Now, send a gpdr deletion request because Google still has your data.
It's going to be difficult after deleting the account though
Difficult but legally required by them, including establishing your bona fides.
Do you have any guides or tips?
A lot of (all?) email services will allow you to forward your mail from Gmail. My advice would be set that up, have all of them going to a specific folder, and only use your new email moving forward. No harm in allowing some email forwarding while you adjust for the next 6 to 12 months. But that way you can also immediately stop using Gmail itself.
Gdrive unless it is really baked into your daily life in a complicated way, it’s pretty easy to replace. Lots of great services out there.
Proton mail allowed me to export my Google Calendar over with just a few clicks. So that was pretty painless. I’m sure there are other calendar services like that. YMMV.
Google maps is tough lol
For the google maps, it helps for us to contribute to Open Street Maps through recording with Mapillary or making edits in our community.
Is the app itself ready for prime time yet? Can I use it daily? I live in a small but major city.
If you can contribute, that would be great. Especially business names and addresses. The best thing I have found to do is get an address from a place via the internet and plug that into gps-coordinates.net and use the first 7 numbers like 31.12345 -82.12345 into osmand when navigating. Then when i arrive i add it to osm so nobody can claim i stole data from another mapping service.
Would you be able to let us know the services you used, the replacements, and how did the migration process work?
Here are the things I replaced my Google/Microsoft/Meta services with:
DO NOT FORGET TO MIGRATE ACCOUNTS BEFORE DELETING
StreetComplete is a great app to help contribute to OpenStreetMaps
Proton for email and cloud storage. Graphenos on a pixel 7a for phone. Phone spps from aurora and fdroid. Kagi.com paid search engine too.
Seconded.
Without a single word on replacements for email, calendar, phone, etc... this post is pretty much useless to everyone else than the OP.
Welcome to the club.
I want to delete mine too, but I use GMail and I have not found a good alternative yet. Tutanota doesn't have Thunderbird support and ProtonMail has, but only on paid accounts. I really want to use Thunderbird because it is such a great email client.
I was in a similar situation and after a lot of research I found posteo.net and I liked its privacy, FOSS and environmental policies and gave it a try. Happy with its service for just 1€ a month.
I’ve been using Proton for about a year and a half now. It’s been really good for my needs, I started on the free version but then decided to pay to help support them and to get access to everything else (specifically SimpleLogin).
This is a daunting proposition, I'm admittedly massively invested in Google's ecosystem. Gmail and Google calendar, I have a pixel phone, watch and buds and have YouTube premium. I feel like the time I switch is when I have a homelab and am able to find open source alternatives to everything heavily use and be able to do so with all devices I use.
Some are easier than others. Especially if you don't mind paying. Protonmail, calendar, drive solve some big ones right away. Maps is tough though, I've tried to find a better solution and haven't been able to so far.
Use newpipe anad install grapheneos on your pixel. I wish i had a pixel to install grapheneos.
I have one and do so. It's pretty great. I will admit I still have some google services on it, but I'm working on not needing those.
Hi,
Trying to do it myself but I'm stuck with YouTube.
I mean, I need a gmail account to pay for the Premium sub. And then, most creators are still using YouTube not the few alternatives... How do you guys do?
if you're using a desktop, try Firefox with the Ublock origin and SponsorBlock Addons. On Android either try the above or use Re Vanced.
why would you do something so barbaric as paying yt premium?
not sarcasm joke, really curious
not sarcasm joke, really curious
I take your question without sarcasm.
Disclaimer: I use uBlock Origin myself, as I really don't like being forced to see ads.
That said, I don't think paying for content is 'barbaric' either. It's a personal choice. Either you want to pay and you can, or you don't want to, or you simply can't. All three are fine by me.
As a teen, back in the 80s, I could not and did not pay for content (it was not online back then but copying music, books and even movies, or computer applications was a thing). Since then I got a few jobs, and the money that come with them. So, I can support the creators I like and I don't need to spend time copying anything or searching for workarounds to access it. Be it on YT, or anywhere else. I would love to not pay Google, mind you, but since so, so many creators are still only hosted there, and since YT premium makes it so easy to pay them (a single monthly payment)...
Try Invidious, FreeTube, NewPipe,... All allow you to watch regular youtube content without ads. You can also create instance local accounts to "create playlists" and "subscribe" to people.
I'm building up to doing the same. Already using Protonmail and Kagi. Looking for a less Google-dependent phone to switch over to and then I might pull the plug myself.
I'm considering it. Youtube just removed a comment of mine calling an elon simp a cracker for "harassment"
Really it's just about the last straw, they passively protect billionaires but will let outright hate speech stay up. They also advertise nazis.
Well done!
I ended up keeping mine for occasional things like leaving YT comments or subscribing to Firebase-distributed apps.
Any suggestions on starting this process? I have a Raspberry Pi and was looking into self-hosted Google Drive/Photos/Gmail replacement. Best FOSS replacements?
Look up Syncthing and then never stop trying to replace closed source and paid software/services. Like any time you launch something ask yourself “does this hit the same way as when I swapped to Syncthing?” If the answer is no you then put “[name of thing you want to replace] foss alternative” into your search engine of choice. You’ll end up down so many rabbit holes, but you’ll come out the other side a whole lot better at making your technology work for you, not the company that made it, and with a suite of free open sourced tools you are in complete control of.
Here are some tools I use that are super easy to get going.
Those are the ones that got me going and I personally believe act as a solid core. Most people will find all of those useful. Other services are more user specific, but that’s a lightweight bundle of software that your RPi will handle well. Much more and you might want to look at beefier hardware.
I can't wait to graduate college so I can stop using my Google account. I still have to use mine for the online office suite. I use LibreOffice if it's just me but I have to collaborate and do group assignments on Google Docs and Slides too.
It's a nice journey, and you can also start to look into proxmox for self hosting things. It really feels amazing to have your own little lab of stuff rather than using the public web for all services.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)