I started to remove all most Google products from my day to day life.
Why you may ask, first off they have way to much information about me and my daily routines. Second they have not always been good stewards of personal information they collect.
To start off I removed Google Chrome browser from my devices, and switched over to DuckDuckGo search engine and on occasion will use Microsoft Bing Search engine. This did take sometime to get used to using something other then Google, as their search functions work differently.
I have migrated my email from a Gmail account to a personal hosted email account. This took a lot longer then I originally expected, as some businesses rely solely on email as a primary ID, and their systems do not have the functionality to change this. Some required an email, to get this changed through a manual process, while others just said sorry no can do. The ones who could not change my account I just dropped them and will use something else as they were not really important to me.
I had an Android phone a long time ago (2008), I stopped using it as it was more of a hassle to work with then other phones I had used in the past. I know many people will say Android is the best phone OS and there is no comparison. My issue was there was no standards across the environment, and there were so many malicious apps in the stores then I wanted to deal with.
I actually found out that I had not been using many of Google Services as they came after something else I had been using and it was not any better then what I used.
Primarily I used Gmail, Calendar, Blogger, Domains, Drive, Voice and Maps.
| Google Service | NOTES / ISSUES | WHAT I USE |
| Gmail | Took a while to move accounts over for different services. | BlueHost Hosted Service |
| Google Contacts | Have not really relied on this in sometime as my Phone always was current with contacts | Apple / iPhone |
| Google Calendar | Automatic add of items to calendar is fully working in others | Apple / iPhone |
| Google Search | Have to learn how to do searches again | DuckDuckGo Bing |
| Google Maps | Google MyMaps – Not found a suitable option OpenStreetMaps – is basic | Bing Maps Apple Maps Still doing a search for alternatives |
| Google Analytics | Stopped using this a while back after one of their changes made it a pain | Not using anything currently |
| Google Drive | Moved to OneDrive as I get 1TB of storage already with my Office suite | OneDrive for documents and photos iCloud for other Apple items |
| Google Photos | Moved to OneDrive | OneDrive |
| Google Docs | Moved to OneDrive | OneDrive |
| Google Play Music | Have been using Spotify for some time | Spotify |
| Google Play Movies/TV | Think I had like one movie I purchased on Google | MoviesAnywhere Disney+ Amazon Prime Netflix Hulu |
| Google YouTube | Did not save anything to YouTube, only used it for researching | Yeah not sure what to use for this one |
| Google Play Audiobooks/Books | Do not really use Audiobooks , but already had a bunch of books in Kindle and Nook | Amazon Kindle Nook Apple Books |
| Google Play Store (apps) | I use Apple products | Apple Store |
| Google Android | I use Apple products | Apple IOS |
| Google’s Android Apps | I use Apple products | Apple Store |
| Google Chrome | Moved to Firefox as it was a resource hog, worse then other browsers | Firefox |
| Google Domains | Used it when I was moving away from 1 and 1 hosting as the price was cheap. | Blue Host |
| Google Hangouts | Limited use to friends who had Gmail accounts | Slack |
| Google Allo | Did not have any friends using this | WhatsApp Signal Telegram |
| Google Podcasts | I use Apple already | Apple |
| Google Newsstand | Never liked Newsstand | The Old Reader |
| Google Wallet | Only used it a couple of times, due to not as many places taking it | PayPal |
| Google Voice | Unlock #, costs $3 to port out https://www.google.com/voice/unlock Need to port to new carrier | Still looking for somewhere to move my number to |
| Google Keep | Never really liked this | OneNote NotePad++ |
| Google Translate | Only use this occasionally | ScannerTranslate App on phone Will figure this out next time I need it |
| Google Duo | Tried to use this, but did not know anyone using it | WebEx – For Work iPhone FaceTime |
| Google Earth | Was cool at first, but never really had that much of a need for it. | Not Using Anything as a replacement |
| Blogger | Platform was not that great, moved to it from an older hosted WordPress, then moved it back to another Hosted WordPress | Hosted WordPress |
| Waze | Loved this service until Google purchased it, after they acquired it I started having a bunch of issues of it not working or just giving error servers unavailable error. So stopped using it about a year ago. | Apple Maps Not The Best Maps |
I started using Google Gmail sometime back in early 2005, when I got an invite from a friend. Had moved away from Hotmail after using it for many years.
I am sure some will mention that I am moving away from Google to another company that may not manage my data all that well. Yes, I have Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple as vendors for my data, but I am not utilizing just one company anymore which was one of my concerns. Albeit that many companies rely on Google for their back-end and have Google Analytics so I will still see some tracking of my searching. I do use Firefox on my devices usually in “Private Window” mode to limit some data collection.
Time will tell if I move back to some of the Google applications, as I am still looking for alternatives. The biggest I seem to have an issue with is the “My Maps” which I like to design travel maps for vacations. I have not found an alternative that does anywhere close to what the Google app does. it relies on Drive and Maps to function so I will need to keep my Google account for the short term. I also do not know what to do with my Google Voice number as I have had it since it was Grand Central and have used it for years as an alternate number to some contacts. Plus I still have five other Gmail accounts I used for various things over the years that I need to keep for the short term until I get them cleared out and all access I used them for moved to my primary or an alternate email account under my control.