Google's really stubborn in terms of data collection
Just enabled DDG's app track protection to test it out. Had Nekogram opened for a few mins, and Google already made 234 data collection attempts. I know the Big Guys are hungry for personal data, but this is absolutely ridiculous.
I do expect such stuff... but collecting so many categories of data in such a stubborn and aggressive way makes me wanna stop using anything that's google-related. like dude stop looking at everything I do in my life. what's next? how many liters of toothpaste I consumed in the past 3 days?
De-Googling is something I did about 5 years ago. It took me about 6 months on and off, but I'm super happy I did. There are always other (and actually better) alternatives to their services. The only one that I struggle not to use is YouTube - the alternatives are all worse.
Check out newpipe for phone and invidious for browsers. Very happy with those services. However I'm not sure how they compare to current YouTube because I had stopped using it from like 8 years before coming across those services... So there may be some functionality loss I'm unaware of.