What's the main reason you're degoogling?

The advertising has become the engine in every possible corner. It's like searching billboards now, not websites. My email feeds the ads I get. My Gboard keyboard for my text messages feeds the ads I'm shown. Hell the websites I visit get advertised back to me. Google Lenovo for work reasons and a year later I'm still getting fed ads for Lenovo on other platforms that have no association with Google. It's like the Adoring fan of Oblivion who really really wants to make me happy by offering me things he heard me mention once Every. Single. Day! Dude stop! Shut up and leave me the fuck alone.

I wish I could shove Google off a cliff.

I feel there is a certain maximum amount of influence a for profit company should be allowed to grow to. They have long surpassed it.

If Google randomly decides to terminate my account for some reason and won't tell me why or allow me to reasonably appeal, I'm screwed.

GDrive, my YouTube, my play store purchases, my Gmail going back since forever, and even all these 3rd party sites where I used "login with Google" could be instantly toasted and irrecoverable.

I became aware that this is way way too much exposure to one company and every component is linked together so if, hypothetically, I left a comment on YouTube that triggered some angsty AI ban algorithm, which led to the whole account getting zapped, I would be one sad puppy.

Better to selfhost, encrypt all, and be in control of my own destiny.

didn't see anyone touching on the most important part, and that is the decisions regarding our data we make now are coming to bite us in the ass five or ten years from now. our chicken brains can't comprehend that, not really. we need a direct feedback loop: hot stove, finger, ouch - no more touching.

up until a decade or two ago, we didn't have the concept of forever in our lives. do stupid shit in school, in uni they don't know about it. fail at one job, the next one doesn't know about it. say something stupid in front of a love interest, the next one's blissfully unaware. in our current paradigm, all of them transgressions are with you, forever.

any and all corporations even adjacent to the advertising/harvesting/mining industries have lost the benefit of doubt, forever. our interaction with them is and should be adversarial from the get go. they should never be in the position to retain any meaningful data points and polluting their ingestion avenues and obscuring activity is mandatory.

edit: the AI example is touching on it.

My motivations are not specific to google.

I don't want a large part of my life and thoughts to be linked to my identity, queryable in someone else's database.

I grew up in DDR and know that a large fraction of people gain pleasure by having control over others. That data is an important avenue for that.

You can already see that governments all over the EU are trying to gain control over it. (To keep the children safe ofcourse).

There's the privacy and constant tracking part of it, but it is also about not being hostage of the company. What if Drive is suddenly a payed-only service OR they lock me out of my account? I can recover faster and cheaper from a failing HDD in my NAS than I ever could from a locked (or deleted) Google account.

I've seen / was burned too many times by free software and services that suddenly disappeared of became overpriced and I don't want to be on that position again. Google is well known for killing stuff as well.

I started degoogling because of Google's more and more transparent business plan of data surveillance. I'm not comfortable with "paying with my information" because of the uncountable (and frankly unimaginable) ways that information can be applied by third parties without my knowledge.

"AI" is one example which wasn't even on the chart when I started degoogling, but we can all be certain that Google and partners use any language sample available on Gmail and G drive to train theirs. This is the company that casually registered private WiFi networks in the course of mapping their Maps street view. They'll harvest everything they can.

At heart, I don't trust corporate mega-monopolies to take care of our best interests as online citizens, and as a European I'm super sceptical of becoming subject to less safe legislation (US, Chinese or whatever) that doesn't offer me protections that I have or expect at home.

By not using Google (or Meta, or Amazon, or X) I can deliberately pick and choose individual services — or host them for myself — rather than hedge everything on the benevolence of one corporation that doesn't give a shit about their users.

Im a private person. I dont feel comfortable people knowing what i did, where i went etc. That applies to big tech as well. I dont have social media and never will.

Plus, i hate ads.

1. I'm trying to be more anti-large corporation, especially those that have bent the knee to Trump.
2. I want to support the people who make replacement apps/services that have a DIY ethic about them.
3. I kind of like the challenge of it, because it's not all that easy...which in my mind shows that it's necessary.

If you don't want to DeGoogle, that's fine. It's a personal decision. If you have all the facts and determine you'd rather stay doing what you're doing, that's fine.

To me it's about how invasive and all-encompassing Google tries to be, while giving little to no respect to our privacy.

I never explicitly and clearly agreed for a random company to follow me everywhere on the Internet, track me on millions of sites even outside Google itself, and be as reckless with the data as a kid, selling it left and right to whoever might concern. Neither do I think regular people would give such consent if consequences would be clearly explained, and not buried deep into ToS.

No, I do not have much to hide. But even if you don't do anything bad, you don't want a random stranger to constantly look into your windows when you're at home, do you? It's creepy at least. For me, Google is that stranger. And Meta. And Microsoft. And Apple etc.

So, making as little room for them in my life as humanly possible is my goal.

@CheeseToastie
Mainly political. While privacy and security are a concern, I'm more focused on stop using products by big corporations, in particularly those with ties to fascist parties and government agencies and I'm very wary of those who try to sell their products as "private and secure FOSS alternatives" while holding similar fascistic ideas.

In addition to the privacy aspect, i wanted to reduce my dependency on outside/external factors as much as possible. I try to self-host and use FOSS where possible. Where not feasible, I try to diversify companies so I'm not overly reliant on one. That way, I can pivot much quicker if a company goes to shit.

Cause fuck ‘em, that’s why.

i don't like the fact that fbi, nsa, cia, etc. could have access to my data. especially now

Nothing is free. If you don't pay for the product, you are the product.

Privacy (different from anonymity) has become more and more important to me, and Google had access to nearly every part of my life in one way or another. I've cut out Musk, Zuck and Bezos, and I'm now nearly completely Google free as well.

I've often heard "why do I care if Google reads my emails? I've got nothing to hide". 2 great answers:

1. Unlock your phone and give it to me for an hour. Just because you have nothing to hide doesn't mean you don't want privacy. Google does exactly that.
2. Speaking of privacy, why bother closing the stall door in a public washroom? You're not doing anything wrong in there.

Companies like google collects, stores and shares data on you.

I don't want someone looking over my shoulder analyzing, interpreting and announcing to the world what I do all the time. I also don't want a permanent record of that to exist. It hurts me when done to me. It hurts society when done to everyone. An example where it hurts you is when you go the insurance company and they deny you or make it expensive cause they have data on you, your behaviour, health and opinions.

It will also be used against you when your government decides they are no longer going to respect human rights or cracking down on the citizenry. They migh feed a big pool of data to an ai and the ai gives you a shitty social score. Nothing is forgotten and it will be missused and missinterpreted. Never for your benefit.

I've put together lists of alternatives on this site: https://www.rebeltechalliance.org/

Moving away from US based/owned/managed services. But it takes times. Email and photos are the Hardest for me. Email because of all the account integrations and many accounts where you just can't change your email address and photos as it requires all people involved in shared albums to migrate with me.