My list of degooglifying actions (mostly from my older post [1])
* switch default search engine to DuckDuckGo (one can still use the !s bang when one wants to see what Google has)
* use tracking blockers (uBlock origin, BlockBear on iOS)
* use anonymous/private/porn mode browsing most of the time (except for sites I actually want to be logged in permanently)
* use Zoho as a replacement for shared Google docs
* use Youtube either in private window, and/or download content once with youtube-dl
* use Apple Maps or OpenStreetMaps instead of Google maps, though still revert to Google maps sometimes, lamentably. It's good. (I never log in, though.)
* long ago switched to different email for main email, and forwarded gmail account to it (and now, basically nobody emails to my old gmail address anymore). (In fact, I use a catch-all domain now (very easy to set up), and a fresh email for basically every account. Quite handy.)
* for contacts, photos, etc. I use Apple's built-in stuff. I do trust Apple a bit more (different business model; look at recent iPhone prices.)
* Signal, Wire, iMessage for messaging
All in all, I think a fairly degooglified life is eminently possible.
In response, people furthermore suggested:
* Firefox with Multi-Account Container function to separate browsing, or just a temporary session with `firefox -no-remote -profile $(mktemp -d)`
* Lineage OS for Android phones (though somewhat controversial)
I can also recommend Invidious [1] as a Youtube replacement. It's effectively a proxy in front of Youtube, only loading the source data (i.e. the video) in its own container. You can subscribe to channels via the builtin RSS functionality just like on Youtube. I use a redirector extension [2] in Firefox to automatically redirect any Youtube links to Invidious, since the signature for loading videos is identical.
Then it will be killed when it gets popular, and is not a long-term replacement, because that's only dubiously legal at best (and I'm being generous there, I'd go with "not legal"), and the blocking-it arms race is going to be advantage Google.
There isn't really a replacement for YouTube, because it's not a service, it's content.
True, this has happened with other similar sites before. The difference as I see it with Invidious is that it is an open-source project [1] that anyone can host. If the main page [2] goes down, you can divert immediately to an alternative host (take [3] as one example). All my RSS subscriptions are one search-and-replace away in my OPML file.
>> * switch default search engine to DuckDuckGo (one can still use the !s bang when one wants to see what Google has)
I switched to Bing Search last year to earn Microsoft rewards, and I was surprised to find that I only need to go to Google for supplementary searches less than 10% of the time. I thought switching to Bing was going to be much worse.
I was on Bing for rewards for a time, but became uncomfortable with their decision to allow ad targeting based on LinkedIn profiles with no option to opt out. DDG user now.
* switch default search engine to DuckDuckGo (one can still use the !s bang when one wants to see what Google has)
* use tracking blockers (uBlock origin, BlockBear on iOS)
* use anonymous/private/porn mode browsing most of the time (except for sites I actually want to be logged in permanently)
* use Zoho as a replacement for shared Google docs
* use Youtube either in private window, and/or download content once with youtube-dl
* use Apple Maps or OpenStreetMaps instead of Google maps, though still revert to Google maps sometimes, lamentably. It's good. (I never log in, though.)
* long ago switched to different email for main email, and forwarded gmail account to it (and now, basically nobody emails to my old gmail address anymore). (In fact, I use a catch-all domain now (very easy to set up), and a fresh email for basically every account. Quite handy.)
* for contacts, photos, etc. I use Apple's built-in stuff. I do trust Apple a bit more (different business model; look at recent iPhone prices.)
* Signal, Wire, iMessage for messaging
All in all, I think a fairly degooglified life is eminently possible.
In response, people furthermore suggested:
* Firefox with Multi-Account Container function to separate browsing, or just a temporary session with `firefox -no-remote -profile $(mktemp -d)`
* Lineage OS for Android phones (though somewhat controversial)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19057709