For the better part of my life I was arguably a Google fanboy. However as i get older and grumpier, i’m less comfortable with an advertising company interfacing with so many aspects of my life. So i’m slowly removing Google products where it makes sense and there are viable alternatives. Listed in chronological order from when I started using the replacement.

Google Maps location sharing > Home Assistant

The Home Assistant companion app on Android is very powerful and I use it on a daily basis. With it installed on mine and my partner’s phones, it does a great job of location tracking. I have a dashboard dedicated to location tracking that shows the last 12hrs history with a button to refresh to get the current location.

Google Search > Searxng

Searxng is a metasearch engine that aggregates the results of many search engines on a single page. I self-host the docker image and am mostly happy with the results. Every now and then, maybe once a week or so I need to pull up a Google search page because Searxng gave me dud results. I could probably tweak the settings to better but the config file is huge and intimidating.

GMail > Fastmail

This is a big one. I snagged a Gmail invite a few months after it came out so have been using it forever. So these days I recieve as much spam and shit as I do normal emails. Fastmail came well recommended so I grabbed a vanity URL and subscribed to their cheapest plan. Very happy with it so far.

Google Chrome > Firefox

This was prompted by both how bloated Chrome as become and how it is slowly being fucked over to prioritise Google’s advertising business. Feels good to be back on Firefox, just like the good old days.

Google Domains > Porkbun

This was forced by Google killing their domains business, but I had been wanting to move away from Google Domains anyway. I’d seen Porkbun mentioned as a cheap, reliable registrar. Does the job.

Ideas for the future

Android

I already use LineageOS on some old phones and tablets, so I could consider it instead of Google’s flavour of Android. You’re still beholden to the Play Store though, so this would barely qualify as degoogling. As for jumping ship to an iPhone, I think i enjoy Android too much to seriously consider it.

Google Photos

I’ve already started the process to move away from Google Photos. Since Google changed the free tier to limit the amount of full size photos allowed before you need to pay, I have been thinking of ditching it. I’m looking into NextCloud, Immich and/or PhotoPrism as potential replacements.

Chromecast

This is as much a reason to tinker with some fun hardware as it is to degoogle but it still counts! I’ve been wanting to build a music streaming box with a Raspberry Pi Zero and one of the DAC HATs. However my Chromecast still works really well so I cant really justify the cost. Maybe one day.

Google Home Mini

I’ve never been suuuper comfortable with having this in our home. But especially for the rest of my family, it’s a very handy way to cue up music, announce the weather and set kitchen timers. Home Assistant is in the middle of their Year of the Voice and their voice assistant tech is seeing some amazing improvements. Hopefully by the end of the year they will have a decent hardware device replacement for my Google Home.

Google Docs

Dont use Google Docs much these days but it’s very convienent for when you need a quick spreadsheet or something. I think NextCloud has a docs component I could investigate.