Life freed against Google?
I’ve full quit the nonfree Google services and found the below free replacements,
Google Maps like: OpenStreetMap
Google Chrome like: Ungoogled-Chromium; Falkon; Konqueror; Iceweasel; Eolie; Midori
Play store like: F-droid
Play music like: VLC
YouTube like: PeerTube
Allo like: Matrix; IRC; https://ring.cx
GMail like: Disroot; https://app.tutanota.com; https://ProtonMail.ch
Google+ like: Diaspora; Friendica; Mastodon (little social server like Twitter, not directly Google related)
Google cloud like: https://OpenLoad.co; NextCloud
Search engines: DDG; Searx
Any other Google parts that also have free replacements? Every people here are welcome for comments. :)
You may find this article interesting:
https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-up-everything-1830565500
It's one of a series in which the author experiments blocking "Big Five":
> https://gizmodo.com/c/goodbye-big-five
Those articles were interesting. The most interesting part to me was the difficulty of avoiding websites hosted by these companies. This is something I haven't gone so far as to try to do, and it seems like it might not even be practically possible.
On the other hand, many other things could have been replaced more conveniently or less expensively than the article makes it seem. She could have used LineageOS instead of a dumb phone, she didn't need to buy a $1500 laptop* to run GNU/Linux, she could have listened to Libre.fm instead of sitting in silence all week, she could have used a Nextcloud service instead of Onionshare, an email service with a donation-based model instead of a paid model, etc.
After reading her first four articles I actually emailed her with a long list and descriptions of the most convenient free replacements I know of for each thing she would have to give up during her final week avoiding all five companies. She apparently did not read it. She was presumably in the middle of her week boycotting Apple, so without a smartphone and while getting used to a new laptop I can't blame her for not reading an email from some random reader, assuming she received my email at all.
It also would have been nice to discuss compromising to the point of sustainability, rather than only presenting the two extremes of complete dependence on these companies versus unsustainable practices like avoiding websites that use AWS. The conclusion could have been "here's what's possible and how to achieve it, here's what's not possible yet and why that is" instead of "it was too hard to completely change my life in two months and now I'm going back to the way things were before." These articles could have been written so that they function as a guide, rather than a deterrent.
Still, there's a lot of good information in there. The articles do a great job of showing just how far each company's control extends into our lives.
*She likely didn't pay for hers, but her readers would have to.
I may sound cynical... but I have a rule for online news/media:
'Any time a product or service is mentioned you are reading a paid-for advertisement for that product or its competitor'.
That's why these article never give general advice that is cost free or easy it implement. These aren't genuine articles about blocking out Google, Facebook, et al. They're thinly veiled shilling of other products...
Don't like X? Buy Y product!
Don't like A service? Sign up for B's new account!
and so on...
Notice how their negativity about Amazon is massively positive too - 'the everything store', 'we have all their products', 'I spend $3k there', 'it's the first place I head', blah blah blah. The implicit message is carefully designed to be positive on balance and not annoy one of their corporate customers.
This is the same pattern for everything else mentioned.
The 'I cut Apple Out of My Life' article is a straight up advert shilling Purism.
Perhaps it is not as sophisticated as you are thinking. It is pretty much yet another superficial sensationalist writing by someone who doesn't seem to even know that the "privacy-respecting DuckDuckGo" is hosted on Amazon. So it is a traffic honeypot. Just look at the number of 3rd party cookies and requests the site uses (many of them related to Google and Amazon ad services and trackers):
Of course that doesn't mean it is not possible to advert Purism too. Why not get money from all "enemies"? :)
Still it good to look at the blocking approach which shows a little more depth than the superficial "I will use AdBlock" and "I won't use Google products".