De-Googling and Rejecting Corporations

Here are multiple products/services you can switch to limit big tech's control over your life while increasing privacy and fighting back against our corporate overlords

Everyday our lives become more and more online. With big tech companies showing no interest in wanting to slow down climate change and the current political climate, it has become increasingly important to take control of your online activity, not be at the will of corporations, and stay private and secure online.

But why care?

  • Pollution: Google and other companies have numerous data centers all across the US and the world that pollute both the local environment, making the air and water unbreathable and unusable, and the global environment by bringing our world and every species on it closer to climate catastrophe. This has gotten exponentially worse with the advent of AI (NPR).
  • Genocide: Google and Amazon have a deal with the Israeli government called Project Nimbus in which they provide cloud computing ervices, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, to assist the Zionist regime in its' genocide (The Intercept). Google fires employees for their opposition and activism towards ending the company's support of the Palestinian genocide (Fortune).
  • War: Google has repeatedly partnered with the US government, including the military and ICE, in order to "get their work done" (Google, 404 Media). They partner with multiple military tech companies, including Palantir and Lockheed Martin (Google, Lockheed Martin). Google has removed any promise that they won't use AI to inflict harm (Defense One).
  • AI: Google has shown that they will knowingly advance AI regardless of any possible ecological or societal issues it triggers (PC Gamer). Google has removed any promise that they won't use AI to inflict harm (Defense One).
  • Privacy: Nothing you do using Google is private. All of your information is tracked and used to serve ads (CNBC). They routinely coordinate with the CIA and NSA along with way too many privacy issues to name (Wikipedia).
  • Control: If you decide to switch from corporation owned services, you will realize that lots of the time the non-billionaire backed alternatives are a lot better. Often the most successful products are claimed to be the best, simply because they have the most users or rake in the most cash. This is often not true, especially when one service becomes so required in modern society that the owners can make it as unusable and as profitable as possible by limiting user's control and ignoring their wants (a monopoly). When you switch to products that actually care about their user's and their experience, it's hard to go back.

Whether they are helping kill our planet, destroying local communities, arming a genocide, suppressing activists, fueling the military-industrial complex, bringing about the AI apocalypse, or simply just eroding everyone's privacy, Google does not care about you. It's time you stop caring about them by ceasing to use their products and services.

It may seem like there's nothing you can do, but we the workers and consumers have the power to change the world for the better. By ceasing to use platforms we can create change (Ethical Consumer). By acknowledging the pain and suffering corporations can, will, and do cause we can be a more ethical, empathetic, and thoughtful society and people.

While this focuses on de-Googling, most information can also be applied to avoid most other big tech companies. Most of our corporate overlords are responsible for much of the same horrors, if not more (Wikipedia and Wikipedia). Most of these products and services are also alternatives from products from companies. Examples of this include swapping Microsoft products or OpenAI'sChatGPT with the products listed here.

Background

You don't need to remove everything.

With how crucial big tech's services are to simply existing in modern life, it is basically impossible to fully remove yourself from their ecosystem. For example, I have gotten my Google usage down to only a few services, along with opting-out of them saving any of my user activity.

I still use Messages, Contacts, and Phone because Google Messages is the only app that supports RCS on Android (the thing that makes texting between iPhone and Android usable). I still have a few Sheets since open-source alternatives aren't good enough yet (Proton is really close). I still use Play because there's no other way to download most apps. I still use Android as my phone operating system. I still use YouTube, although a modified version without ads (See "Blocking Ads").

Even if you still use their platforms, you're still doing something. Despite how many Google products I still use, I've stopped using Gmail, Chrome, Search, Workspace and Drive (except Sheets), alendar, Maps, Keep, Password Manager, Gemini, Translate,Gboard, Pay, and Authenticator in addition to signing out where possible, turning off activity tracking, and removing Google's source of profit by blocking ads and trackers everywhere.

Google Takeout

Google offers a service called Takeout which allows you to download all of your data across all of the services you use. You can download everything ranging from Passwords, Drive, Gmail, Classroom, Keep, Maps, Messages, YouTube, Calendar, Chrome, Contacts, and 71 other platforms. This is invaluable when backing up data or when transferring to a different platform. Free and available from any browser.

Your Google Account

By going to your Google Account Settings you can change numerous settings to limit their control over your life. You can change settings from the Data & privacy menu and delete your activity on My Activity. Free and available from any browser.

One of the most annoying part of this whole process for me was going through all the accounts I've made by signing up with Google and either deleting them or changing them to my new email along with setting a password before unlinking Google. You can manage your connections on the Third-party apps & services page from your Google Account. Free and available from any browser.

Proton

Proton is a nonprofit-owned company that was founded in 2014 to "build a better internet where privacy is the default" (Proton). They first rolled out Proton Mail followed by Proton VPN (which you may have heard of as it's often considered to be the best VPN). Now they also have Proton Drive, Docs, Sheets, Calendar, Meet, Authenticator, a Password Manager, a private AI chatbot, and more. They are constantly adding new products to their lineup that have all the benefits of a big online ecosystem that Google offers with features Google wouldn't want you to have while being an open-source, ethical, and innovative alternative to Google's monopoly. The only downside is for their products to be as fully functional as Google's you need to subscribe to one of their plans. Personally, subscribing to the discounted student plan is more than worth it if it means I'm not supporting a company that actively arms both the Israeli and US militaries, let alone all the other reasons previously discussed.

Browsers and Search Engines

Web browsers are the app you use to view the internet (think Google Chrome, Safari, or Edge). Search engines are the sites you use to actually search the web (like Google Search or Bing). I understand most people don’t want to switch from Google Chrome and Search, but I did and I don’t regret it one bit.

Google has been cracking down on ad blockers recently, especially on YouTube. Switching to a non-Chromium browser and being able to take control of my browser has been great. I love that if there’s something I don’t like about Firefox, I can simply change it.

As I’m sure everyone’s aware, Google Search has gotten so much worse with the advent of AI. There’s worse results, an AI overview that you can’t turn off that’s often wrong, and the previously discussed reasons to not support Google.

Browser: Firefox Search Engine: Startpage
  • Stay anonymous online while getting quality results from Google.
  • No force fed AI.
  • Extremely simple.
  • Using POST is more secure than GET.
  • Free. Available from any browser.

Email

Switching your email provider is a lot easier than you may think. There are lots of small niche emailing services, but Proton Mail is relatively popular and common to the point where you may know someone or something who has a Proton Mail address. Proton has an program called Easy Switch that makes it extremely easy to switch. You'll set up forwarding so that any email sent to your old email address will now be copied to your new one, meaning you don't need to go through the hassle of changing accounts and telling people you have a new email if you don't want to. Also during Easy Switch you can copy over everything like emails and labels so you can continue to use your email just as you were, without missing anything.

Making a new email address is also a great opportunity to change your email from whatever you set it to when you were 12. Switching emails also gives you a good opportunity to start new habits with internet privacy and security. I recommend that whenever you make a new account or switch an old one, you use a +Alias by appending the name of the service you're signing up to after a plus (+) in your address. For example, if you're signing up for UpScrolled instead of setting your email as "youremail@proton.me" set it to "youremail+upscrolled@proton.me". You will still get your emails as normal, but you'll know where they are coming from and how they got that email address as the email address the emails are sent to will contain the alias. If that service ever sells your email, when you start getting spam emails you'll see who they got the email from based on the service name appended on. If you're petty like me or just don't care about that service anymore, you could then take an action like deleting the account out of spite. +Aliases are also available on Gmail.

The most annoying thing out of anything on this guide is changing over your accounts from your old email to your new one. Thankfully because of the forwarding you set up, it's not strictly required. You can take as much time as you need. I've slowly been working on it over the past couple months by going through the apps I have installed on my phone, the passwords I have saved on my password manager, and the accounts linked to my Google Account that you can find under Third-party apps & services. It's crucial that you change over your accounts that you use Sign in with Google on, as you likely don't have a password set so you have no other way to sign in.

With a free account, you can only receive up to 150 messages a day and there's a limit to how many folders and labels you can have. The desktop application isn't available with a free account (the browser version still is). Open-source.

Before making the switch, I recommend reviewing Proton's plans and making sure none of the restrictions placed on free accounts are deal breakers if you don't intend to pay.

Drive, OneDrive, Office, and Workspace

Google Workspace, formerly known as G Suite, includes platforms like Drive, Docs, Slides, Sheets, Drawings, Gmail, Calendar, Keep, emini, and more. Microsoft Office includes platforms like OneDrive, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote.

LibreOffice is a free and open-source alternative to Google or Microsoft's suite of documents. They also have things that Google and Microsoft don't have, like editors for diagrams, databases, math, and charts. Proton has Docs and Sheets, with more possibly on the way. In my experience Proton's are more user friendly, but you can only access them via the web like with Google and they lack some features. You could compare Proton's environment to Google's, and LibreOffice's toMicrosoft's.

You have the option of self hosting AI Chatbots. Because they are self-hosted, you can use them offline and without restrictions. You have the option of what AI model you use. Two are by big tech, but they are free, open-source, and offline. I recommend DeepSeek, Llama (by Meta, compare to Meta AI) or Gemma (by Google, compare to Gemini).

Proton's suite of documents are available from any browser while LibreOffice is available for download on most mobile and PC platforms. All are free and open-source unless otherwise noted. Here are the alternatives for each product:

Product Alternative Notes
Cloud Storage (Drive, OneDrive) Proton Drive 5 GBs free
Syncthing
Just storing files yourself
Documents (Docs, Word) Proton Docs Tied to your Proton Drive storage
LibreOffice Writer
Spreadsheets (Sheets, Excel) Proton Sheets Tied to your Proton Drive storage
LibreOffice Calc
Slide Shows (Slides, PowerPoint) LibreOffice Impress
Drawings More features: GIMP Most PC platforms
More simple: LibreOffice Draw
Calendar Proton Calendar
Notes (Keep, OneNote) More features: Notion
 From any browser
More simple: Simplenote
AI Chatbots: Self-hosted PocketPal Most mobile platforms
Ollama Most PC platforms
AI Chatbots: Online (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot) Lumo by Proton Limit for free accounts
Most mobile platforms and from any browser
Vanish by Startpage Limit for free accounts
Android and iOS

Debloating Windows

Windows isn't what it used to be. AI being shoved down your throat, forcing you to downloading things you don't want, performance, (their founder/former CEO being in the Epstein Files (New York Times),) etc. It is fully in your power to control what goes on your computer. Use this guide by Chris Titus in order to set up your computer (if you aren't starting from scratch you can skip the first part) without any of the bloat or spyware, especially using his Windows Utility. You can use Windhawk to customize Windows to your liking even further.

Alternatives