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This is like switching from Walmart to 15 other stores just to buy the same stuff. It’s going to be extremely difficult to convince anyone to make this jump.
It’s a actually harder because whoops, three years later you try to log into a service and it asks for a verification code sent to your Gmail address that you no longer have access to, oh well.
I keep a librewolf browser with a profile named BS that I use for logging into these services. You could do something like that to log into these services once every few months to keep it active until you’re ready to completely let go.
And btw, most of these services are open source. Although it would have been nice to see peertube on there
I did it already many years ago. You dont have to purposely loose all your old accesses. You can secure them and abandon them.
It happened once in 10y that I had to go back to recover 1 email from my google account but it was for something stupid that I could have avoided.
The hard part could be WhatsApp in Europe. I abandoned it the day after it was bought by facebook
Tell me what motivated you to go through that?
Also, I’m a pirate, and I hate ads. Only thing I still use is YouTube, but without an account and with ublock / Newpipe
Understanding very early the toxicity of some social networks
Not wanting to be a number in a database for marketing targeting
Not wanting to be found by anyone online by just typing my name (privacy and security)
Being very selective with who is a friend and who is not and sharing with them only what I want (sending them a picture or a meme without my grandma or my boss or my neighbor knowing)
It’s more like switching to 15 other specialized stores which all value one’s privacy as opposed to the one which does everything and leverages its user data for maximum profit. No offence but comments like yours serve no purpose other than to impede non-tech-savvy people’s digital empowerment.
Many of the services depicted here aren’t really in reach for the average user and that is a problem we cannot ignore. People aren’t too stupid to realize that switching E-mail addresses requires planning, but there are many hurdles that pave the way from something like Google Photos towards Immich, imho the most significant app category up there.
So unfortunately you are correct. Transitions like that are extremely difficult especially after the decision has been made. Which makes it all the more important that we do not paint a picture of doom and gloom when the price of inaction is de-facto surveillance.
No offence but comments like yours serve no purpose other than to impede non-tech-savvy people’s digital empowerment.
I would argue that empowerment is more associated with capability rather than privacy or social justice (Whatever reason people are protesting Google); and having an all in one stop is incredibly convenient, and thus capable.
Sounds like the type of person who would buy a smart toaster and give Google even more intimate data they can use to predict you.
Okay, let me empower you with living on Mars in a small shack that’s temperature controlled with oxygen
Wow so much privacy… you’re so empowered now.
It’s not an all-or-nothing type situation.
True, it’s about what you value.
And if you don’t care about privacy or punishing google for some reason or another, then there is nothing empowering about switching services.
like switching from Walmart to 15 other stores just to buy the same stuff
As the other commenter pointed out: you do that once. And if you do it properly, nobody will be sending anything to a gmail address you don’t use anymore.
Then you have 15 stores all around the same parking lot, to stick with your analogy.And yes, it’s always a trade-off with convenience, but much less so than you make it sound.
BTW, above list sucks, there are much better lists of alternatives around. And articles that describe how to switch etc. etc.
What non-google chromium based browsers would you guys recommend?
Firefox (and derivatives) are slow as shit on my laptop, but ungoogled chromium is fast enough.
It’s hard to recommend any Chromium-based browser in 2026 as Chromium no longer supports Manifest v2 extensions, breaking support for essential content blockers like uBlock Origin.
Even Brave, which has a built-in adblocker not based on extensions, is loaded with AI and Crypto bs, and as far as I’m aware, the adblocker portion of its code is closed source. This isn’t even mentioning the horrific political opinions expressed by the CEO of that company.
I keep a copy of raw ungoogled Chromium around for webUSB firmware flashing, but that’s it.
If I were you, I would try and figure out what is causing firefox-based browsers to run slowly - i.e. toggling on/off hardware acceleration in browser settings and see if that makes a difference.
sure wish mozilla would get their head out of their ass and implement webusb already
Thorium is excellent, but I’m not sure if it’s still being regularly updated. Also interested in alternative chromium browser reccs, if anyone has any.
Non Google chromium browsers?
My friend, Google develops chromium.
I use Tuta for email but damn if the Tuta calendar app isn’t god awful. I don’t know if they improved it (this was like 6 months ago) but I couldn’t duplicate events and I would both get phantom notifications for old deleted events and I wouldn’t get notifications for updated events.
I’m somewhat glad I’m not the only one getting phantom notifications. I got one last week for a deleted event. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on.
I’ve been debating leaving Tuta and switching to mailbox.org. I’m annoyed by the lack of support for standard protocols like S/MIME and SMTP. As far as I understand with encryption, I can only send encrypted emails to other Tuta users in practice. Yes, I can send emails encrypted with a password. But it kind of defeats the point if the password has to be sent unprotected where an attacker could just use the password to unencrypt the email themselves. The lack of SMTP support also means none of my self-hosted services can send emails.
The good: I have never seen ghost notifications or wrong notifications. The bad: it’s still ugly but I don’t mind.
Very good list, this is recommendable.
As much as I want peertube to succeed, I find it so cumbersome to use for finding worthwhile content to watch. It might be out there but he’ll if I can find it.
Where is DeepL?
Aurora isn’t really anti-google as it’s merely a different front end for Play (that you can use anonymously).
Need more calendar options such as mailbox.org.
Good start though!
Yeah, plus all the android alternatives are just different android distributions.
It’s important to recognize that Android distributions without Google’s (spyware) Play Services are vastly better for privacy than the commercial Android distributions that ship on most phones. To overlook/minimize that difference by calling them “just” different Android distributions is misleading.
I mean yeah I know they’re better, I run lineage os, but it still is just another android distribution, not a real android alternative. I feel like the people who just want safer android are going to be confused by them being called “alternatives” and the people who want an alternative know that they aren’t really alternatives.
The need being served here is for an alternative to Google’s spyware, not for an alternative to Android.
The Android operating system itself is not a significant privacy problem. (It might seem like one because most Android distributions include Google Play Services, but without that, Android is pretty tame and very useful.)
Aurora isn’t really anti-google as it’s merely a different front end for Play (that you can use anonymously).
You could say the same about Piped, which is just an alt front end for YouTube.
None of these alternatives seem to tackle the networking effect of the root Google services. None of them address durability, either. Proton VPN launched in 2017, Google’s been around since 1998. Microsoft’s been around since 1975. IBM’s been around since 1911.
If you don’t mind rebasing your entire digital profile every five or ten years, these alternatives are fine. But most people don’t want to ditch a 20 year old email address or fiddle with a brand new OS, when enshitification can be right around the corner for any of these services in another few years.
Ffs, I’d just finished putting the shine on my PLEX server before they shit the bed.
Agree on the calendar. In particular would like to find one with map integration.
Mailbox is pretty good. The UI is a bit clunky, but so far I like it.
Anyone have experience with Kagi translate or LibreTranslate. How privacy respecting are they?
Are there any alternatives such as a self-hosted local translator?
You can run LibreTranslate locally in a Docker/Podman container. iirc it does need a few GB of space to download the model.
I only played with it for a little bit maybe like a year ago and wasn’t super impressed by its Japanese to English translations, but that could have been me just not setting it up right, or maybe its improved since then. I didn’t try any other languages
Proton also has mail and password management.
Anyone knows of a google lens translation alternative? I use it to share memes with a friend who doesn’t know English without having too manually replace text (these days it’s pretty good with context).
Ideally I would love to self host a thing that would do that, I don’t think it would be too complicated to vibe-code some self hosted translator plugged into a image to text reader/replacer or however you’d call that… But the fact that it sounds simple to vibecode makes me think it either already exists or is way more complicated than it sounds.
Why would you want it to be a server instead of an app just running on the phone, that can work offline?
woke up at 4am to piss… ended up switching over to graphene while I was up, so was going to be seeking just such a thing today. thank you!
What about for google maps?
i like openstreetmap a lot. There is also this another application called street complete, with which you can help make it better. Its kind of like a game, there are question bubbles on the map and you answer stuff like what kind of roof some building has or what is the condition of the pavement on some area. Its really nice since its so easy to do and you know you are helping when you use it.
And if you REALLY want to help, openstreetmap has very good tools for adding information, though you need to use the website for it since it can get quite complex which makes it a bit more cumbersome.
And in google maps, you just get denied when you try correcting something that is grossly wrong, or have to wait unspecified time to even know if your correction is good enough for whoever is deciding stuff there.
Openstreetmap (OSM) is a much larger project than you seem to realize. At least OSMAnd is “theirs”, and there is many apps/sites/software that use OSM behind the scenes. E.g., all the official route planners of cities in my country.
And if you REALLY want to help, openstreetmap has very good tools for adding information, though you need to use the website for it since it can get quite complex which makes it a bit more cumbersome.
Every bit helps. Desktop apps exist. OSMAnd has editing built in.
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Are we doing ads now here? And are we, like, OK with it now?
Bruh chill a lot of these are FOSS
I don’t want brands to think there’s a loophole they can exploit by half-heartedly endorsing FOSS for nefarious advertising. “Coke tastes great with the user agency of Linux” is still an ad for Coke.
Yeah and that Tutao stuff looks pretty appealing with those nice bold letters and top placement.
This is an ad for Tuta, which server side software is, AFAIK proprietary. You cannot self-host.
On second thought you’re absolutely right. Report created.
edit: oh, this is YSK, I was thinking more about IT communities.
If you’re already going through the trouble of leaving Google… leave subscription services altogether.
Think about the reasons and headaches involved in your Google migration: you don’t control their policies and what they do with your data, they can keep raising prices or killing features you want, migrating platforms is a mess, you are at the mercy of their abstractions and APIs, a board of directors change could turn the company into the opposite of what you trusted it for… Guess what, exactly all of the same points apply to Tuta, or Proton, or whoever else.
Don’t repeat the same mistake, don’t find yourself looking for a “de-Proton your life” guide 8 years from now. Have your pictures in your computer, there are many easy ways to organize, browse, and sync them. Keep copies of your music. Keep backups, they’re automatic, encrypted and compressed nowadays. Have your own calendar and notes, you can pick from a multitude of choices with any UI imaginable. Sync your files with SyncThing, it’s faster and more powerful than whatever “cloud” you could get.
What about the email? How do you deal with the issue, when everything needs a registration, but it doesn’t accept your kadu@kadu.ninja custom email, because it “doesn’t look like a legit address”? That happened to me multiple time with a smaller provider. Also you might not be able to send mail to e.g. gmail because you don’t have the latest <insert whatever certification> on your server. Or when your server gets hacked, it sends a shitton of spam, gets blacklisted, and it will be impossible to get rid of that
Would add PeerTube for youtube replacements
Youtube’s alternatives looking really sad :( Love me some Invidious but an actual alternative would be so cool. Peertube is that on paper but missing content aside i think the UI is really holding them back it’s just not inviting at all.
