Google Alternatives Guide: How (and Why) to Avoid Google

Originally published at: https://ethical.net/ethical/google-alternatives/

“Google it.” Even my technophobe grandma understands what that means, and almost everyone with experience of the internet has used the company’s services in some shape or form. Once a humble search engine, Google has morphed into one of the biggest companies in the world. “Don’t be evil” used to be part of its corporate…

Thanks a lot for the article!

I’m just about to set up a plan to get rid of as many Google Services as I can and increase privacy in my digital life. Mail will probably be one of the easier ones. I’m leaning towards mailbox, that you listed as well.

I’m missing the following tools on the list:

  • Matomo for Analytics
  • invidio[dot]us --> no ads, subscription without google account
  • Mastadon as Facebook alternative
  • Nextcloud as a Google Drive alternative
  • Open Street Map as a Google Maps alternative
  • Mapstr as places bookmark alternative for Google Maps (especially for mobile)

Also, this article helps with some tool recommendations: https://impossiblehq.com/complete-guide-leaving-google/

And this is also pretty great, to get more privacy in general: https://datadetoxkit.org/en/home

Still looking for more ethical alternatives for my daily life tools.

Cheers!

Hey @joshuaschaer, cheers for the response :slight_smile:

So great that you’re actually going ahead, walking the walk, and banishing Google from your life! I’ve found it the hardest of the Big 5 disentangle myself from: I can’t live without my ASMR videos, which you can only really find on YouTube :roll_eyes:

Thanks for recommending those tools! The ones you mention are actually listed on our resources page (the precursor to our full directory); I think James, the writer of that article, was just picking out a few of his faves :slight_smile:

But Mapstr was something that wasn’t on our radar, and there’s some brilliant suggestions on Impossible and the Data Detox Kit - thanks a million! We’ll get those added to our resources page! :slight_smile:

What daily life tools are you looking for alternatives for, if you don’t mind me asking?!

1 Like

Hi there @highwindows.

At least you can now use a more anonymous yt frontend to watch your ASMR videos. :grinning:. But why not use vimeo?

Yes, how embarassing, I saw that later on, that most tools were already listed.

I’ve got some more mobile apps that you can review and maybe add to the list:

  • YourHour: Phone Addiction Tracker & Controller
  • FiveUp: “With «Five up», private individuals, organisations and volunteers can network with each other in the simplest way.”
  • SkinVision: Perform regular self-checks for skin cancer with your phone.
  • Where is public toilet: pretty much what the title says
  • Yuka: Make the best choices for your health
  • ** Momentum: simple donations (Early Access)**: Tie moments in your life to automatic donations.
  • Blokada: The best ad blocker for Android: free and open source .
  • Daylio: Mood Tracker and Micro Diary
  • KeePassXC: KeePassXC can store your passwords safely and auto-type them into your everyday websites and applications.

My main concern atm is to find a propper solution/alternative for the Google Fotos App & Cloud: --> Sync my photos with a nice app into a secure, privacy focused, ecological cloud (swiss data protection law), possibly with family options (sharing, multiple users), e2e encryption and if possible, with some kind of version control. I’m putting together a list with providers I found on the internet or that were recommended to me by friends.

Maybe you guys can help me out? <3

I just had a look, and there doesn’t seem to be much ASMR on Vimeo, alas! :frowning:

Thanks so much for the brilliant further recs Joshua! :raised_hands: Will get the most relevant ones added :relaxed:

RE: ethical clouds - do you have any thoughts, @Cata? :thinking:

See, We all know, Google has the largest share in the market. It’s not that much easy to avoid it. You can see this in browsing as well. Chrome is the most favourite browser among people. But you don’t need to worry, there are some good alternatives to it as well. Here is the list of a secure web browser which you can try.

You should check out SearchScene.com. It’s a charitable search engine that donates up to 95% of its profits to charity. Click on the charity icon at the top right of the homepage to choose the charities you want to support. It has great search results too and is much more ethical than Google (which isn’t hard!)

Email: Posteo is a great ethical alternative to all of the other email providers since 2009 - just check out their about us and you will see what I mean. They should honestly top the list.

Mobile phone internet browser: Ecosia has a mobile phone internet browser now.

Google Docs/ Google Sheets: I’ve just started using Zoho. Seems like a good alternate to Microsoft/Google

Google Photos - I am currently looking for a good alternative. Does anyone have some suggestions (Any luck with this @joshuaschaer)?