Google

Oh boy this is gonna be a long one considering the number of applications in the Google Ecosystem. This company has a huge monopoly in your data collection just by the different tools in their ecosystem.

Google Tools (mainly but not limited to):

• Search
• Chrome
• Android
• Electronic mail (or email as the kids say it)
• Drive, along with
  • Docs
  • Sheets
  • Slides
  • Forms
  • Jamboard
• YouTube
• Chat tools
  • Hangouts (shut down in 2022)
  • Meets
  • Allo (shut down in 2019)
  • Duo (merged into Google Meet in 2022)
• Misc. Services (That is how big Google is, I need a miscellaneous section)

For Google I shall be going in the order of ease rather than the order I mentioned them above, which is more in the order of relevance.

Search

Due to the complexities of searching the only alternative viable is DuckDuckGo. They protect your privacy and also have a lot of cool features like bang commands.

Bang commands start with ! followed by the command. So, if I did !slackbuild 0ad it would take you to the search result in SlackBuilds.org for 0ad. If I did !scholar data privacy it would take you to the search result of Google scholar (I know, I know) for data privacy.

If you want to self host your own search engine, while results may vary based on configuration etc. One could use SearXNG (a fork of the now-unmaintained Searx) or use one of the publicly available instances here.

Chrome

Chrome is (was?) a great browser. I am not going to argue about that. It is however used as a tool to spy on you, just like Microsoft Edge! As an alternative you can use Firefox. It does have its problems, like it uses Google search by default which you can change to Duckduckgo! With its minor issues it is still a great browser and the best alternative to a browser that can work as a Chrome and Chromium based browser. It also has Firefox sync which helps you sync your browser across machines. It is FOSS so people have access to the code to make sure it is not spying on you and it follows rigorous reviews before a new piece of code is added to the official Firefox code. So, access to the source code is always great!!

If you do need to use a Chromium based browser, use Chromium, if you do not use the Google Sync then it is fairly Google free. There is also Ungoogled Chromium where someone has gone out of their way to remove the Google bits. You should find a package for your distro of choice, it should be easier to get now considering the (one of many) recent Google controversy.

If you are using Google Chrome on your Android device Cromite (a fork of the now-unmaintained Bromite) is an option that aims to curb the idea of "browser as an advertisement platform".

E-Mail

Some good ol' Gmail alternatives are:

• Proton Mail
• Tuta (formerly Tutanota)

Both are designed with your privacy in mind. The major downside is they do not have the "unlimited storage" Google provide and have paid upgrade-able versions.

I personally use my Gmail to sign up for junk and get random spam whereas I use Proton Mail for all communications with people I know.

Chat Tools

The chat tools need to be put into 2 categories:

User tools:

• Hangouts (shut down in 2022)
• Allo (shut down in 2019)
• Duo (merged into Google Meet in 2022)

Conference/Enterprise tools:

• Chat
• Meets

User Tools

Hangouts and Allo: Same as the alternatives for Facebook messenger and WhatsApp.

Duo: Duo is designed to be a Video chat application. Both Signal and Matrix can fill this gap or one could also use Jitsi Meet (more about it when talking about Google Meets).

Enterprise Tools

Chat: For chat specifically which aims to be a Slack alternative, use Matrix. It is designed to be a Slack, IRC alternative which I feel does a decent job of personal communications as well.

Meets: For Meets one can use Jitsi Meet via their different public instances here. Jitsi Meets has improved in leaps and bounds since BC (Before CoVid-19) and is super smooth now. My favorite feature about Jitsi Meets is the Raise hand feature which none of the other conference call apps have and it has existed way BC.

Drive

Drive is a hard thing to replace as you still have to trust your data on someone else's computer. There are very few providers that I would trust:

• Mega.nz is the only that comes to mind that gives you 20GB of free storage and encrypts your files as well.
• Setup your own Nextcloud instance, while still relatively easy it can still be daunting for those who have not used a Linux based OS.

Android

Android is a pain to replace. It is the Windows of the mobile ecosystem, in their reach and also in how they spy on you. Replacing it has slight limitations as it isn't as easy to change the OS on the mobile as one would hope and it involves checking if the phone you intend to buy is supported by the OS you would like to install. There are however a few phones that are built from the ground up with privacy and non-Android OS in mind.

• PinePhone
  • A realistic as FOSS as possible phone while also being affordable. You can put any OS you would like on this $150 - $200 phone.
• Librem 5
  • This is a phone built from the ground up keeping FOSS in mind by Purism. This phone was a long shot and has been in the works for a few years but is finally showing signs of life for customers. This phone is as FOSS as possible for a phone built from scratch. Priced at $700 roughly and $1200 for the Made in USA version of the phone. I want to live in the world where this phone makes sense but we sadly do not.
• A Google free version of Android
  • This is possibly the most affordable but you need to make sure you use the right phone and the right ROM. You can put in a compatible ROM into an existing Android phone which pimps it out for us privacy concerned folks.
    • Replicant OS which replaces all proprietary blobs from the existing Android OS.
    • /e/ is an OS marketed as a Degoogled version of Android.
    • Lineage is also a pretty good degoogled Android alternative that has a nice bunch of built-in privacy centric features
    • For Pixel phones, Calyx and Graphene are great ROMs

YouTube

Holy fuck balls, this is gonna be hard. To find a YouTube equivalent that hasn't been taken over by the alt-right.

You have LBRY which is open source and a nice little blockchain but its founder is Jeremy Kauffman. LBRY Inc was shut down by the SEC in 2023, and its main instance Odysee is effectively centralized now.

The only alternative is PeerTube which requires content creators to host their own site or upload to an existing instance of PeerTube.

Misc. Services

Domains: Google Domains (sold to Squarespace in 2023) provides custom domain names. Alternatives to use would be Njalla or Namecheap.

There are more obscure services Google provides which shall be added here.