Categories
Blog

Why I quit using Google

So I was recently asked why I prefer to use free and open source software over more conventional and popular proprietary software and services.

A few years ago I was an avid Google user. I was deeply embedded in the Google ecosystem and used their products everywhere. I used Gmail for email, Google Calendar and Contacts for PIM, YouTube for entertainment, Google Newsstand for news, Android for mobile, and Chrome as my web browser.

I would upload all of my family photos to Google Photos and all of my personal documents to Google Drive (which were all in Google Docs format). I used Google Domains to register my domain names for websites where I would keep track of my users using Google Analytics and monetize them using Google AdSense.

I used Google Hangouts (one of Google’s previous messaging plays) to communicate with friends and family and Google Wallet (with debit card) to buy things online and in-store.

My home is covered with Google Homes (1 in my office, 1 in my bedroom, 1 in the main living area) which I would use to play music on my Google Play Music subscription and podcasts from Google Podcasts.

I have easily invested thousands of dollars into my Google account to buy movies, TV shows, apps, and Google hardware devices. This was truly the Google life.

Then one day, I received an email from Google that changed everything.

“Your account has been suspended”

Just the thing you want to wake up to in the morning. An email from Google saying that your account has been suspended due to a perceived Terms of Use violation. No prior warning. No appeals process. No number to call. Trying to sign in to your Google account yields an error and all of your connected devices are signed out. All of your Google data, your photos, emails, contacts, calendars, purchased movies and TV shows. All gone.

I nearly had a heart attack, until I saw that the Google account that had been suspended was in fact not my main personal Google account, but a throwaway Gmail account that I created years prior for a project. I hadn’t touched the other account since creation and forgot it existed. Apparently my personal Gmail was listed as the recovery address for the throwaway account and that’s why I received the termination email.

Although I was able to breathe a sigh of relief this time, the email was wake up call. I was forced to critically reevaluate my dependence on a single company for all the tech products and services in my life.

I found myself to be a frog in a heating pot of water and I made the decision that I was going to jump out.

Leaving Google

Today there are plenty of lists on the internet providing alternatives to Google services such as this and this. Although the “DeGoogle” movement was still in its infancy when I was making the move.

The first Google service I decided to drop was Gmail, the heart of my online identity. I migrated to Fastmail with my own domain in case I needed to move again (hint: glad I did, now I self host my email). Fastmail also provided calendar and contacts solutions so that took care of leaving Google Calendar and Contacts.

Here are some other alternatives that I moved to:

Migrating away from Google was not a fast or easy process. It took years to get where I am now and there are still several Google services that I depend on: YouTube and Google Home.

Eventually, my Google Home’s will grow old and become unsupported at which point hopefully the Mycroft devices have matured and become available for purchase. YouTube may never be replaced (although I do hope for projects like PeerTube to succeed) but I find the compromise of using only one or two Google services to be acceptable.

At this point losing my Google account due to a mistake in their machine learning would largely be inconsequential and my focus has shifted to leaving Amazon which I use for most of my shopping and cloud services.

The reason that I moved to mostly FOSS applications is that it seems to be the only software ecosystem where everything works seamlessly together and I don’t have to cede control to any single company. Alternatively I could have simply split my service usage up evenly across Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple but I don’t feel that they would have worked as nicely together.

Overall I’m very happy with the open source ecosystem. I use Ubuntu with KDE on all of my computers and Android (no GApps) on my mobile phone. I’ve ordered the PinePhone “Brave Heart” and hope to one day be able to use it or one of its successors as a daily driver with Ubuntu Touch or Plasma Mobile.

I don’t want to give the impression that I exclusively use open source software either, I do use a number of proprietary apps including: Sublime Text, Typora, and Cloudron.

82 replies on “Why I quit using Google”

@kyleHey, great post 🙂 I just need to correct you on one point: it's openstreetmap, without an s ;). And please contribute some data if you have a bit of time. Using streetcomplete (from f-droid) would already be very helpful :). It gives you very simple "quests" you can answer e.g. on your way home from work and that improve the data quality.I also use youtube, but never log in, and clean cookies everytime. I use skytube to keep track of channels I like instead.

You said you replaced google voice with Ting, but that seems like a phone service in the usual sense. Whereas Voice is a number attached to an account/app, not a phone/sim/esim. Ting can’t do that, can it?

Hi, very nice article, thanks !
May I suggest Yunohost ? yunohost.org
It’s a bit like Cloudron, allows you to manage your server very easily, including automated installation of hundreds of FOSS apps like Nextcloud and email self hosting !

@kyle great story! I’ve made very similar switches to you, including Cloudron, and have been very happy with it. I used to be die hard Google as well. Thankfully I didn’t have a scare like you. Just an impending dread when I thought about how dependent I was.

Unfortunately, Google services just work, most are free and those that arent are priced cheaply (like drive), so I honestly use many.

The trick, i think, is the balance between taking advantage of the services without oversharing personal info as much as possible.

Creating dummy accounts and having a backup of all your important data somewhere else just in case you ever get locked out is common sense knowledge in these cloud-based times.

Nothing is free, with google you literally PAY with your personal information to better allow them to sell that information to advertisers and build out their own algorithm projects.

But yeah, it does JUST WORK, but I switched almost everything to a Synology based system behind a firewall which also JUST WORKS, and I own all the data.

Except for email, for that I trust MS for now.

Every once in a while I get bored of iOS and use Google’s products and services, only to remember that Google quickly cancels tons of stuff, while Apple doesn’t. Sure, Apple is a s closed-source and proprietary as they get, opposite of the freeware and open-source movements, but their products thrive and don’t get so easily cancelled.

Leave a reply to Ano Cancel reply