I have been looking at the degoogle movement that is happening lately and seeing what areas I could focus on myself.
First you may ask yourself what is degoogle means? To me it means decreasing or eliminating your reliance on tech companies that use your personal data to sell services back to you or sell your data to other companies.
While the phrase degoogle is picking on google, to me there are 5 major companies that are of concern Alphabet(Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta(Facebook), and Microsoft. While these companies are the big tech giants, there are others you could add to your list as well.
First steps to degoogle is to analysis what services you are using. I will break it up into the following categories:
Let’s face it, almost everyone uses googles email, Microsoft’s Hotmail/outlook, or Yahoo mail. Some alternative to those could be mailbox.org or proton mail offering free and paid plans or using your web hosting provider if they have email as well.
| Email Services (Migrate from) | Suggested Email Service |
| Google Gmail Microsoft Hotmail/Outlook iCloud | Proton mail https://mailbox.org/en/ Web hosting mail with a web portal |
Web Browsers
Next on the list is web browsers and in my opinion I think this is one of the most important ones to consider switching due to the way websites use cookies to keep track of your data.
Googles Chrome is the most popular web browser by a long shot. I even have a terrible blog post from when it was released and trying it out 17 years ago.
I have mostly used Firefox for the last two decades, so that is obviously my browser of choice, but there are a few others such as Opera, Librewolf (custom privacy focused version of Firefox), or Brave.
Note: There was just recently a concern with Firefox and its Terms of Service (TOS) change so take that with a grain of salt when looking at options.
| Web Browsers (Migrate from) | Suggested Web Browsers |
| Google Chrome Microsoft Edge Safari | Mozilla Firefox Librewolf Brave |
Search Engines
Search engines being another service that definitely uses your personal data such search to market products to you. Once again Google is definitely the leader here. I admittedly use Microsoft Bing as my search engine, as they actually give you rewards to use their service , it once again at the cost of your personal data. If you are looking at getting away from these big two, look at DuckDuckGo. It’s a search engine based on online privacy while still providing results.
| Search Engines (Migrate from) | Suggested Search Engines |
| Google Search Bing | DuckDuckGo Qwant |
Document Storage
File and Document hosting services are next on the list. Google Drive and Microsoft Onedrive are popular services. I am unsure how the community feels about Dropbox, its a major player in this space, but not one of the big 4 tech giants.
there are some good open source alternatives that people can host at home such as next cloud or paid alternatives.
| Document Storage (Migrate from) | Suggested Document Storage |
| Google Drive Microsoft Onedrive iCloud | Proton Drive Self Storage https://nextcloud.com/ |
Messaging Apps
Messaging apps is a unique problem to solve, as need to make sure your contacts are also available on the same service. To me the two biggest providers to be concerned with are both Meta owned, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
Discord is a messaging platform while popular with the video game community, could be a great replacement to connect with your friends and family. Another popular replacement is a service called Element. This client actually can communicate with multiple services such as IRC, Slack, and Telegram and bridge them into a protocol called the Matrix (funny name). It offers end to end encryption as well.
| Messaging Apps (Migrate from) | Suggested Messaging Apps |
| Facebook Messenger iMessage | Discord Element Signal |
Smart Home
Smart home solutions are typically tied to the hardware you buy, but there are some options to de-cloud your smart home. Google Home and Amazon Alexa are the big players out there. I highly suggest checking out Home Assistant. I have been using home assistant for about 5 years now and been meaning to write at least one blog post about it, but probably a few. High level it’s software that can manage your smart home without any cloud connectivity.
| Smart Home (Migrate from) | Suggested Smart Home |
| Google Home Amazon Alexa Apple Homekit | Home Assistant |
Social Media
Social Media is a very interesting service that I am sure we will be examining its impact for the next couple of decades. I am of the Facebook generation that got exclusive access with an EDU email. I admit I use Facebook on a regular basis so it personally will be difficult for me to give it up. One of the reasons I started a blog was to post more on my website then on Facebook.
todo add alternatives
Operating Systems
Operating Systems is the last item. Microsoft Windows is the main concern I think about, but you could be thinking about MacOS for PC, and iOS and Android for mobile. Microsoft has been adding ads , forcing using an online account to login into windows and defaults saving your personal files in onedrive. If any of these bother you, this would be a good reason to consider switching. In this review I am only going to cover alternatives for Windows, with Linux being a great option. Linux is actually a kernel, and the distributions are what makes up a typical operating system.
There are many different distributions of Linux, but some of my favorites are Debian, xubuntu(Ubuntu), and Manjaro. I was thinking about doing a few distribution reviews in the future so stay tuned for those.
| Operating Systems (Migrate from) | Suggested Operating Systems |
| Microsoft Windows all versions | Debian xubuntu Manjaro |
You don’t need to change everything you are doing at once. I would suggest starting with Search Engine or Web Browser changes first, they are the easiest items in this list to change, while operating system is probably the most difficult. Hopefully this article gets you to start thinking about how companies use your personal data when providing you a service. What are you thoughts on the categories I deep dived into or the suggestions I made?
Disclosures
I still use many of these services myself, so I am working on my transition as well. Biggest transitions I have made myself, is using Firefox and Home Assistant. Also this website currently uses Google adsense which as I was writing this, I was considering should I transition?