🩵 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

💙💙💙

Show threadSuperDicq
@Bwee I know some ways to get your data out of the Google systems.

For email, I would recommend adding your Gmail account into a desktop email client, such as Thunderbird. From here you can easily make a backup and same all your emails to a file or transfer them to a different mailbox.

As for Chrome you could use Firefox, it has a very user friendly profile import feature specifically designed for Chrome, this copies all your saved passwords and such.

For collaborative document and spreadsheets editing I would recommend using Cryptpad. Just like the fediverse this is at best when self-hosted, but that requires technical knowledge. There are publicly accessible instances you can use however, like cryptpad.fr. This is service is very limited if you don't pay for it, but it works. Their paid tiers are 5, 10 and 15 euro per month so would consider that reasonable pricing if you really can't get into self-hosting.
May 16, 2024 at 11:58amWeb
Show threadKevin Karhan May 16, 2024

@SuperDicq @Bwee also there are other options like #monoclesOcean as a replavement for #GoogleDocs & #GoogleDrive.

It's based off @nextcloud and hosted by @monocles and does offer both sharing and collaborative edits of files.

And they also offer a good paid but ad-free and privacy-focussed #eMail service...

As for #Android, I can recommend using @fdroidorg for #Apps and you don't even need rooting for that to work.

also #monocles charges €5 p.m. (available in € 30 / 6 months and € 60 / 12 months packages) for their complete offering with mail, chat & cloud...