Ten Years Without Google
2023-07-12
Rather than updating my post from three plus years ago I felt it better to leave it as it was and instead post what I am using now, more than ten years after giving up Google. I still believe it is worth your while to stay diversified. Try unrelated services, look for privacy and host it yourself if you are able. I am currently using and recommend the following services and software.
- NetNewsWire - My feed reader, I have been using NetNewsWire for the last couple years since changing my web facing server to a static only host. It works for me as I am an iPhone and Mac user primarily and it saves my subscriptions in the cloud.
- ProtonMail - My email provider since it's release. Fun story, I was a customer of Lavabit, and so was Ed Snowden. Lavabit was taken down, and I moved to Protonmail.
- Syncthing - Decentralized storage, synchronize files between two or more computers. I have used Syncthing for longer than I can remember, at least 6 years is my best guess. I have never had a problem with it and my needed files are always there on all my computers, no matter the operating system.
- Firefox - A fantastic browser; I dumped Chrome in 2013 and see no reason anyone would use Chrome. I occasionally use Safari, which has excellent privacy features that make fingerprinting more difficult.
- Startpage - I was using DuckDuckGo for many years, but stopped due to their relationship with Microsoft and the Bing tie in. I have been using Startpage and a few others for more than a year, but Startpage is my default. A big reason I dumped DuckDuckGo is because Bing flagged my webpage and removed it from their results for 8+ months. I tried everything and they would not add my page back to their index. You can find many people chronicling similar behavior with their blogs. Mysteriously, one day it just showed up again. It led me to wonder how many great results were not available in Bing and therefore DuckDuckGo due to this behavior.
- Keybase - Secure groups, files and chat.
- Ungoogleable - I have made the decision to remove my website from Google.
These are just some of the software and services I used to become free of Google. DeGoogle has many alternatives for search, email, cloud storage, and more. Part of being Google free is keeping their hardware out of your life. I have Linux, FreeBSD, and Apple devices and a single Windows computer only used for gaming.
