Mastodawn

🩵 Bwee the Fluffdragon 🩵May 16, 2024

So... I've read some things lately about the big evil G that have put me into unease. The problem is, I use Google for absolutely everything right now, and have for as long as Google has existed. It's tied into everything and I need to break free.

These are the Google things I use regularly:

* Email - Gmail (I have many years of email that I've saved in my account)
* Browser - Chrome (including saving my passwords)
* Writing - Docs (I need collaborative capabilities and a place to safely save my work)
* Spreadsheets - Sheets (used for organizing various things, collaborative options are very needed and used often)

My phone is even a Google Pixel phone, of course running Android and integrated into everything I do.

I am not very tech savvy. I need user-friendly, reliable, relatively easy to learn options for everything I use, and I have zero idea where to begin.

I've done searches online for alternatives, but nothing is really standing out to me as being a good replacement. If you have any ideas for me (and dear god let them please be free or have reasonable pricing) please let me know.

Thank you for any advice!

#help #google #degoogle

Edited to add: Thank you all so much for your thoughts and responses, I got more than I bargained for, haha! I have this post bookmarked and will take in the information at my own pace.

I will be muting this post as I have been a little overwhelmed with the responses, but I really appreciate all the input for when I have time to process it. :3

💙💙💙

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CyberFoxar May 16, 2024

@Bwee Depends on how much you are willing to pay for your services.

To get it out of the way: if you're okay with Microsoft (I'm not fwiw), Office 365 has all the bells and whistles of the g-suite.

There are also a slew of smaller, other services. I've got a friend working at "Infomaniak" and their K-suite product has all the features of the G-suite.

There's also going the self-host route, especially for collaborative document editing. There's some software to help you with it, like yunohost that handle most of the hassle for you.

If you're willing to do some research, you can also look into individuals who make their own services available on https://www.chatons.org/ , they're a bit less reliable than big names, but might be worth a look ! Some of them might even be reachable on the fediverse :P

Bienvenue sur le site du collectif CHATONS | CHATONS

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CyberFoxar

@Bwee Also, remember to make a google export of your email/data. You can do so somewhere in the google account panel, stuff like "data export". It'll help keep your mail archives.