires less work on my end.
  • Maps: Google Maps is very good. For now, I’m okay having Google know where I’m going.
  • YouTube: Tons of video content. I have played around with yt-dlp to download videos from YouTube. I find the convenience of browsing and watching on YouTube hard to beat at the moment.

Resources

There is a very active degoogle subreddit. I haven’t used it much, but it looks like a great resource.