Alternatives to Google Products
( 3 min read )
The anti-Google crowd is growing.
- The Two Reasons I Don’t Trust Google With My Data – Medium
- Google Cannot Be Stopped - The Atlantic
- Is It Time to Break Up Google? - The New York Times
- Big data, big business, Big Brother? - CNN.com
- How I Fully Quit Google (and you can too) - Medium
A blog post from restoreprivacy.com recently covered a few Google Products that could be replaced with some alternative products. The idea is that, these alternatives will respect your privacy and data, or don’t track your online activity.
I want to expand on their list with some suggestions of my own. And include things that were not mentioned.
I’ll start by reiterating the common services:
- Google Search <– DuckDuckGo, StartPage
- Chrome <– Firefox, Tor, Brave, or any Firefox-based browser (e.g. Palemoon, Iceweasel, WaterFox)
- Gmail <– ProtonMail, Mailfence, Tutanota
- Google Calendar <– Etar
- Google Drive <– TeamDrive
- Google Docs <– LibreOffice
- Google Photos <– Shoebox, Piwigo
- Google Maps <– OpenStreetMaps, MapHub, Maps.me
- Hangouts <– Wire, Telegram, Keybase, or Signal
- Google Plus <– Does anyone even use this? Mastodon, Diaspora
- YouTube <– PeerTube, Vimeo
- ChromeOS <– Linux
- Google Fonts <– FontSquirrel
- Google Forms <– JotForm
- Google Surveys <– SurveyMonkey
- Google Translate <– DeepL
- Android <– iPhone is the only reasonable choice, but you can checkout how to secure your Android device instead of switching.
Now for more alternatives:
- Google Authenticator <– Authy, Authenticator
- Google Graphs <– Plotly? Not entirely sure if they have a HTTP API.
- reCAPTCHA <– No real suggestion. Webdevs might be able to program some custom captcha instead, which I know… sucks.
- Google Fiber <– No real suggestion. But I do recommend using a good VPN service regardless of your ISP you’re stuck with.
- Google Fi <– No real suggestion. Since this really depends on your location and available options.
- DNS (8.8.8.8) <– Quad9 (9.9.9.9) or Cloudflare (1.1.1.1)
- Google Domains <– PorkBun, Namecheap
- Google Analytics <– Matomo (formerly Piwik)
- GCP <– AWS, IBM Cloud, Pivotal, OpenShift, or others mentioned here.
- GKS <– AWS EKS, IBM Container Service, RedHat OpenShift, Pivotal, Azure, or others mentioned here.
My list is terribly incomplete. I also haven’t tested most of the apps, social media, calendar, drive, solutions. Because I don’t use them in the first place. So take my suggestions with a grain of salt.
I’m not as anti-Google as some others might be. I still use Google Domains, and plan to stop using Google Maps on my iPhone. But I did migrate to ProtonMail from Gmail, and that was my biggest challenge 3 years ago so I got that going for me. Which is nice. If you’re looking for more, checkout the other articles by restoreprivacy.com.
Published: Jun 22, 2018
Category: privacy