Right now a lot of us are trying to divest and diversify from having our entire lives on Google both because of the way Google spends its money and the long-standing privacy concerns seeming a bit more scary now.

What services have you switched to and what has your experience been? What do you like, what don’t you like, would you recommend them?

  • Kalvin Carefour Johnny@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    2 hours ago

    I tried to minimize my dependency on Google by signing up for various email services like Petal Mail by Huawei, Proton Mail, and Yandex Mail. I also tried to find smartphones that don’t have Google by default, such as Murena smartphones and Huawei smartphones. But it seems like it’s too late to look for those gems without Google because I have so many apps that I bought on Google, amounting to around five digits in Malaysian Ringgit, which is not cheap. So I think I’ll stay with Google for now, sadly.

  • AlexWarburton@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    5 hours ago

    Google Search -> Ecosia, Qwant Browser -> Vivaldi Mail, Calender -> Proton* Drive -> Proton* DNS -> Quad9 Notes -> Joplin VPN -> Proton LLM/AI -> Mistral Translate -> DeepL Maps -> Here We Go Dall-E etc -> Stability Matrix Kindle -> Pocketbook

    *Planning to move everything to a NAS with Nextcloud and synch in with Jottacloud as a backup.

    • EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 hour ago

      I see from the “View source” option that your comment has everything in a neat, line-by-line fashion, though the final markup is decidedly not.

      So, a pro-tip I’ve noticed from my own commenting experience: even if you have a line break, Lemmy (for some stupid reason) won’t apply one when rendering; so if you want it to show, you have to use two line breaks, though then there will be an extra half-line or so that you probably never wanted.

      For example, don’t do

      Line Item 1
      Line Item 2
      

      but rather do

      Line Item 1
      
      Line Item 2
      

      Yes, I agree it’s rather stupid.

      • Ephera@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        10 minutes ago

        It’s the way Markdown works, for reasons, which is what Lemmy uses for its comment syntax.

        If you want a regular line
        break, you can put two spaces
        at the end of a line.

  • JustARegularNerd@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    edit-2
    11 hours ago

    Been degoogled for years at this point:

    • Stock Android --> LineageOS or GrapheneOS (no gapps)
    • YouTube --> Invidious*, NewPipe
    • Google Search --> DuckDuckGo, Brave Search
    • Google Play Store --> F-Droid, Aurora Store

    I’ve also decoupled from other similar services:

    • Outlook --> ProtonMail
    • Calendar --> Nextcloud*
    • OneDrive --> Nextcloud*
    • Windows, macOS --> Linux (after years of distrohopping, I found LMDE is incredibly stable while still being a nice “out of box” distro)
    • Google Maps, Apple Maps --> OSMAnd, Organic Maps

    I never used any online password manager myself, I went from writing passwords in a literal book to KeePass, to now Vaultwarden* for that

    * - self hosted

  • 0485@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    10 hours ago

    I have moved away from Google Contacts and Google Calendar and am now using Synology Calendar/Contacts. I’ve left Google Drive for Synology Drive and I’ve left Google Photos for Synology Photos. Everything is self hosted and self maintained.

  • venotic@kbin.melroy.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    11 hours ago

    ProtonMail was the GMail alternative for awhile, until Proton CEO did a stupid move. Otherwise, ProtonMail had actually been a great service and it was nice having a data cap of 500MB. It told me that was all I ever needed for the few years I had with it.

    Firefox Forks over Chrome.

      • venotic@kbin.melroy.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        11 hours ago

        Proton CEO endorsed Trump. Proton’s stance has always been against Big Tech and how Big Tech is bad and that’s all well and good. But, it’s contradicting when you praise or endorse an administration that’s more than likely going to let Big Tech roll over everyone.

          • go $fsck yourself@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 hour ago

            I never saw anyone try to claim that he was MAGA. Even if he doesn’t necessarily support Trump, the tweet is still beyond tone-deaf as it’s still painting Trump in a positive light while Trump is trampling on our rights and the constitution.

  • Flubo@feddit.org
    link
    fedilink
    Deutsch
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    10 hours ago

    Mail: Posteo Maps: osmand for walking, hiking, cycling, skiing and magic earth for car navigation (because of real live traffic) Drive: nextcloud Phone: second Hand Google pixel with graphene OS installed (degiogled Android)

    There are like 10 communities called something like privacy and a couple with degoogle in their name specifically. If you need more alternatives check them out. ;)

  • Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    10 hours ago

    Firefox.

    Immich for photos

    Radicale for calendar and contacts

    My own mail domain and server, for mail

    Lineages on android

    The only thing I cannot do without, is google maps.

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    11 hours ago

    The #1 Google service/app that I used in the past was Google Maps. I’ve replaced it with Magic Earth for the last few years and it’s been great. It uses Open Street Map for its navigation data, handles addresses very well, has live crowd-sourced traffic and hazard data, and can record rolling footage if you want it to act like a dashcam.

    It works on Android and iOS, and supports Apple watch and Android car play if you use those.

    For email I use Protonmail, for Google drove I use Proton Drive and my own self hosted NAS. For browsing I use several different Firefox forks like Zen, Floorp, LibreWolf, etc. UnGoogled Chromium for the rare times that a website “needs” Chrome to run.

    My phone runs GrapheneOS which works great.

    • Bhaelfur@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      10 hours ago

      I’ll have to check out Magic Earth. My biggest fear switching from Google Maps was not having up to date road closures or accident reports.

      • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 hours ago

        The traffic data, at least in my area of the US, is pretty good.

        Road closures are a rough point for sure. Generally, Magic Earth does have them marked, but not always. And the map data is only updated once a month. So even if a new closure does show up on Magic Earth, it takes several weeks to a month.

        This isn’t a terrible issue for me in my area, because I know the major roads and highways decently well, but when in other states or cities, it can be a problem.

        That being said, it’s still about 80% accurate on the whole. And on rare occasion, it has actually had a closure marked correctly that Google Maps didn’t.

  • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    11 hours ago

    These are what I use:

    Browsers: Fennec, LibreWolf

    Email Clients: K-9, Fair Email, Proton Mail, Thunderbird

    Pictures: Fossify Camera, Fossify Gallery

    File Sharing: Proton Drive

    YouTube: Tubular

    SMS Messaging: Textra (It’s not FOSS, but unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a FOSS app in existence that shows the actual name of the person who’s sent the message in group chats. They just show an icon, which isn’t enough for me to keep track)

    App store: Droid-ify (F-Droid), Aurora Store

    Password Manager: Bitwarden

    eBook Reader: Librera FD

    Books: Bookwyrm

    Translation: LibreTranslator

    Calendar: Proton Calendar

    What I can’t find good alternatives for:

    YouTube itself - enough said

    Phone screen translation - I still use Google Assistant, and I’m not aware of anything else that grabs and translates all text on my phone screen

    Maps - Rant time. This one is so annoying because there are FOSS navigation apps based on OpenStreetMap that are excellent in every way except one that makes them unusable for me: Using POV navigation instead of observing the convention of up = north. I did find one that lets you maintain a normal map view during navigation, but it doesn’t keep your position centered automatically, which makes it impossible to use while driving. I have no idea who all you deranged people are who actually like the POV navigation, but there are definitely a lot of you because I can’t find a replacement for Google Maps. I even tried Mapquest because at least it’s not Google, but when I tried using it to navigate the first time, it somehow autocorrected “St” to “Ave” and I ended up lost lol. This maps situation really grinds my gears. I do still try to contribute as much as I can to OSM though because it’s an important project, and hopefully someday an uninsane developer will make a proper alternative to Google Maps.

    • jlow (he/him)@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      10 hours ago

      Interesting, I’ve had the exact opposite problem with Osmand last summer: Could not get it to use POV mode (not smart enough to navigate otherwise when cycling), it was always stuck on North Is Up (there’s a button to change that on the upper left corner which they now changed to click and hold so I have my hopes up that it’ll work now).

      • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        10 hours ago

        I wonder if Osmand is the one I tried that was so close to being usable for me, but didn’t keep my location centered when North was up. I spent a day trying everything I could find, so I can’t recall exactly. I’ll give it a go though and see if it works.

        I don’t think you’ll have much trouble finding one that works the way you want it because everything I tried used POV as the default for some perplexing reason. (Like if I was facing East for example, then East was up.)

    • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      10 hours ago

      Oh, and I go back and forth between Sear XNG and Startpage for search engine. I know Startpage is Bad, but there’s no search engine in existence that really makes me happy.

  • tfm@europe.pub
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    11 hours ago

    Chrome ➡️ Brave - Open source and privacy focused

    Search ➡️ Qwant - Good search results and privacy focusing

    Photos ➡️ Immich - Pretty much Google Photos but self hosted

    Drive ➡️ Nextcloud - Use it with Hetzner Storage Share, pretty cheap and easy to use

    Gmail ➡️ mailbox.org - European email hosting focusing on privacy

    Meet ➡️ Nextcloud

      • JustARegularNerd@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        11 hours ago

        As per their website:

        As online advertising becomes ever more ubiquitous and unsanctioned, AdNauseam works to complete the cycle by automating ad clicks universally and blindly on behalf of its users. Built atop uBlock Origin, AdNauseam quietly clicks on every blocked ad, registering a visit on ad networks’ databases. As the collected data gathered shows an omnivorous click-stream, user tracking, targeting and surveillance become futile

  • Theo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    11 hours ago

    Other than Fediverse apps/websites, and F-droid for FOSS, I have switched to ProtonVPN and their encrypted emails.

    • pleasestopasking@reddthat.comOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      11 hours ago

      Yes, I switched to Proton as well and so far it’s been really painless. Proton pass in particular is amazing.

      It was a little hard to pay the real value for something I’ve gotten used to being so heavily subsidized, but I just am reminding myself that it’s because they’re not making money off of my data.

  • The_Caretaker@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    11 hours ago

    I use F-Droid and Aurora Store on my phone and replaced the Google apps, that came preloaded on the phone, with FOSS apps. NewPipe on my phone and FreeTube on my PC to replace YouTube. I don’t use Gmail. My Google account is on a Proton account. After I am sure I have all my desired apps switched over to email sign in, I will delete the Google account. I am also switching my Proton mail for Tuta mail. Proton is on the wrong side. I also dumped Microsoft over a year ago. I have been on Linux since then. I have avoided FaceBook for over a decade and never maintained a Twitter account.

  • jlow (he/him)@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    10 hours ago

    https://cartes.app/ is a new kid on the block to replaces Gmaps, looks very cool bit is also very alpha atm. But I’ll keep checking it, it has some very cool features already (French only atm which I don’t speak at all but it’s still super usable.)