Why I started de-Googling myself
The beginning of a difficult journey
After reading about it in a number of Substacks, Reddit communities and working with privacy myself, I have finally made the decision to gradually de-Google myself. Just to give an idea of how many Google products I have been using:
Gmail for all personal (and some professional) mails,
Google Calendar to organise my life outside work,
Google Maps for navigation,
YouTube,
Android, and therefore Google Play and several built-in apps of the above.
The decision was not easy and it came with a lot of “what-ifs”. What if I can’t find similarly good products? What if I’ll have difficulties because of this in my daily life? How do I keep in touch with family, friends, other professionals outside my day-to-day work?
These products mean a large portion of my interactions with people only and how I organise myself. This means that a too fast or disorganised de-Googling could lead to a digital armageddon in my personal life. Before moving forward with this, it should be also noted that I already started using some more privacy-friendly products before. The most straightforward step is to replace Google search, and Startpage worked perfectly fine for years for me. I’ve been using Firefox instead of Chrome for a very long time now. Thanks to the Firefox, I gained access to the broadest selection of privacy tools like password managers, masked emails, ad blockers, and so on (some say the same for Brave, but it is slightly less customisable in my view). These were already big steps over a couple of years to improve my online privacy and security.
However, all of this takes time and it can cost some money as well, unfortunately. The question is then: why such a hassle?
Concerns over privacy
(Privacy) policies come and go: even working in the field, it is difficult to stay on top what happens with your data. With the AI zeitgeist, you simply lose track which company uses your data for training its brand new AI model (e.g. Gemini for Google). When you realize all Google services and the data they hold are connected via your Google account, you can get an idea where the data comes from to train their AI. Most companies simply wait until receiving a GDPR or similar fine to change their practices, and by that time their service becomes established and profitable enough to simply pay off the fine.
This applies to Google as well, already having a list of GDPR fines over the years (see also some ongoing complaints here while filtering only to Google ). In fact, ironically, Google largely contributed to the development of European data protection law. For example, the right to be forgotten was first articulated in the famous Google Spain case in 2014, where it was stated that you have the right to be deleted from any online sources - especially from Google search.
Google also gives concern to informational self-determination, of having control over where your data is stored, what are the terms for that, who can (even with the slightest theoretical possibility) access that data and why. As I wrote in my previous post, pverall, even if you read all the privacy policies and terms & conditions, there is not much you can do about it anyway as an individual person.
Market dominance and power of Big Techs
Personally, I was bothered by the fact that a small amount of Big Techs have a significant market dominance, such as the “lock-in effect” of their products. This means that once you’re used to one of their products, it’s hard to switch from them. Some of the products are a condition to use others. For example, it is difficult to use an Android phone without having a Google account. While you can de-Google your Android device afterwards, you will face some technical issues.
The timeline of Google’s (now Alphabet’s) acquisitions over time explain also well how it dominated certain types of products we’re using:
As essentially all these products are linked to a Google account, Google has a good control of data from various aspects of our lives. In my case, Gmail has nearly all my communications with the administration, healthcare or part of my work. Google Drive has all files shared with family and friends, notes and research ideas recorded to myself. Google Calender holds my appointments - be it medical, dates, reminders for errands, online purchases, and so on - they are all held in one place and at the mercy of a Big Tech.
This is a concept call data power, coined by researchers in the field and most recently by the French data protection authority (CNIL) as well1. According to CNIL, data power can
“manifest itself in a number of ways in objective empirical reality, can therefore be defined as an impediment to a person’s informational autonomy, due to an economic imbalance between them and the data controller, reflected in an asymmetry of information or other biases of individual rationality, and measured by a risk to the protection of that person’s data or privacy”.
Meaning: if you feel out of control against Big Techs, that feeling is right, as this is how their systems are designed.
Security concerns
If you use Google services as I did (or even more), you can get to know pretty much everything about where I come and go, what do I do, even have some ideas what to I dream or aspire of. While everyone says the famous “I have nothing to hide” quote, I don’t think any of the readers would be comfortable giving credentials to their Gmail accounts.
Just think about the invites you get for an appointment on your Gmail account - that goes on your Google calendar as well. Think if you get bank statements, medical documents or any pdfs - those attachments go automatically on Google Drive. Thanks to Google Maps, all the steps I take outside of my house are there. I even systematically saved locations I loved around the world or where I’d like to go.
All of this linked to a lastname.firstname Gmail account, which is one of the first guesses if you want to find out someone’s email address. It is fair to say now that Gmail is the most targeted email provider for cyberattacks - simply because everyone knows and uses it.
And through a Google account of an average person, you have access to all this, start changing passwords and take over of other accounts. If someone else can access this vast amount of data about you, they could probably learn more about you than you do, and you can find yourself as a victim of identity thefts. If you have your ID documentations uploaded, people can apply for bank accounts or credit loans in your name, defamate you, or start using that information against you.
While I was fortunate enough to not to be subject to anything like this, online fraud is on the rise, and you can take steps (even for free) to prevent them.
The solution
Many of the privacy gurus link to one company: to Protonmail, which has many services that are designed to replace Google. In fact, they offer much guidance to show how to transition from Google to Proton products.
Protonmail is based in Switzerland and the data is stored there, meaning that most law enforcement authorities around the globe cannot give away your data on request (such as the NSA as I wrote in a previous post). Proton services don’t sell your data back and forth, and all the messages are end-to-end encrypted, meaning they couldn’t share your data to anyone even if it was requested. No targeted ads, no spams. You can link several email domains to one account, let’s say one for marketing purposes, one for social media accounts, etc.
There is of course a price (literally) of having your data not being monetized: you have to pay for Proton products to have more or less the same level as for Google services. While Protonmail has a free version, it only offers 1GB of storage. In my case, even after removing all my data from Google Drive and started a cleaning of larger emails on Gmail, it was simply just not enough to transfer my email history. It means that if you really want to get the habit of using Proton services, you need a paid version (~5 euros) to have 15GB of a paid Protonmail.
However, any company needs to make a profit in one way or another, and the pricing is still fair. In my case, the main driving point was when I simply started to run out of space on my Google Drive and Dropbox, and Proton Drive has reasonable prices to upgrade later on for more storage. That’s how I decided for a full transition for my calender and drive storage as well.
If you’re interested in how this moving exactly looks like, you can find detailed guidance here:
Suggestions before you start
Privacy is important. But with any habit, you should need to be well aware of the reasons before starting it, otherwise it won’t stick. I tried this transitioning myself before, and I didn’t like the fact that I had to pay for privacy - this is why I ditched the idea of Protonmail at first. After all, data protection by design and by default is a right in Europe, and these kind of services should be rather the rule than the exception.
You should also consider the time this transition takes. I strongly recommend not to switch all services at the same time, as it can easily can get out of control or too overwhelming. Most files you have online have to be transferred, but you might want to do a cleaning at first as I did, which meant deleting and sorting years of files. Once you switch email accounts, you have to do it manually on all social media, websites, online stores, banks, public administration etc., which is an immensely boring and time-consuming exercise (not to talk about the security alerts it triggers everywhere). You need to get used to a new interface, you have to delete (or disable) Google apps and replace them with new ones.
These are things that you have done with Google many years ago without being more conscious about it, and this is the process you’re trying to consciously reverse. However, the time you’re investing returns in the control you’re gaining on the data you have.
What’s next?
I find it nearly impossible to replace Google Maps for now. While there are better apps for driving, it was just simply the most reliable app I was using when visiting new countries, and its ratings of restaurants and sights while travelling feels priceless. When it comes to Street View, which other company would be so crazy to travel all corners of the world frequently so that you can look around by yourself? While alternatives exist, you’ll probably need a number of other apps to replace it, and their efficiency can be different depending on the country you’re in.
The issue is the same with YouTube: while alternative platforms do exist (e.g. the European Data Protection Supervisor developed a completely ad-free video hosting platform called EU Video), it does not compare to the quality offered by YouTube and the content providers there (and frankly, nobody uses alternatives that much).
Lastly, you can find many guides to de-Google your Android devices to make them more privacy-friendly, but that honestly feels like too much hassle for a product - a physical phone - that should absolutely not be linked to the usage of a Big Tech’s services by design. A potential solution can be switching to Apple - but then, again, the user bears the costs, and you essentially switch from one Big Tech to another.
To close these thoughts, privacy and security should be more like a long-term journey, rather than a one-off exercise. There are always new services and more moves from Big Techs that can motivate you doing these steps. The question is, how important this is for you and how much time (or money) you are willing to invest in it.
What other privacy-friendly services you’re using to replace Google services? Feel free to share below!
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Conclusions of the Lasserre mission on data protection and competition: deepening the dialogue, pages 15-16, CNIL (French data protection authority), 18 March 2025, https://www.cnil.fr/sites/default/files/2025-03/conclusions-lasserre-mission.pdf