It took a few months preparation but I deleted all my google accounts today, and it feels good.
Now, send a gpdr deletion request because Google still has your data.
It’s going to be difficult after deleting the account though
Difficult but legally required by them, including establishing your bona fides.
Would you be able to let us know the services you used, the replacements, and how did the migration process work?
Here are the things I replaced my Google/Microsoft/Meta services with:
- Tuta(nota): Email
- Nextcloud: Cloud
- Typst: LaTeX/Docs alternative
- LineageOS: Degoogled Android rom
- Aurora Store: Google Play Store alternative
- NewPipe, Odysee, Peertube: YouTube alternatives
- Firefox: Chrome/Chromium alternative
- SearXNG: Meta search engine
- Linux/BSD: Windows alternatives
- Bitwarden: Password manager & 2FA client
- OpenStreetMaps (OsmAnd): Google maps replacement
- LibreTranslate, Deepl: Google translate alternative
- Signal, SimpleX, Briar, Matrix: chat and group organization
DO NOT FORGET TO MIGRATE ACCOUNTS BEFORE DELETING
Proton for email and cloud storage. Graphenos on a pixel 7a for phone. Phone spps from aurora and fdroid. Kagi.com paid search engine too.
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Does skiff work?
Seconded.
Without a single word on replacements for email, calendar, phone, etc… this post is pretty much useless to everyone else than the OP.
See above. Plus I use Thunderbird for calendar.
Great, thanks!
How does Thunderbird work for you wrt to sharing calendars with others (eg. family) and syncing with eg. an Outlook calendar?
I only use Thunderbird calendar for myself so I don’t know. Proton includes a calendar offering in their package but I have not tried it yet.
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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There’s several apps to use open street map data. Organic Maps and OSMAnd to name a few. I use a bit of both along with Waze when needed.
Thanks! You too LWD!
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.
I’m not 100% but I am close. Off gdrive, off gcal, off chrome, almost entirely off gmail. I’ll check out the maps!
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!
Google maps is tough lol
You could try to see if you’d like Magic Earth. It’s proprietary, but has a good privacy policy, uses Open Street Maps, and has traffic data.
Though if you’re dependent on Google Maps for reviews and photos of places, then it’s much harder to replace. Though I guess you could just use the website to look that up.
Just dug through a lemmy thread of recommended android apps a minute ago and found someone recommending Organic Maps. Pretty damn good compared to some others I’ve seen!
And of course, popping into streetcomplete here and there and contributing some data helps sharpen the data 🙂
A guide? Sure! Go to the account settings and click “Delete my account”
So helpful
This makes as much sense as telling somebody to delete all of the contents on their failing hard drive before transferring them to a new one
Welcome to the club.
Welcome to the real world.
You think that’s air you’re breathing?
Let’s not go all the way down the rabbit hole in one pill. Steps of one less person so inured (Definition: Made tough by habitual exposure), so hopelessly dependent on Google.
What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?
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 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.
Some are easier than others. Especially if you don’t mind paying. Protonmail, calendar, drive solve some big ones right away. Maps is tough though, I’ve tried to find a better solution and haven’t been able to so far.
I’ve been mapping my city with streetcomplete and using osmand live to download my edits, organic maps has a better address search though, so I use that too. I don’t use the live traffic stuff, but osmand is capable of it.
I’m building up to doing the same. Already using Protonmail and Kagi. Looking for a less Google-dependent phone to switch over to and then I might pull the plug myself.
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.
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?
It’s a bit newer, but Immich is a very promising Google Photos replacement.
I recommend setting up a NextCloud server.
Well done!
I ended up keeping mine for occasional things like leaving YT comments or subscribing to Firebase-distributed apps.
Who dis?
I can’t wait to graduate college so I can stop using my Google account. I still have to use mine for the online office suite. I use LibreOffice if it’s just me but I have to collaborate and do group assignments on Google Docs and Slides too.
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.
Congrats!
Boffo!
