I’ve put together lists of alternatives on this site: https://www.rebeltechalliance.org/

I started degoogling because of Google’s more and more transparent business plan of data surveillance. I’m not comfortable with “paying with my information” because of the uncountable (and frankly unimaginable) ways that information can be applied by third parties without my knowledge.

“AI” is one example which wasn’t even on the chart when I started degoogling, but we can all be certain that Google and partners use any language sample available on Gmail and G drive to train theirs. This is the company that casually registered private WiFi networks in the course of mapping their Maps street view. They’ll harvest everything they can.

At heart, I don’t trust corporate mega-monopolies to take care of our best interests as online citizens, and as a European I’m super sceptical of becoming subject to less safe legislation (US, Chinese or whatever) that doesn’t offer me protections that I have or expect at home.

By not using Google (or Meta, or Amazon, or X) I can deliberately pick and choose individual services — or host them for myself — rather than hedge everything on the benevolence of one corporation that doesn’t give a shit about their users.

There’s the privacy and constant tracking part of it, but it is also about not being hostage of the company. What if Drive is suddenly a payed-only service OR they lock me out of my account? I can recover faster and cheaper from a failing HDD in my NAS than I ever could from a locked (or deleted) Google account.

I’ve seen / was burned too many times by free software and services that suddenly disappeared of became overpriced and I don’t want to be on that position again. Google is well known for killing stuff as well.

Companies like google collects, stores and shares data on you.

I don’t want someone looking over my shoulder analyzing, interpreting and announcing to the world what I do all the time. I also don’t want a permanent record of that to exist. It hurts me when done to me. It hurts society when done to everyone. An example where it hurts you is when you go the insurance company and they deny you or make it expensive cause they have data on you, your behaviour, health and opinions.

It will also be used against you when your government decides they are no longer going to respect human rights or cracking down on the citizenry. They migh feed a big pool of data to an ai and the ai gives you a shitty social score. Nothing is forgotten and it will be missused and missinterpreted. Never for your benefit.

In addition to the privacy aspect, i wanted to reduce my dependency on outside/external factors as much as possible. I try to self-host and use FOSS where possible. Where not feasible, I try to diversify companies so I’m not overly reliant on one. That way, I can pivot much quicker if a company goes to shit.

Originally it was because suggested results were a waste of time and I had used linux in grad school. I liked being able to use my computer how I wanted. As I learned more and more the ethics became a strong enough motivator I got rid of gmail and stopped using google maps. I’m 100% degoogled now, and I never looked back. Sometimes I have friends or people at work who want to collaborate using google products. I tell them I take an ethical stance against it. I will never go back.

Google has moved far away from “do no evil”.

I feel like I’m always being watched - just to make some rich person richer.

I don’t like ads, they’re a menace to society, I will find something if I need it.

They have too much control in the world.

It’s not just Google. But we don’t need any of them. It’d be better if they didn’t exist.

My data is my data. Period. Or at least it should be.
Abuse of position as dominant provider of search engine (incl. censorship) and mobile OS.
Labour Practice.
e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google

Similiar reasons apply to Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, PayPal, X and so on since well before Trump & Co.
e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Tech

Appologies for my aggressive tone. I really hate these companies / their owners and what they are doing to our society, wellbeing, and humanness. It could have turned out so much different, if not for their greed and egoism!

Nothing is free. If you don’t pay for the product, you are the product.

Privacy (different from anonymity) has become more and more important to me, and Google had access to nearly every part of my life in one way or another. I’ve cut out Musk, Zuck and Bezos, and I’m now nearly completely Google free as well.

I’ve often heard “why do I care if Google reads my emails? I’ve got nothing to hide”. 2 great answers:

1. Unlock your phone and give it to me for an hour. Just because you have nothing to hide doesn’t mean you don’t want privacy. Google does exactly that.

2. Speaking of privacy, why bother closing the stall door in a public washroom? You’re not doing anything wrong in there.

i dont want google profiting by sending my data to the gov whos paying for it with my tax money

@CheeseToastie Spending my money in autocratic countries is like buying them the weapons they will point at me to take away my freedom.

Giving my data to them is pretty much the same as they monetize it.

didn’t see anyone touching on the most important part, and that is the decisions regarding our data we make now are coming to bite us in the ass five or ten years from now. our chicken brains can’t comprehend that, not really. we need a direct feedback loop: hot stove, finger, ouch - no more touching.

up until a decade or two ago, we didn’t have the concept of forever in our lives. do stupid shit in school, in uni they don’t know about it. fail at one job, the next one doesn’t know about it. say something stupid in front of a love interest, the next one’s blissfully unaware. in our current paradigm, all of them transgressions are with you, forever.

any and all corporations even adjacent to the advertising/harvesting/mining industries have lost the benefit of doubt, forever. our interaction with them is and should be adversarial from the get go. they should never be in the position to retain any meaningful data points and polluting their ingestion avenues and obscuring activity is mandatory.

edit: the AI example is touching on it.

Cause fuck ‘em, that’s why.

For me it always felt a bit weird to give google all this data about me, but it was so convenient and their services often are very good and definitely user friendly. So I always told myself, what’s the worst they can do? They are a corporation and they would only hurt themselves if they used their data against their users. And anyway they are US based. The USA are the biggest and oldest democracy which wouldn’t allow evil forces to gain power.

Yeah, that was that.

i don’t like the fact that fbi, nsa, cia, etc. could have access to my data. especially now