The federal government argues Google has smothered competition by paying companies such as Apple and Verizon to lock in its search engine as the default.
While I don’t believe you can degoogle that quickly, because some of their services take quite some time to properly switch, such as email, in the end it’s not too hard, but just takes time and some work.
Changing email is easy, if you don’t mind it being a slow process. Just forward your google email, and start slowly replacing any service you notice in the following months/years to your new address.
Google Drive is harder to replace, I went for just running a NAS with Nextcloud, which takes care of most of Google Drive/Docs/Calendar stuff. If self-hosting isn’t your cup of tea, Proton is slowly setting up usable google alternatives - they have Drive and Calendar IIRC.
Now for phone, that’s the hardest task. You wouldn’t help yourself by getting an IPhone. While it would de-google you, there’s basically no point in switching google for apple. Getting android to be usable for stuff like banking, MFA and other bullshit you need your phone for while being degoogled is hard, due to the bullshit Google Services. The only solution I found is to either just go with dumb phone with an obscure OS, or just get a Google Pixel and run GrapheneOS.
Maps are another issue, but thankfully we have a local https://mapy.cz/ , which is a pretty OK alternative to Google maps for our country, and I guess they even work worldwide. I don’t drive a car, so I don’t really need it that often.
The only remaining Google service I use is GCloud VPS, because I have some websites running there on the free instances that I’m too lazy to move. But I’m slowly migrating it to Amazon. Not that it would help much, anyway. And also Youtube, but I’m trying to go through the alternative front-ends as much as possible.
While I don’t believe you can degoogle that quickly, because some of their services take quite some time to properly switch, such as email, in the end it’s not too hard, but just takes time and some work.
Changing email is easy, if you don’t mind it being a slow process. Just forward your google email, and start slowly replacing any service you notice in the following months/years to your new address.
Google Drive is harder to replace, I went for just running a NAS with Nextcloud, which takes care of most of Google Drive/Docs/Calendar stuff. If self-hosting isn’t your cup of tea, Proton is slowly setting up usable google alternatives - they have Drive and Calendar IIRC.
Now for phone, that’s the hardest task. You wouldn’t help yourself by getting an IPhone. While it would de-google you, there’s basically no point in switching google for apple. Getting android to be usable for stuff like banking, MFA and other bullshit you need your phone for while being degoogled is hard, due to the bullshit Google Services. The only solution I found is to either just go with dumb phone with an obscure OS, or just get a Google Pixel and run GrapheneOS.
Maps are another issue, but thankfully we have a local https://mapy.cz/ , which is a pretty OK alternative to Google maps for our country, and I guess they even work worldwide. I don’t drive a car, so I don’t really need it that often.
The only remaining Google service I use is GCloud VPS, because I have some websites running there on the free instances that I’m too lazy to move. But I’m slowly migrating it to Amazon. Not that it would help much, anyway. And also Youtube, but I’m trying to go through the alternative front-ends as much as possible.
And for browser, I’m using https://mullvad.net/en/browser. Fuck chromium.