DEV Community

Cover image for The First Steps to De-google Yourself
mosbat
mosbat

Posted on • Edited on

The First Steps to De-google Yourself

Fed up of Google? More and more people are beginning to recognize the evil Google is hiding and investors have begun putting money to create similar services *minus * the awful practices Google have been doing to it's users such as using/sharing data forcefully on it's users along with suppressing freedom of speech.

However, to get rid of Google, you need to make sure the following items are checked:

1- Are you logging in to any sites or services using Google's authentication? If yes, your first step would be check which apps are connected to Google or use Google for login. Steps on how to see the list of apps here.

Once you have identified which sites you login using Google, go to each site, use forgot password step in order to force those sites to give you a password. At this point, after that, you're able to login without using Google's authentication though you need to change the email address to more secure and reputable email providers such as ProtonMail.com.

2- Prepare an auto reply to all incoming messages to anyone contacting you over your Gmail asking them to instead email you over to your new email address.

3- Make sure you're not subscribed anymore to any Google Services such as Google Music, YouTube premium, etc...

4- Make sure to export any sheets/documents/stuff you have either on Google's services or Google Drive to somewhere else.

5- Prepare a list of bookmarks for your favorite YouTube videos that do not require login to view; since you will lose your playlists on YouTube once you do.

Finally, it's time to consider the following alternatives to Android's OS:
https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/

If you made it this far, congratulations, you have De-googled yourself and no longer under the mercy of big brother tech Google.

Top comments (8)

Collapse
 
amelishan profile image
amelishan

Google allows anyone to download and use a basic version of Android to create their OS. However, it is missing several important modules that control everything from the notifications you receive to turn-by-turn navigation and even the Play Store. So you could say it's a more vulnerable system. I advise you to use a degoogled phone. A friend of mine advised me to buy one at degoogledirect.com. I looked it up; it turns out there are a lot of smartphones depending on the budget.

Collapse
 
tonyknibbmakarahealth profile image
TonyTheTonyToneTone

Also, use the Brave web browser. Ad blocking is built-in, and it's faster rendering than Chrome.

Collapse
 
codewander profile image
Kanishka

Brave founder is controversial, so I use firefox

Collapse
 
tonyknibbmakarahealth profile image
TonyTheTonyToneTone

"controversial" ?

Brave is better that FF and Chrome. It does everything faster, or it seemed to when I tested them btb.

Thread Thread
 
codewander profile image
Kanishka
Thread Thread
 
tonyknibbmakarahealth profile image
TonyTheTonyToneTone

So because of his personal politics, you won't use a web browser? This is what's wrong with the world these days... everyone wants everything to be political. It's divisive collectivism, and it'll end it no good.

Thread Thread
 
codewander profile image
Kanishka

I respect people who choose to use brave, I just don't think everybody who uses brave realizes that they are choosing a browser built by someone who left Firefox/Mozilla partly because he was against same sex marriage. As long as the consumer is informed, it's fine by me

Collapse
 
codewander profile image
Kanishka

I use invidious front end to YouTube.