For the lazy like myself
This video is about how to degoogle your life, czyli [in Polish] to minimize your reliance on Google products and services.
In the first part of the video, the speaker discusses why you might want to degoogle your life. They mention that Google collects a lot of data on its users, and that this data is used to target ads and to train machine learning algorithms. The speaker also argues that Google's services are becoming less and less usable.
The speaker then provides a number of alternatives to Google products and services. Here are a few examples:
- Search engines: DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Ecosia, Brave Search
- Email: Proton, Tuta
- Photo backup: Ente, Stingle, PhotoSync, Image
- DNS: Quad9, NextDNS, Cloudflare
The speaker acknowledges that there are many other alternatives available, and that this is just a starting point. They also recommend checking out the sponsor of the video, Pulseway, which is a monitoring and management software.
The video ends with a call to action, encouraging viewers to watch part two of the series.
Nice to see a YouTuber with a massive audience demystifying some of the alternatives to Google. There are of course many smaller channels who have provided better and more in-depth guides in the past, but someone this mainstream weighing in on their side does a lot to help the cause.
I thought I should comment to highlight that LTT has not improved and has doubled down in their attempts to cover over sexual harassment in recent days putting out the following statement earlier in the week:-
There were a series of accusations about our company last August from a former employee. Immediately following these accusations, LMG hired Roper Greyell - a large Vancouver-based law firm specializing in labor and employment law, to conduct a third-party investigation. Their website describes them as “one of the largest employment and labour law firms in Western Canada.” They work with both private and public sector employers.
To ensure a fair investigation, LMG did not comment or publicly release any data and asked our team members to do the same. Now that the investigation is complete, we’re able to provide a summary of the findings.
The investigation found that:
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Claims of bullying and harassment were not substantiated.
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Allegations that sexual harassment were ignored or not addressed were false.
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Any concerns that were raised were investigated. Furthermore, from reviewing our history, the investigator is confident that if any other concerns had been raised, we would have investigated them.
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There was no evidence of “abuse of power” or retaliation. The individual involved may not have agreed with our decisions or performance feedback, but our actions were for legitimate work-related purposes, and our business reasons were valid.
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Allegations of process errors and miscommunication while onboarding this individual were partially substantiated, but the investigator found ample documentary evidence of LMG working to rectify the errors and the individual being treated generously and respectfully. When they had questions, they were responded to and addressed.
In summary, as confirmed by the investigation, the allegations made against the team were largely unfounded, misleading, and unfair.
With all of that said, in the spirit of ongoing improvement, the investigator shared their general recommendation that fast-growing workplaces should invest in continuing professional development. The investigator encouraged us to provide further training to our team about how to raise concerns to reinforce our existing workplace policies.
Prior to receiving this report, LMG solicited anonymous feedback from the team in an effort to ensure there was no unreported bullying and harassment and hosted a training session which reiterated our workplace policies and reinforced our reporting structure. LMG will continue to assess ongoing continuing education for our team.
At this time, we feel our case for a defamation suit would be very strong; however, our deepest wish is to simply put all of this behind us. We hope that will be the case, given the investigator’s clear findings that the allegations made online were misrepresentations of what actually occurred. We will continue to assess if there is persistent reputational damage or further defamation.
This doesn’t mean our company is perfect and our journey is over. We are continuously learning and trying to do better. Thank you all for being part of our community.
As you can see, they hired an outside legal firm to declare that they did nothing wrong in enabling said sexual harassment because there wasn't a paper trail, despite them admitting that the victim was told to talk it out with the abuser.
They followed up by threatening the victim with a lawsuit for continuing to speak out.
I feel that, as a woman and a victim of sexual harassment myself, its only fair that I must stand by other women that the patriarchy attempts to silence and ensure that those who wish to uphold a safe space for sexual harassment are held to account and not given an unopposed platform.
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Google services I still use before being unGoogled:
- Voice: I have to make like 1 or 2 calls within the US a year & not worth a SIM
- Maps: for when OSM isn’t cutting it & I’ll contribute the missing data after I found it
- Translate: for when Yandex Translate doesn’t cut it (everything ‘free’ only works with European languages)
- YouTube: no real alternative here that isn’t limited to just a piece of its scope, but viewed thru Librewolf+uBlock Origin+SponsorBlock or PipePipe
… and the last one is just basically every employer I have worked with puts all their company data on Google & it can’t really be avoided with them >:(
I've degoogled apart from:
- Google photos - I have shared storage with my family and I really can't be doing with sorting out the mess when I cancel my 200GB subscription. I do however back all photos up to my server.
- Pixel phone - I try not use any Google apps/search but the phones are updated regularly and are reasonably good value for money. Other brands have the Google tracking with the OEM tracking on top.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/YnSv8ylLfPw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
This video was fantastic and I hope they keep this series up. I'm switching to Kagi from ddg because of this vid and I'll spend time this weekend looking into ente/immich and all the DNS options highlighted here.
Super excited. It's weird paying for email or search engines given they've always been free in my lifetime but the services have been noticeably worse as of late and I miss an Internet constantly bombarding you with things you should believe or buy.
I used AI to summarize the different Google products and services listed in the video along with their suggested alternatives and timestamps. AI is pretty cool sometimes.
Google Product/Service Recommended Alternatives Timestamp Google Chrome Firefox, Brave, Arc, Ungoogled Chromium 94-326 Google Search Startpage, Ecosia, DuckDuckGo, Brave Search, Kagi 328-493 Gmail Tutanota, ProtonMail 534-671 Google Photos Ente, Stingle 674-794 Google DNS Quad9, NextDNS, Cloudflare 827-1074 Google Analytics Not covered in this video, to be discussed in part 2 N/A Google Maps To be covered in part 2 N/A Google Ad Services To be covered in part 2 N/A Google Drive To be covered in part 2 N/A YouTube To be covered in part 2 N/A I want to get off Google photos, but I also don't want to pay a subscription. And I don't really want to self host. A pay once service I'd accept, but I haven't seen one with an extremely cursory search. I don't need any fancy features. Just store the photos, let me see them online, and let me put them in albums.
