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Sometime around 2021 I began to feel that use of Google services constituted a grave threat to my digital sovereignty, and began slowly moving off of them.
Here in 2024 I still have a Google account and probably will for the foreseeable future, because Google Fi and Google Fiber remain the best cell service and internet service providers, and you need a Google account to pay for them.
Today I use my Google account for five things:
- As an OAuth identity for services that require one - literally just Tailscale, I have replaced everything else with email-based accounts
- Filling out Google Forms - please stop using these folks, they require a Google account
- Access to shared Google Photos albums
- Google Fi (cell service)
- Google Fiber (internet)
Despite these limited use cases, which are all provided for free with a personal-tier Google account, I still have to pay for Google Suite ($8/month). Why? Because years ago when I wanted to use a custom domain on my Gmail account, I started paying for Google Suite to enable this functionality. When you do this, your Google account is converted from a “Personal” to a “Business” account. This is a one way transition. Once this happens, if you stop paying for it, your level of services drops *below* that offered to a free personal Google account. So unless I want to completely disable my Google account (spoilers: I do, but not yet) I have to continue to pay Google, because they don't offer a downgrade path.
Below I share what I have replaced various Google services with.
Gmail
Migrated from Gmail first to Protonmail, and then in 2023 to Fastmail, which I am much more satisfied with. I was paying for GSuite for Business in order to use a custom domain name, now I pay Fastmail for that.
Google Drive
This is a tough one. I have replaced google drive with a combination of the following
- For files shared only among my own devices, I use a storage array on my home server mounted on all my devices (yes, even iPhone) via Samba
- For files shared to others, I self host Filestash on my cloud VM, but this isn't ideal because of space limitations on the VM disk. Similar issue with Nextcloud. Recently (yesterday) I started using magic wormhole for p2p transfers and really like it. I have tried Syncthing but it's too hard to use for most people and is geared towards syncing and not transfers.
Google Photos
For hosting my personal photos, I replaced Google Photos with Photoprism.
Sharing photos is much more complicated. The usual situation for me is that I go on a trip with a bunch of people, and afterwards someone sets up a shared Google Photos album, everyone uploads their pictures to Google Photos and then adds them to the album. I am usually the odd one out complaining about this. So far I have done one of two things:
* Uploaded my photos to the shared album, advised all participants that they will be deleted in 2 weeks, and then delete them in 2 weeks * Zipped the photos and shared directly via one of the methods described in the previous section
This is much to the chagrin of people I go on group trips with, because they don't understand why I can't just use Google Photos like them and I end up being viewed as a source of inconvenience. Oh well.
Google Contacts & Calendar
I run Nextcloud on my home server and have replaced G services with Nextcloud's cardDAV and calDAV implementations. This legitimately works better than Google's services.
YouTube
Replaced with Peertube, although my YouTube channel is still up because I haven't gotten around to wiping it yet.
Unfortunately one video I made has popped off, and since it's educational I'm a little reluctant to take it down. I will probably make a video explaining how to get to my Peertube, upload that to YouTube, and then take everything else down. Then when I finally get around to deleting my Google account, that will disappear too.
Keep
Replaced first by Notion, and then Obsidian.
Android / Play Services
Bought an iPhone.
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