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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Pixdigit May 16, 2024

@Bwee a good replacement for Google docs is Cryptpad. There are many providers but cryptpad.fr is the flagship instance.

For email I use @Tutanota . Though gmail is very rich in features, some of which aren't (yet) part of tuta mail. @protonprivacy is also a good choice for mail, though I have no personal experience with them.

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The1goit

@Pixdigit @Bwee
I've also been degoogling myself; I've switched to Firefox as my main browser and slapped some extensions on it (Ublock origin, something that handles cookie banners, sponsorblock, etc), I also use @protonprivacy as my email now, but I still use gmail for stuff that spams my inbox.

For note taking, I used to use google keep, and then one note, but I switched to @obsidian cause it stores locally on your device (my portable hard drive) and uses plain markdown files. For passwords I recommend @bitwarden as a password manager.