2024-06-16

Why you might consider degoogling your life

Over the recent years the phrase degoogling has become a new phrase that has become more and more mentioned. The problem is that if you heavily reply on google products that means google will have more data about you. There are many google products that you may use every day: google pixel as your phone, google nest for your security, google search to search stuff up, youtube to watch videos, google drive to store your files and google photos to store all your images.

With all those products google can collect lots of information about you. Google also has had many data breeches making the data google has about you a privacy threat.

Services to consider switching

As a average person you may use many google services day to day lets break down each degoogling step into each service: - Google Search - Google Keep - Gmail - Google Maps

Google search

Google search is the most popular search engine and is used by millions every day. Although google search is the most popular is does not mean its the best for privacy.

DuckDuckGo is a good alternative to google since there is no signup or logins and no tracking links. Even the tor browser uses DuckDuckGo as its default search engine.

Google keep

A good alternative to google keep is Obsidian. Obsidian is a note taking app that does not use the cloud to store the notes.

Gmail

Instead of gmail I use proton mail which is better for privacy.

Google maps

Instead of using Google maps to find places I use OpenStreetMap since its more up to date and is created by mappers around the world. I even contribute to OpenStreetMap.

Hardware

I would get rid of any Google hardware that you own since you don't know what that Google nest could be listening to.

Google Pixel

If you own a google pixel then you might not need to trow it away. In fact the google pixel (in terms of hardware) is a great phone. Rather than using android use GrapheneOS its android without the Google services.