so, you want to quit google! seriously, good for you. but uh oh, it’s actually kind of difficult because a not insignificant portion of the internet is completely dependent on google and you can’t stop using the corporation’s services without significantly reducing your own quality of life! well that really sucks. but fear not – it is, in fact, possible to quit google without destroying your ability to interact with the internet! in fact, quitting google is pretty easy, and anyone can do it with a just little bit of patience and hatred. the thing is, and google probably doesn’t want you to know this, but they offer literally nothing unique! in other words, you can replace every part of google with minimal impact to your life. shocking, really.

first of all, what does google even do for you? let me list some of the free services that people typically use it for:

  • accessing the internet (google chrome)
  • browsing the internet (google search)
  • checking emails (gmail)
  • digital calendar stuff (google calendar)
  • navigation and gps (google maps)
  • web office suite (google drive, google docs, google sheets, google slides)
  • youtube

i’ll go through these one at a time and break down how to quit each service in a way that hopefully isn’t completely mind numbing. the degoogle movement is pretty popular, but a lot of services are too focused on the “why” and kind of skim over the “how.” since you made it past the title on this little guide, i think it’s probably safe to assume you already get why it’s necessary to get rid of that pesky parasite of a corporation. and if you don’t understand the why, then don’t worry about it. just trust me and quit google

how do i access the internet without google holding my hand?

(by the way i’m going to pretend like phones don’t exist)

ok this is the hardest part to explain, so i’ll get it out the way with a quick and oversimplified explanation on the current state of web browsers. there are basically only three web browsers: chrome, firefox, and safari. you might be thinking, “what about [insert brand name] browser?” well too bad it’s probably based on either chrome or firefox. get used to it. this is the truth and anybody who tells you otherwise is conveniently ignoring the fact that the supposed other options are literally nonfunctional on the modern web. but what do i mean by “based on chrome or firefox”?

a web browser is just a piece of software – a big pile of code and other magic stuff. a lot of software is difficult or illegal to modify (proprietary), but there’s also a lot that can be freely modified (open source) into derivations that we call “forks.” web browsers are, thankfully, generally open source. even google’s browser framework (chromium) is open source! this is where we get opera and brave and vivaldi and microslop edge and whatever. firefox is, of course, also open source.

we despise google, so we’re going to ignore chrome and its forks. here are your real options:

  • mozilla firefox. …eh. now, a lot of people are going to tell you that firefox is no good. essentially, firefox is developed by mozilla, and mozilla is actually mostly funded by google. also mozilla has become increasingly supportive of ai slop garbage, and collects a ton of evil telemetry and data in the stock firefox web browser. so yes, it’s better than chrome. but no, it’s not ideal. you should look for a fork.
  • firefox fork:
    • librewolf. a classic option for privacy enthusiasts. it’s mostly identical to firefox except it is pre-configured to be very secure and private. a great option, especially if you don’t want too many sweeping changes from the firefox experience!
    • waterfox. another classic. this one is a little more ambitious than librewolf and makes many more changes. however, it’s also very customizable and is quite private. not as private as librewolf, but still a great choice.
    • floorp. this one is similar to waterfox but has an opinionated design. it’s maybe even more customizable. another great choice, if you don’t mind the strange name that is vaguely uncomfortable to pronounce out loud
    • zen browser. this one is my personal favorite. it’s still kind of new compared to the other options, but is really lovely to look at and is a lot better than stock firefox for privacy. it has my personal favorite implementation of vertical tabs. excellent choice!
    • mullvad browser. this one is for hardcore privacy enthusiasts. it’s actually based on the tor browser (which is based on firefox), and is hardened to be particularly resistant against browser fingerprinting. thus, it sacrifices a lot of user experience for very, very good privacy.

and those are your options! download one of these and make it your entire identity. go on, spread the news about firefox supremacy and banish the thought of ever touching a chromium based browser again. in the end, it doesn’t really matter which one you choose as long as it works for you. but no matter what, don’t forget to install the most important browser extension – a nonnegotiable inclusion regardless of what you choose: ublock origin. do not forget.

how do i browse the internet without gemini whispering me positive affirmations?

google search (google.com) sucks. it is so unfathomably bad that i cannot comprehend why people don’t seek alternatives more often. they surely must have deluded themselves, thinking nothing else exists and they must therefore endure the sheer agony of using it. but you are better than that, because you clearly have the capacity to learn as long as you are willing to not pathetically cling to the dying vestige of google’s heyday. behold, your plentiful options:

  • startpage. a great choice for a classic browser experience. minimally invasive, relatively fast, and no ai slop to fill you with despair for humanity’s future.
  • duckduckgo. everyone will make fun of you for this, but trust me it’s a lot better than whatever garbage google serves. you might need to disable ai features, but at these those are somewhat functional and out of the way compared to google
  • kagi. a secret paid option. trade a little bit of money for a premium search experience. i’ve never actually used it myself but i’ve heard great things
  • searxng. a metasearch engine, meaning it scrapes results from other search engines, so your device never directly interacts with an evil engine. look up instances and find one that works for you.
  • 4get. a secret good option, and actually the best option. yet another metasearch engine, except this one actually works. phenomenal. splendid, even. find a list of instances here, or use the lus.lu instance at https://4g.lus.lu.

how do i check my email without my private life being divulged to the united states government?

gmail is actually good, sadly. it’s the only thing google hasn’t completely butchered, and i can completely understand why it might singlehandedly prevent someone from moving on from a certain corporation. but don’t be fooled – gmail is just as evil as google’s other services. you will simply need to embrace the janky alternatives and find something better. besides, even if google wasn’t an evil corporation, you still shouldn’t be using gmail since internet centralization is objectively a bad thing. here are my suggestions:

  • proton. i actually love proton, even though it gets a lot of criticism in the privacy community for not being good enough sometimes. as far as i’m aware, it’s the only privacy-oriented company that can realistically replace google’s entire suite of office tools without sacrificing user experience. proton mail is no different. it’s pretty good, has functional clients, and is privacy respecting.
  • tuta. arguably even more privacy focused and trustworthy than proton. their clients are kind of mediocre in my opinion, but definitely good enough.
  • mailbox mail. this is probably, overall, the best option. unlike most providers, it does not offer a free tier, although a personal email account is very cheap (like €1/month for people with normal emailing needs, or €3/month for access to a bunch of other stuff). also supports custom domains, email aliases, imap/smtp, and cash payments.

now, don’t be fooled. email is not secure and any provider that says something about “encryption” really means “encryption when emailing someone with the same email provider as you.” for example, your emails sent from a proton account are still harvested by google if the recipient is a gmail account. while, yes, proton can encrypt emails, this only applies if the recipient actually supports encryption. most mainstream email providers do not, so you have to go through extra measures to ensure email security. this is mainly done with PGP, where senders and recipients encrypt and decrypt emails on the client side. but that’s not what this article is about, and you should still quit gmail either way.

how do i plan stuff without google’s unsolicited assistance?

the actually best answer is a paper calendar. you know, something you write on? with a pen? but i suppose that isn’t up to the standards of the modern internet denizen, so digital may be best. there really isn’t much to talk about here. all of the above email providers also have calendars, since the two features are basically intertwined for some reason. honestly, this doesn’t even need to be its own section. just use:

  • proton calendar
  • tuta calendar
  • mailbox mail (calendar)

there are also standalone calendars, but those probably aren’t what you’re looking for coming from google suite. i’d highly recommend investing in something like mailbox.org and just enjoying that particular ecosystem.

how do i navigate the world without google’s convenient product placement?

that’s not a joke, by the way. google suggestions for nearby locations on its maps can be advertisements. you open up your map, looking for some food in a city you’re unfamiliar with, only to pawned off to the highest bidder after being enticed by the suspiciously convenient suggestions it provides. talk about the illusion of freedom. your biggest alternative here is going to be the wonderful collection of software that sources mapping data from openstreetmap (osm). osm is an open, free system of community-maintained map data that anyone can contribute to, and most open source maps/navigation systems use it. in fact, you might want to avoid maps that don’t use osm data. you can find a complete list of osm clients here but if you’re lazy:

  • organic maps. this is a pretty typical suggestion, since it’s multiplatform, functional, and good for privacy. while it might lack some features that users coming from google maps might expect, maybe you should be less entitled and deal with it
  • comaps. on the other hand, this might be a somewhat strange suggestion, since it’s a very recent fork of organic maps. some people got tired of the slow development and made comaps. i prefer it because i have no reason not to. right now, they are almost identical in terms of features, but comaps might be seeing new things. however, you might prefer organic maps if you don’t care about foss drama.
  • osmand. not available for ios. more feature robust than organic maps / comaps. pretty good client. i also know like nothing about it so maybe don’t trust me. i think i remember hearing that the osm data editing is really good on osmand, so it might be good if you’d like to be a productive member of society.

how do i edit documents without donating 4 gib of ram to google’s webui?

ok, so you want microsoft office – oops, sorry, it’s actually called “microsoft copilot 360” i guess – but without the difficulty of an advanced (scary) computer program. what are your options now? google docs? disgusting. this is horrible. sure, it may be vaguely functional, but it’s google. that alone is a good reason to give up now, and we all know that, as a good person, you refuse to touch that “copilot” garbage. what do you do?

  • libreoffice. ah, truly a beautiful foss project. it’s essentially microslop office but actually good, and it doesn’t collect megabytes of telemetry per second. truly excellent. excel fanatics may be dissatisfied by the lack of perfect feature parity with libreoffice calc, but it’s certainly the best good option.
  • onlyoffice. this one is cloud based, meaning you’ll generally be able to access it from a web browser. however, that doesn’t mean you can just go to onlyoffice.com and start typing away on your favorite .odt document. rather, this software is designed to run on a server, then be integrated into other services, from nextcloud to cryptpad. by the way, for security purposes, cryptpad is the best. but depending on your threat model, it may be easier to just use something like nextcloud or seafile. all of those are designed to be self hosted, but there are plenty of public cryptpad instances out there. there aren’t many for nextcloud (and none for seafile as far as i know), but they still exist. see here for a list of public cryptpad instances. choose one and live out your days google drive/docs free!

how do i rot my brain without watching 30 minutes of targeted advertisements before my video begins?

well, this is awkward. you see, there is no alternative to youtube that would make a reasonable person happy. yeah, peertube is a great project, but it’s just not ready for widespread adoption. however, we can compromise: an alternative frontend! simply put, an alternative frontend is a piece of software that interacts with another service on your behalf. in this case, you watch a youtube video through the frontend, and the frontend is the one that fetches the video for you. this is a really effective way to bypass ads and other foul youtube “features” like gross tracking. there is exactly one alternative frontend for youtube that i personally consider worth discussing: invidious.

invidious. a beautiful project. truly lovely. while, yes, it does sometimes break, that’s usually because google hates invidious so much. they hate it because invidious is an incredibly convenient way to access to youtube, and because it probably upsets advertisers. all you have to do is visit a public instance and it just works! here are some instances:

most invidious instances are highly prone to breaking because, like i said, google absolutely hates this. so use these generously! any and every opportunity to make google angry is worth taking. these instances are free! use them. don’t subject yourself to the miserable agony of youtube.com.

now what?

delete your google account. there is nothing google can do for you at this point. you must request a total data deletion and finally bid farewell to your account. here’s how:

  1. go to https://myaccount.google.com and log in
  2. on sidebar, choose “data & privacy”
  3. scroll all the way down and choose “delete your google account”
  4. you may be asked to verify your log in session, so do that
  5. check the two confirmation boxes at the bottom of the screen it’ll bring you to
  6. press the big blue “delete account” button
  7. congratulations!