boycotts and degoogling

lately, i've been making an effort to remove myself from as many google products as possible. i made the browser switch from chrome to firefox about two years ago, but it wasn't until i saw a post by ykreborn that i decided to start migrating the rest of my dependencies.

i thoroughly stand by the statement "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism"—in the sense that despite there being significant merits in being didactic about your purchases with regard to societal impact, you cannot simply "buy your way" to radical liberation, as all forms of consumption are exploitative to some degree under capitalist society. in other words, yes, you should make an earnest effort in reducing your patronage to monopolized corporate empires, but it is a short-term solution to our current circumstances, and you ought to be placing your energy into more direct forms of resistance instead.

back to degoogling. if you plan on getting started with something similar, it pays to ask yourself what your motivations are, as the answer will determine the strategies you implement. the perfect goal would be to divest from all silicon valley bullshit, but deregulated markets and technocrats have made this near impossible for the everyday person. that being said, many people have begun to divest from google as much as possible due to big tech's recent lapdogging towards the trump administration. others are doing so to safeguard themselves from google's ultimate role as an unsolicited data collector.

your reasons will determine to what extent and with what replacements you'll degoogle. mine are because i'm paranoid and contrarian.

i'm mostly concerned with making myself less reliant on centralized big tech ecosystems, for both political and privacy-related reasons. my approach to this is cutting out as many of their products as possible while making certain exceptions for those with genuinely no reasonable alternatives; i've managed to replace about 80% of my usual google products so far, which i think is decent.

this post shouldn't be used as a guide for those also wanting to divest from google; the subreddit r/degoogle was instrumental in streamlining the trial-and-error process of finding the best replacements for my personal preferences, and the people there are much more scrutinizing and principled than me. i can only offer my impatiently written recommendations that could possibly act as a starting point for those with similar goals as me.

this is what i have so far.

browser

• i've been using firefox for a while now. even though i hold a healthy amount of skepticism towards their commitment towards privacy, i think firefox is the most accessible option for online laymen who just need to get away from anything chromium. there are quite a few powerful extensions that have basically eradicated all sense of discomfort i would typically be used to when browsing online. i haven't seen a youtube ad in years, and i'm able to block TERFs without having to dive into their profiles to perform a litmus test first.

email/calendar

this was fairly easy. working with organizers and independent journalists quickly introduced me to proton, a free, open-source, and privacy-focused service with a variety of digital products. migration from google is a breeze with their dedicated guides, so this was probably the quickest transition i made in this process. currently, i use proton for email, file storage, and digital calendars, which all work harmoniously with each other and function almost exactly like their google counterparts.

however, proton's services are still a little lacking, which brings me to my next point.

cloud storage

my only qualm with proton is that they have yet to finish developing their document-editing software—this makes their cloud storage service, proton drive, effectively just a file management service that lacks substitutes for sheets, docs, slides, and the like. i still use it, just to host my original google drive data so i can cancel my google one subscription. a slight plus is that proton drive can sync your devices' files to the cloud, in the same way that onedrive or dropbox can. proton drive also offers automatic photo backups in the way that google photos does, but (at the time of writing) does not currently offer any way of organizing or cataloging photos—something absolutely necessary for me as a digital artist.

which is why i use ente for my photo cloud storage. it's a near replica of google photos, except encrypted and open source. like proton, they also have a dedicated migration service for those coming from google. they also have a feature called "guest mode," which you can toggle before showing someone a photo so they can't swipe through all the other photos in your gallery. pretty neat.

keyboard

i had some pretty strict criteria for my mobile keyboard, which admittedly made the search for one much harder. i wanted one that offered accurate swipe typing, clipboard functions, and no tracking while still being customizable. heliboard actually checked those points for me. my only qualm is that pinyin/jyutping keyboards aren't supported, so i currently circumvent that using my native phone's chinese keyboard with online services turned off.

navigation

this is probably one of the hardest. google maps acts as both a navigation service and a reviewing service. i use both. there is currently no immediate alternative that can do both. however, out of all the open-source apps that pull data from openstreetmaps, herewego has the cleanest UI and most accurate routing, so i use that instead. for finding reviews and recommendations on where to eat, i use my girlfriend, who uses yelp.

misc

to replace the play store, i use a combination of f-droid (where open-source/FLOSS devs host their apps) and aurora store (an app that allows you to download and update apps from the play store without a google account). for google wallet, i now use my actual wallet and catima to store my membership cards.