De-Googling My Life Series

I love Google products. Theyโ€™re easy to use, they look good, and for the most part, they work really well. I was having a conversation with a friend the other day, and we were talking about what would happen if Google closed their doors tomorrow. I quickly realised that I would be in a world of pain. No email, contacts, calendars, search, social networking, website stats and many, many more.

Not only that, but there are a number of concerns around privacy on Googleโ€™s services (or lack of). As the saying goesโ€ฆ

If an online product/service is free, youโ€™re the product!

I donโ€™t want to be Googleโ€™s product any more, so Iโ€™ve decided to do something about it โ€“ Iโ€™m going to try and De-Google my life. The chances of me completely removing Google from all facets of my life are near impossible, but I would like to find alternatives to the main services I use, such as:

The Problem

Love them or hate them, Google make some class-leading products and services, so replacing them will be difficult. Iโ€™m going to start this endeavour with a simple rule that I cannot afford to break:

If itโ€™s not as good as Google, Iโ€™m not interested.

Although I donโ€™t want to be โ€œthe productโ€, usability is just as important to me as my privacy. For example, I could go and create an email account within cPanel on a hosting package I have, but in my opinion at least, Roundcube is awful. Itโ€™s missing many features and itโ€™s just plain ugly. So any new services I choose need to match, or better, the core features I use in Googleโ€™s offerings.

Iโ€™m under no illusion that this is going to be a simple task โ€“ I think itโ€™s going to be a nightmare, and it may well be expensive too. But Iโ€™m going to stick with it and see how I get on.

So, with that in mind, keep an eye out for my next post where Iโ€™m going to be making a start a replacing some of the Google products & services that I use on a daily basis.

Have you De-Googled?

Have you managed to cut the Google apron strings? If so, please do tell me about it in the comments below โ€“ I think Iโ€™m going to need all the help I can get!

You can find links to all posts in this series by clicking here.

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De-Googling My Life 01 โ€“ Browser & Search