How to move away from Google

I moved away from Google a few years ago. I'm using the following alternatives:

- Email: ProtonMail

- Contacts, Calendar, Online storage: NextCloud hosted by Hetzner (https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share)

- Phone: LineageOS (Android)

-- App stores: F-Droid for most apps and Aurora store for the occasional non F-Droid apps (like the ProtonMail client)

-- Maps: MagicEarth (not open source but privacy friendly and very featureful)

-- Messaging: Telegram FOSS

-- Contact & Calendar sync: DAVx

- Notes: Joplin (syncs with NextCloud and available on F-Droid as well)

- Search: DuckDuckGo

ProntonMail (with own domain) and the hosted NextCloud instance aren't free, but privacy comes with a price and I'm happy to pay for it. So far I'm very happy with the transition.

Not sure if you do it for privacy, ethical or practical reasons, but here's my journey: I removed my life from Big Tech (FB, TW, Gmail, YT, G Drive, MS, and other anti-user/spyware/malware companies). It was surprisingly easy to do and refreshing spiritually.

First, philosophy: this article resonated so much with me that I made the brave step of deleting my big tech accounts and switching to Linux: https://medium.com/hackernoon/leaving-apple-and-google-my-ee...

Then, execution. This site will help you to find user-friendly alternatives to your spyware apps/OSs/services: https://www.privacytools.io/

I am now with a setup that maximizes privacy and giving money to ethical companies: Phone OS: LineageOS and /e/ Desktop/Laptop: Debian and Linux Mint Browser Mobile: Bromite Browser Desktop: LibreWolf (firefox fork oriented to privacy) Maps and GPS mobile: OsmAnd Mobile app store: F-Droid, Aurora Store Search Engine: DuckduckGo, SearX Email: Posteo (1€/month) VPN: Mullvad (5€/month) Online drive: NextCloud-based service ie /e/ foundation

Once I researched the above and checked the companies/projects are trustworthy, I started using them with surprisingly low bumps in the road. For mobile OS I went radical and didn't even install microG (a package to enable G services so some apps work well). I still can use my favorite apps, including banking (although if you root your phone you might have issues)

Fastmail for email.

I used to use syncthing to maintain backups and syncing, but eventually just gave into iCloud as a compromise. Setting up and maintaining syncthing on wife and kids devices became a pain.

DuckDuckGo for search. Dropping down to google when I’m stuck. Honestly I’ve found google worse for technical topics due to all the junk websites that recycle content.

You’ll be fighting against the current trying to ditch google with an android phone! I’m sure it’s possible though.

A great benefit of de googling (and also dropping most social media) is that I am barely exposed to ads at all! It’s is shocking using other peoples devices now ahah.

I thought I'll be the last to move from Google because I'm alright with them using all my private data. But now I'm line to find an alternative: they've just locked our payment profile for an app with 25k+ positive ratings and their support does literally nothing to help us. I've just started a thread, maybe someone has the same experience and can share their experience https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30861147

Not sure if you like Microsoft any better but after over a decade of Gmail I’ve moved back to outlook and prefer it. It’s a lot better than it used to be. One Drive is much better than GDrive, and MS’s office programs have always been significantly better IMO. I find the whole Microsoft suite to be affordable and enjoyable to use. Obviously iPhone is an (or the) alternative to Android.

I still don’t find much better than Google for searching but I guess Bing and DDG are at least a lot better than nothing. I do feel like my user satisfaction with Google search goes down a little bit every year.

Depending on why you’re moving away from Google these may not be options you’ll consider. But if your opposition isn’t to big tech in particular but to just Google give MS products a try if you haven’t in awhile.

I was in this same situation a couple of years ago and easily managed to move to a comoletely Google-free life for 3€/month. I've documented it on my blog [0], but here's the summary:

- mail-in-a-box for email

- NextCloud (included in mail-in-a-box) for contacts, calendars, and files

- LineageOS for MicroG for Android

- OpenStreetMap for maps

- DuckDuckGo for search

- Firefox as internet browser

[0] https://blog.ideotec.es/leaving-google-foss-journey/

This has already been discussed extensively on HN in the past.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I'm still looking for an alternative e-mail provider that is more privacy-conscious than Google, still works with ordinary IMAP and is based in the EU so I get to actually benefit from EU data protection. Haven't found one that ticks all boxes yet, but going with a US company doesn't appear to change much as I'm not a US citizen and hence fair game once my data is on US servers and I guess it inevitably will end up there, and encryption schemes that won't work with IMAP are too cumbersome (I tried); ideally they also have contacts and calendar that work with the iOS/macOS apps. Would love to de-google at least email on the domain I own but it's not as easy as I'd expected.

This will get buried with the other comments, but I've done a good job getting away from Google:

Email: Tutanota Calendar: Tutanota Messaging: Signal Phone: GrapheneOS Maps: OsmAnd~ Apps: F-Droid or Aurora Store Mobile Browser: Vanadium (Chromium-based) Desktop Browser: Brave (Chromium-based) YouTube client: NewPipe

The last three are iffy as far as de-Google-img goes. I used Firefox for years but recently I find it unusable. Every year more websites are broken in Firefox and it never gets better despite bug reports. There also isn't really an alternative to YouTube's content unless the creator you follow also posts on Odysee.

I moved from Gmail to Posteo, Gdrive to Nextcloud, and Android to /e/ OS. I self-host Nextcloud and installed the mobile OS myself, but if someone is not inclined, both have ready to use offerings as well.

Nextcloud partnered with providers and they give 2GB instances for free, allegedly. If you need more, you can check https://github.com/nextcloud/providers#providers

Buy an /e/ OS phone: https://esolutions.shop/

There are also third party sellers, like "Liberate your tech", who sell phones with GrapheneOS preinstalled.

Regarding their stability; Posteo is going strong since 2009, Nextcloud as a project 2010. For mobile devices I'd look at 3-5 year periods, and I feel confident that /e/ OS and GrapheneOS will be around for that time. Even if they don't, the situation is not that different from owning an Android that's not updated anymore, and also usually you can sell the phone on the used market and buy a new one that's still supported.

I've been a big fan of Fastmail for email and calendars. I've also thought about joining May First Co-op (https://mayfirst.coop/) as they've been around for a bit and offer a suite of services which includes email, chat, nextcloud for documents and files, etc.

I've also had good results with DDG for most things search. I know people say the results are worse, and on some occasions they are, but mostly it's perfectly serviceable in my experience.

For video conferencing I've been using a mix of Jitsi Meet and meet.coop (a big blue button instance that I have access to through my membership in social.coop, which is good for social media).

For chat (including phone calls and SMS through https://jmp.chat) I use https://conversations.im, the client costs money but the service just went free unless you want to use a custom domain.

My phone is running Lineage OS using F-Droid for an app store. I don't like F-Droid very much for reasons that don't matter here (that might have been fixed since the last time I looked into it for all I know), but it is a perfectly good alternative so I recommend it in the absence of anything better.

For maps I've been using Organic (https://organicmaps.app/). It uses Open Street map data so at first a lot of places I wanted to navigate to weren't there, but I added all the places I go regularly to the map and now it works pretty well.

I see a lot of recommendations for self hosted alternatives, either at home or a VPS/Rented server. While the HN crowd is probably better suited than most people, running a server connected to the internet is no small taks, and people should seriously consider other alternatives before doing so.

For some of the services, your own privacy measures may not matter one bit. Take email for example, you may self host it, or use a privacy oriented provider, but it doesn't help one bit if you recipient is on gmail or outlook, so one could argue that attempting to privacy secure email is in vain. You can of course use GPG, but that requires the receiver to publish keys, which not very many people do.

I've self hosted for a couple of decades, but some years ago i decided i no longer wanted to be our resident sysadm, and instead moved everything to the cloud. I went from a proxmox cluster and a couple of NAS boxes spinning at home, to nothing spinning, and no open ports in the firewall.

We now use regular cloud services (Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud, etc), and instead use Cryptomator (https://cryptomator.org/) to encrypt everything before sending it to the cloud.

For specific apps we use

- Joplin for notes (or just ios notes)

- Signal for messaging (though in reality we use quite a few clients, as it highly depends on what your recipient uses)

- MXRoute for mail / contacts

- DuckDuckGo for searching.

- Cryptomator on top of whatever cloud storage the individual prefers.

- Photos, here we chose the easy path, and simply use the integration offered by our phones, which in our case means iPhones, so iCloud.

https://app.skiff.org/ for E2EE Google Docs. Even has a direct integration to make the migration

Self hosted email for 20 years so ignoring that:

- nextcloud for photos/drive - bitwarden with vaultwarden backend for passwords - self hosted Firefox Sync for everything else - syncthing for outlying file sharing - jottacloud for high capacity storage dump (rclone is your friend)

Probably forgot something

I use Fastmail for email and Dropbox for cloud storage. They're not going anywhere any time soon.

> I want to eventually move away, especially gmail and drive.

Run it yourself!

Get yourself a solid hosting company with shared webhosting. For Germany, hetzner or all-inkl would be my choice.

A hetzner "Level 1" shared webhosting for 1,90 €/month will come with an included TLD of your choice. Use that to host your own mailboxes. 10 GB webspace should be good for that, too.

Then install a NextCloud instance on that webhost. Add a hetzner "Storage Box", 3,45 €/month will give you 1 TB of space which can be mounted into the NextCloud through a free plugin.

That way you have mail and your own cloud for 5,50 €/month for as long as you pay the bill...

I think the fast answer, unfortunately, is going to Microsoft or Apple. They aren't going anywhere.

For personal use I'm happy with ProtonMail and F-Droid. For a calendar I use paper because I like being able to look at the wall and see the month, and to physically write things down. Same goes for note-taking, though that's a hybrid of digital and paper, with a goal of the important-er stuff going into the text files for easier searching (though like with paper books I have a sense where in each notebook certain things are). Good luck!

I wrote a bit about it at a blog post [0]. My idea is to substitute the "cloud" (i.e, your data and applications running on someone else's computers) for a "lake" of your own devices where you can replicate and synchronize the data, and use native free applications for each of the devices that you have.

So, for hardware

- Workstations: Linux

- Mobile: /e/OS [1]

For software:

- GDrive -> Syncthing for the documents, LibreOffice on workstations, simple document viewers on mobile

- Email: My own domain, service provided by namecheap, costs ~20€/year.

- Contacts, Calendar -> Syncthing to synchonize the files between the devices, and DecSync [2] as a calendar provider on thunderbird (workstation) and k-mail (mobile)

- App Store: F-Droid for most software, and the odd exception (Berlin ticket for public transportation) that is not F/OSS I use the /e/OS store (which proxies some of the apps from Google into their own store)

- Maps: MagicEarth (works well, uses OSM data, can do navigation decently and allows to choose download maps to keep offline). One of these days I will try again to self-host a tiling server, but I'm not sure what I would do for navigation.

- Messaging: Matrix/Element is my main client, I also have XMPP. Both are hosted by communick, the "professional managed service" that I run [3]. I also have Telegram (FOSS client) on mobile, but I've been meaning to implement the bridge on communick so that I can ditch the client. I use hangouts only on the computer if and only if the other party is not available on the preferred methods.

- Search: Brave search is working well. I preferred Brave over DDG because Brave is building their own index. If you think your queries are not giving you good results, you can turn on "Google mixing", where they make a (proxied) query to Google and show their results mixed with their own.

[0]: https://raphael.lullis.net/thinking-heads-are-not-in-the-clo...

[1]: https://e.foundation

[2]: https://github.com/39aldo39/DecSync

[3]: https://communick.com

Not to hijack the thread but in a similar vain: is anyone using an esolutions/murena degoogled phone as a daily driver? Thinking of getting their Fairphone version with /e/os but am unsure how it will handle common tasks (banking apps, navigation, camera, ...)?

ie. https://esolutions.shop/shop/murena-fairphone-4-fr/

I use Fastmail for my personal email and Outlook for my work email.

If you have any need to use Microsoft products for work or home (gaming), then it's worth getting an Office 365 subscription, since it also gives you a terabyte of space on OneDrive, which syncs pretty seamlessly on Windows.

You can de-Google a big chunk of your Android if you don't mind using Microsoft instead. Outlook for email, OneDrive for sync, Edge for browsing, OneNote for notes etc.

I deleted my Google account three years ago and haven't looked back.

Email was really the only thing I made heavy use of: Gandi, who I already pay to keep my domain registered, offers 3 GB mailboxes for free. This works fine for me since I archive and delete old mail annually. You can purchase 50 GB mailboxes for a few dollars per month.

For file storage, I host my own NextCloud instance and handle (offline, geographically redundant) backups myself. I also pay for a MEGA account and back up critically important documents there.

My primary phone runs Android 6 (terrible, I know) and I haven't had issues using it while not logged into a Google account. The artificially limited capacity of Google Maps' search history is a disappointing dark pattern, but that's about it. I plan on switching to a PinePhone eventually.

I do worry about the usability of newer Android versions without a Google account. Not sure what's changed, do you have to sign in to use current Android phones?

One question I've been asking myself about this migration, and didn't find all the solutions yet, is how to deal with services/websites/... I've logged into with a Google account. It's not always clear how, if even possible, to migrate from a Google SSO to a login/password.

Does anyone has thoughts on this?

I use gmail as my backup e-mail and Google drive as one of three cloud storage services. I pay for GCP and YouTube ad-free and YouTube Music.

Great non-Google services I pay for are ProtonMail, Fastmail, iCloud, and Office-365.

I have played around with self-hosting options, but decided to just use Cloud services, but don’t rely on any single vendor.

Maybe a bit contrarian but the best move might not be to move away for google unless the main driver is data privacy.

If you just don't want to risk being locked out its more important to keep access to your data these would be the steps:

- Get your own domain for email. If google locks you out you can just point it to somewhere else.

- Set google takeout to make monthly backups (automatically) of your email, photos and so on to google drive.

- Install desktop google drive on your computer. Set it to fully mirror all your files locally/offline. Then if google locks you out you will still have access to your files and photo/email backups. Bonus points for having a desktop mail app that keeps your email locally.

The lockout problem is not unique to google, can happen with most providers.

I switched to Tutanota for email and calendar and it has been surprisingly flawless.

To make the transition easier I started by forwarding all Gmail emails to Tutanota and I've been slowly updating my accounts to the new email. The plan is to eventually delete my Google accounts completely.

For e-mail, definitely check out https://mailbox.org. I've been a happy user of their service for more than a year now. Clean, secure, and effective. I'm not associated with them, but here is a decent review of it[1].

If you're comfortable with email clients, you can even use mailbox.org as a dumb mail-drop location and fetch everything locally via tools such as `mbsync`. Then you can use a mail client your choice (Thunderbird, Mutt, etc) to read/respond.

[1] https://proprivacy.com/email/review/mailboxorg

I'll suggest Searx/SearXNG as a search engine. It's self-hosted, but you can find public instances at https://searx.space/

If you decide to go the self-hosted route, it's trivial to deploy with searx(ng)-docker. Being a meta-search engine, it can pull results from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, dictionaries, torrent sites, etc; this gives it a degree of customisability that traditional search engines don't have.

I'll also mention Whoogle, which serves as a libre front-end to Google, although it doesn't currently support any other search engines.

I run my own mail server and host all my websites on a cheap Linode instance ($5/mo) - it can be a pain in the ass to setup, but once it's up and running, there isn't much you need to do. Been running for 15 years now.

For email, calendar, notes and contact I recommend SOGo Groupware, open source solution with activesync.

- https://www.sogo.nu/

IMVHO you should not look at "alternatives" in the sense of "substitute a WebApp with another" but in workflow terms:

- emails? They are normally valuable tool and personal stuff, they must not be outside your control as much as possible so GMail or Proton change nothing if you use them with their webmail. Just buy a domain, choose a hosted mail service, just because host one yourself is not that easy these days, sync or better grab your remote inbox to a homeserver and use your mail locally in your desktop. The local part means sync against your server the entire maildir, use a local MUA, with good search, tagging etc capabilities, my personal choice is notmuch, to sync mail muchsync, to grab mail fetchmail+MailDrop (but you might like OfflineIMAP or MBSync). Webmail served by your homeserver (i.e. MailPie or Modoboa or even the simple RoundCube) as a last resort if you aren't at your desktop;

- calendar/agenda? Similarly, personally I use org-mode, far more powerful than modern calendar, but again you might prefer different things, thou local and synced not centrally served.

- Drive? To share files there are various options from classic WebDAV to third party services no reason to be tied to one in particular if that's not yours, the rest of Drive is not really a thing IMVHO

- search? Just use Google Search is not more evil than any other player, there is no real open choice there, YaCy while have a public distributed network count just too few participants to be an alternative and the web is the web, you can't run your own.

- Maps? Again not much real alternatives, a PND is good enough for car navigation, for the rest there are very few other maps services but none as powerful as Maps just due to the scale. OSM is hyper-good in limited areas, very lacking elsewhere so not a real option.

- notes? The best I know are again Emacs/org-mode/org-roam etc combo, TiddlyWiki with a daemon to serve it might be another option, Zim another more limited but still light and classic for certain users.

Looking for alternatives in terms of substituting a player with another is a game loosed from start and does not solve anything: companies are not "good" or "evil" they just follow their interest, some might be less friendly then others, but interests in the game remain the same.

> I want to eventually move away, especially gmail

register your own domain name, either for personal or professional purposes

take some basic security precautions on your domain registrar account, use a long complex password that's not used for any other service anywhere else on the internet, and set up some form of 2FA for logins as well.

control your own authoritative DNS zonefile and choose where to set your MX records

choose a 3rd party email service such as the other recommendation here, fastmail, and set the MX records, SPF and DKIM appropriately

Searching around here would be a good start

then things like this

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30528205

I have been off google (mostly) by: 1. Email: Zohomail 2. maps: apple maps (sometimes vet it with google maps to verify shortest path, etc) 3. drive: iCloud

Has been working fine so far.

I got rid of my smartphone altogether 2 years ago and haven't missed it at all (we use my wife's phone in the car for Google Maps).

Before that I tried de-Googled Android and the experience wasn't great. Many of the alternatives can ostensibly do what the Big Tech product does, but there are bizarre pitfalls that break the experience. Stuff like OSMAnd having no business names and taking literally 15 minutes to map a route across town.

I still use Gmail/Calendar but I do so through Fastmail. I like the Gmail client but I am happy to know I can ditch it anytime without drama. I have a number of domains and email aliases routing through Fastmail which has a copy of all my messages. So if I need to use another mail client, no biggie.

I also went back to Dropbox and love it. No Google drive client for Linux is bizarre.

https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/

Have a look at r/degoogle

Can we assume you're also trying to avoid iOS?

Alternatives to Android:

1. Librem - https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

2. Pine - https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

[Disclaimer - I haven't used these devices.]

Maybe someone can give me an idea: I have about 3TB+ images I need access to online (eg. easy, automated upload from iPhone, access and search when I am looking for an image (Google Photos style)) alongside secure backup. What's my best option that's also reasonable priced?

Start here. An app that helps you deploy your own server with various tools you need.

Platform on user's hosting provider for deploying private services, managed via mobile application.

https://selfprivacy.org/en/

For email, I forwarded all emails to my new email. The rest was easy, except for Youtube... I need to find a way to subscribe to channels without a Google account (it would be nice if they had RSS and an external link).

I use Namecheap for email. Dropbox for "drive" (I don't use it often).

I use YT, Google Search, and Google Meet. You cannot escape the first two, and the later is a display of professionalism for me as a freelancer.

I have been using Fastmail for roughly three years now and happy with it.

https://www.fastmail.com/gmail-alternative/

Fastmail to replace gmail/calendar/contacts and some file storage (drive). I also use Syncthing as a replacement for google drive. Android, well, you know what the only alternative is.

Email:

Casual use - ProtonMail

Git and friends - Nixnet

Use FairEmail on Android and Geary (sometimes Aerc) on Linux.

fastmail has been great for e-mail.

Using it as a google drive alternative though but I'd like to move to a solution with client-side encryption. Should actually be doable with the webdav that fastmail exposes and rclone: https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277882-Re...

And I miss google sheets.

Google Search —> you.com

Google Chrome —> Brave

Gmail —> ProtonMail

Google Docs —> Notion

What suggestions does anyone have for phone providers? I've long wanted to move off of Google Fi

there is a whole subreddit about it : https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/

Tutanota for email.

Office365 is probably going to stay around for ten more years.