De-Googling Your Life

Wresting your data and services back from Google

Many of us are, unfortunately, deeply embedded into the Google digital ecosystem. We watch videos, write emails, store files and more, all through their services. While this is an undeniable convenience, Google is ultimately a monopoly that engages in huge amounts of data collection.

I am particularly concerned by their pivot into AI recently. While at present Google claims that they do not train their AI on user content, they don’t offer many assurances that this will remain the case forever. Microsoft is already training on user content, so it isn’t unreasonable to imagine that Google could move in that direction as well. Most users will not read updated privacy policies, so their content could be stolen before they know it. Additionally, even Google’s current use of AI poses a privacy risk, opening the door to malicious actors obtaining sensitive information or even accessing smart homes far easier than they otherwise could. Many of the specific vulnerabilities have since been patched, but there could be yet-undiscovered additional vulnerabilities as well.

I, and hopefully you reading this, find Google to be a pretty risky company to have hold your personal information. I first discuss improving your privacy under Google, then offer brief tips on Google account data migration. Following the general tips, I recommend a number of replacements for Google services, then briefly conclude. I’d encourage anyone reading this to also check out my PC and iOS privacy articles for additional tips.

Improving Google

Google Account Settings

Most likely, you won’t be willing/able to ditch Google completely. There are some undeniable conveniences, and in some cases having one might be necessary (collaborating on a Google Doc, etc). There are, thankfully, a few things you can do before even worrying about removing or migrating anything.

Most of the settings you’ll want can be found under Data & Privacy in Google Account. Google offers a Privacy Checkup, which can be a good way to quickly improve settings. Ideally, you’ll want to disable everything under Things you’ve done and places you’ve been to start. This will vastly reduce the amount of information Google retains about you and disable ad and search “personalization” features which harm your privacy.

Under Info you can share with others you can disable the sharing of personal information, like location and date of birth, with others on Google services. The last main thing to look at on this page is Data from apps and services you use, where you can see both Google and third-party services you use. We’ll return to the Google services, but for now know that the third-party services pose both a privacy and security risk. They risk your privacy simply by being yet another account associating your activity together, but more crucially, they increase the potential damage of a compromised Google account. If you use your Gmail to sign into many third-party services, then someone with control of your Google account also gains access to all of those services, along with any credit card information or other saved data therein. Many websites, of course, require two-factor authentication to prevent this, but not all, so it is generally best to not connect your Google account to any services. Create a separate log-in and use a password manager like KeePassXC instead.

Disabling Gemini

Considering the aforementioned vulnerabilities with Gemini, I highly recommend disabling it. This can be accomplished by going to general Gmail settings, hitting Manage Workspace smart features, and switching both settings off. I am also inclined to suggest unchecking Smart Compose, Smart Compose Personalization, and Smart Reply. These features are not directly associated with Gemini, but Smart Compose Personalization especially is highly likely to use AI and be privacy-violating, as many personalization features are. Note that these various settings only affect Google “workspaces”; Google searches will still include AI generation unless you include “-ai” or vulgar language to searches.

Jumping Ship

The Google Dashboard and Data Migration

Google’s Dashboard lists your various Google services and the data associated with them. You can download your data here or hop to Delete Services to delete things, though not all of Google’s services have the easy delete option. Perhaps most helpful is Google Takeout, which allows you to select services simultaneously and choose file formats to export your data.

I would go through Dashboard and take stock of what services you’re using, deleting the truly useless ones and moving anything else you feel able to. The particulars can vary depending on the service. I myself have only used Takeout for Drive, Maps, and YouTube. I haven’t fully left Gmail, and had no data to migrate for other services.

Google Search

There are a number of alternatives to Google’s search engine which I discuss in my PC privacy article. I won’t relitigate all the options here, but the main ones I presented were SearXNG, Startpage, and Mullvad Leta. I recommend Startpage, which privately queries Google and Bing, as the daily choice for most users. Mullvad users should stick with Mullvad Leta, so they are not de-anonymized. I highly recommend occasional use of SearXNG for everyone, as its meta search engine capabilities can help find obscure websites, images, or even torrents. Any of the three options tend to return similar or better results to Google on its own, and all are more private.

Gmail

I cover the differences between different email providers at greater length in my PC privacy article, but suffice it to say that while completely securing email is quite difficult, there are a number of options that are an improvement over Gmail.

It is very likely that you’ll want to keep you Gmail active for one reason or another, and so for most people I’d recommend simply switching clients instead of dropping Gmail entirely. Accessing your email through Thunderbird will be more private than using Gmail’s webpage, as Thunderbird blocks potentially dangerous content and can reject website cookies. It can also be configured for end-to-end encryption, if that’s something that you want.

Otherwise, I would just recommend to slowly phase Gmail out of your life as much as possible and to begin using another provider like Tuta for most of your email needs. Tuta and providers like them possess much better privacy standards than Google does. I haven’t tried importing emails to other providers myself, so I can’t confirm how easy it is (though considering the interoperability of email, I doubt it’d be too cumbersome). Other email providers will generally come with their own Calendar and Contacts, though they may be behind a paywall.

Google Maps

Google Maps is an interesting case, on account of the fact that you cannot export your data very easily. Most saved location lists on Google Maps will export as lists of coordinates and other data, but the default favorites list will export as a list of Google Maps links. This makes migrating over to other services rather prohibitive, at least for those who keep a lot of saved locations in that default list.

The additional hitch is that there isn’t a great competitor to Google Maps that is more private. The best option is Open Street Map (or Organic Maps for mobile, which is an offline app and based on Open Street Map). Open Street Map is community run and great for privacy in that regard, but being so behind in resources compared to Google comes at a cost. Open Street Map is often less detailed than Google Maps, with locations sometimes missing or labeled generically. It also does not have traffic data, making it fine for general planning but rather poor at finding best routes and making accurate timing estimates. Personally, I use Organic Maps for saved locations and some basic navigation and Apple Maps for unfamiliar or potentially traffic-ridden routes.

Google Drive

Drive is, in some ways, much easier to replace than the previous two services, as its use is not as ubiquitous and there are services which can fully replace it. Of course, it still may be difficult to leave behind completely, as not everyone will want to join you in using a different file collaboration service. In all reality, I am most inclined to recommend that people simply store everything they can on their PC or external drives rather than the cloud, but cloud services are an undeniable convenience.

You can easily download your Drive contents using Takeout and delete any files that you don’t actively need in your drive. As for replacement services, the best option to directly replace Drive is probably Proton Drive. I have some personal misgivings about Proton, but they are generally well respected, most of their services (including Drive) have a free tier, and their ecosystem much resembles Google’s. CryptPad is pretty similar in offerings, and I’m a bit more inclined to trust it. Other options include Tresorit, Peergos, Filen, and ente. If you aren’t as concerned with collaboration, I might suggest Filen as yet another main option to check out.

The Google Office Suite

Of course, while you may now have a new place to store your files, you’ll still need something to make the files themselves. As mentioned at the beginning of the article, I have even less trust in Microsoft than I do in Google, so I’d steer users away from just defaulting to the Microsoft Office suite.

Options include CryptPad, LibreOffice, and OnlyOffice. All are open-source and include access to all basic features for free. CryptPad is primarily online, making it perhaps the closest analogue, though I’m not sure how well their suite itself measures up. LibreOffice and OnlyOffice both more resemble the Microsoft Office suite, but do still have cloud capabilities. You can see a (likely biased, admittedly) comparison between the two on OnlyOffice’s website. I was personally put off by OnlyOffice’s adoption of AI features, so I have been using LibreOffice. I will confess that it is pretty slow to launch, so I can’t say I’m pleased enough with it to highly recommend it, but I haven’t had major issues. OnlyOffice does support more file types and generally seems more popular, so it may be the better choice, in spite of my misgivings.

Google Photos

Again, local storage may be best, but there are a number of cloud services you can choose from. Many of the Drive alternatives I listed would work for photo storage as well. Ente is my (and Privacy Guides’) specific recommendation, as it is a trustworthy option that focuses primarily on photo/video storage rather than file storage in general.

YouTube

Exporting your YouTube data is pretty smooth, but importing into a preferred client is sometimes less than smooth, sadly. You should be able to get everything downloaded using Google Takeout, but I would first determine what your replacement is, or you may waste unnecessary download time.

The alternatives to YouTube vary wildly in scope and specific objectives. There are alternative YouTube front-ends and wholesale attempts at YouTube replacements. PeerTube and LBRY are examples of the latter. PeerTube in particular is highly lauded for its decentralization and interoperability with the Fediverse, and does replicate the basic YouTube features pretty well. Unfortunately, PeerTube and YouTube replacements like it fundamentally suffer from a lack of reach. There simply aren’t many creators on it, so while it is a great alternative video host, it isn’t a very comparable user experience in terms of content.

As for YouTube front-ends, there are a few different options depending on platform. For the web, some of the main options are Invidious and Piped. Essentially, you still browse YouTube, but signed-out and anonymously. Invidious is the more popular of the two. Having used Invidious a little, I am not the most taken with it. I’ve personally not had a great success rate on videos loading like they should, rather than throwing errors. You’ll find, unfortunately, that you may have to get used to occasional errors when using many of these YouTube alternatives.

Android users are really the luckiest ones here, as NewPipe, LibreTube, and Grayjay (YouTube alternative front-end apps) are all available, and all quite well liked. I’ve heard the most good things about NewPipe, but all three are quite good to my understanding.

My personal preference is a stand-alone PC client. There are two options I’m aware of for Windows - Grayjay and FreeTube. I have used FreeTube up until now, though truthfully Grayjay sounded quite promising, so I’ve started trying it as well. Both fetch YouTube privately, but Grayjay can pull from a long list of places, not just YouTube (including Twitch, Patreon, etc). So far, the key advantage Grayjay has is working around YouTube updates far quicker than FreeTube. When I first decide to click on a video, I’m much more assured that I won’t get an error message. Unfortunately, Grayjay is rather slow, having a much longer delay to start playing videos than FreeTube (when FreeTube is working, that is).

Both FreeTube and Grayjay allow the import of subscriptions and playlists; check to be sure what file types they accept before using Takeout. Both also allow playlists to be imported via URL, but Grayjay limits this feature to paid users. If you do import playlists via URL to FreeTube, you’ll have to copy your Water Later to another playlist first, as Watch Later cannot be switched off of Private. The extension Multiselect for YouTube makes this fairly quick. On the whole, I prefer FreeTube’s interface and features, but Grayjay is undeniably quicker to skirt YouTube’s hostile measures and allows access to more than just YouTube, so I can’t recommend one too strongly over the other.

Google News

Any Substack user reading this is very unlikely to use Google News, but I’ll briefly cover it for those who may use it. The hallmark of a good news aggregator, in my view, is high customization. To that end, nothing beats an RSS reader. For those unfamiliar, RSS is a feed that allows standardized, readable access to website updates. In the context of news websites, articles will appear individually, much as they would on other news apps, but RSS is not limited to mainstream news. You can get YouTube videos, posts from Substack creators, subreddit posts, and more in an RSS reader.

I’d recommend checking out Privacy Guides’ page on news aggregators if you want to check out multiple options. Most people, I imagine, will want to look at news on their phone. Therefore, I recommend Feeder for Android users and NetWireNews for iOS users. I recommend several news outlets and individual journalists/writers to follow in my Resources and Voices article. Base URLs should work to add feeds a lot of the time (i.e., riverrambles.substack.com) but you may need to add /rss or /feed in some cases. If that doesn’t work, there are websites like FetchRSS and self-hosted options like FreshRSS that can create RSS feeds from websites.

Other Google Services

It felt wasteful to dedicate independent sections to every single service, particularly when I don’t have much to say for all of them. I’d recommend replacing Google Meet with Jitsi Meet, though, of course, we aren’t always given a choice whether to use Google Meet or not. For Google Forms, CryptPad, OnlyOffice, and Zoho Forms all may be viable replacements, depending on exact needs. Obsidian is an excellent note-taking service with a lot of customization features that can replace Google Keep.

To look into anything that I didn’t cover or to find recommendations yourself, I highly recommend checking out AlternativeTo. You can find numerous alternatives to any selected app/service, ranked by the website’s community. You can (and should) filter for criteria like Open Source, Free, and Privacy focused. Do be aware that an app or service being highly recommended does not mean it is perfect. Some software may have multiple nearly flawless alternatives, while with other software the pickings may be slim. Keep in mind that recommended replacements may fit a very specific part of the functionality, so look into features before committing. I also, as always, recommend looking at Privacy Guides’ and Avoid the Hack’s recommendations for various private software.

Escaping Google Hardware

Of course, the long arm of Google is even a bit harder to escape for those using Google devices. I categorically recommend against any “smart house” software, be it owned by Google or anyone else, so I have no recommendations there. I don’t hear anyone singing the praise of Chromebooks, so I don’t have strong recommendations there either, at least not beyond my PC privacy article.

I can offer a little more help to those using Pixels. Despite Google’s deservedly poor privacy reputation, the actual hardware in Pixels is quite robust from a security perspective. That is why GrapheneOS is limited to Pixels, and why they’re the only phone that Privacy Guides currently recommends. Admittedly, this may change, as there continue to be new attempts at making private phones, and GrapheneOS has confirmed that they’ve started working with another Android manufacturer (with release as soon as 2026).

So at present, my biggest recommendation for Pixel users is simply to use GrapheneOS, the privacy-conscious Android OS of choice. Other phones may become better options later down the line. Privacy Guides has some recommendations on specific apps and how best to obtain apps that are worth checking out. (Of particular note - avoid the Google Play store, and F-Droid isn’t the best either!)

I do want to briefly address switching devices - one of the most popular means to transfer messages between Android phones is an app called SMS Backup & Restore, which is closed-source. Based on my reading of their privacy policy, they’re pretty standard - your messages themselves are unlikely to be shared, but “anonymized” user data is shared with Google for analytics and advertising. Maybe better than relying on Google services to backup and transfer data, but if so, not by much.

A reader has made me aware of Android Debug Bridge, which can be used to transfer SMS without third-party involvement. There are Stack Overflow pages on the topic, though they may be outdated. This Reddit thread on moving files may be more up-to-date, albeit with a slightly different focus. I can’t offer much personal help here; the Debug Bridge is a command-line development tool, so being unable to test it firsthand, I don’t have much insight into what might work. Hopefully the threads I’ve provided at least prove to be good jumping-off points for those interested.

So long, and thanks for all the fish

I hope that this article was helpful! I do realize that unlike my PC article, I’m not offering many easy solutions. The process of moving potentially decades of data is not an easy one, particularly when you have to replace so many distinct services. Running back through what I covered, replacing Google services requires using something like six separate providers. That is, in many ways, a good thing. A breach of your email no longer means that your photos are all compromised as well. Nonetheless, believe me, I empathize with the desire to not worry about the hassle.

The good news is, speaking for myself at least - I’ve actually had a much better experience with less reliance on Google. I’ve fallen completely in love with my RSS reader, and it feels very refreshing to access more content through dedicated clients rather than on a browser. In settling on my main search engine being Startpage, I found SearXNG and was blown away by the capabilities and degree of customization. And so on, and so forth. I hope that readers bear in mind that this may not just be a privacy upgrade; it could be a flat-out user-experience upgrade.