Ungoogling my life

I was dismayed (but unfortunately not really surprised) to see all the big tech CEOs kiss the ring during the inauguration a few weeks back. I decided then that I didn’t want to subscribe to any products of these companies with my personal money anymore. In my case, this meant only Google. I do have an iPhone (the first iPhone since the 3GS or something) but I’m not paying any subscriptions there either.

I have been a paying Google subscriber for years and years, starting in their “Don’t be evil” area and sticking with them as the product and the companies ethics got worse and worse.

GMail

I have switched my private mail to Fastmail a few years ago, so I haven’t been really using GMail anymore.

GMail is still a really good email service. In the last few weeks the AI features have become hard to overlook and/or ignore though, and I’m not really happy about that. Fastmail shows more restraint in this area.

Google Calendar

We have shared family calendars using Google Calendar. Now I do not have a private calendar anymore, and am using the Work calendar for everything. That’s a small setback. Fastmail also has a calendar functionality but sharing read/write calendars doesn’t seem to be easily possible except if others are in the same account group.

Google Drive and Google Photos

I don’t miss the Drive all that much. The things I’m working on are versioned with Git, and since I’m switching from desktop to notebook all the time anyway everything is already backuped and synced everywhere. For everything else I have started renting a Storage Box at Hetzner. I’m paying a few euros per month for 1 TiB of storage which is accessible by several protocols.

Docs / Spreadsheets

LibreOffice exists and fits my needs. Whenever possible I use pen and paper or flat text files anyway.

Maps

I have been a happy OsmAnd subscriber anyway. I’m still paying for it but have been using Organic Maps more often now because the app feels faster and nicer.

YouTube and YouTube Music

I’m very happy with Bandcamp and have been buying music there for years now. I don’t think the app is great though.

I have tried several apps, and have now settled on foobar2000. It works well and includes an FTP server which I can use to push the library from the computer to the phone using a lftp script.

I looked into setting up by own streaming server but haven’t gotten anywhere with that project yet, and I’m not sure if I really want to pursue that.

On the computer I’m back to using Rhythmbox.

Not having a YouTube subscription is great, because all the ads are so annoying that I’m spending less time on YouTube than I did in years. And if I really want to watch something yt-dlp exists and does what it says on the tin.

Other things

I have been playing Ingress for over 10 years. It didn’t immediately register that I also deleted that account with my Google account. I’m still a bit sad when thinking about all the badges I lost, but it has been definitely worth it.

Google Keep has worked well for me for small To Dos, reminders and notes. I haven’t found an acceptable replacement yet; Apple Notes works somewhat, but cannot be accessed on the web if you’re using their advanced data protection feature. Maybe I need a To Do app, but this space is so crowded that I don’t even want to start searching for something with fits my needs.

At work we’re still using Google Workspace. It would probably be in our interest to change that though.