The way Google & Facebook are getting so monstorous and tracking everything we do, I thought I’d do my small bit to leave that all behind. I want a bit of privacy but that’s not a big issue so hence why some of these below are proprietory or ‘not good for privacy’. With the help of people’s suggestions on reddit, privacytools.io and other stuff, here’s what I’m replacing the various Google products with:

Computer

Google search – DuckDuckGo with any !bang I need, so can !searx, !arch etc

Chromium – Firefox with addons as per privacytools.io instructions

Passwords – Bitwarden

Gmail – ProtonM ail (Plus subscriber)



VPN – ProtonVPN (Plus subscriber)

Calendar – Fruux, Any.do & EteSync

Contacts – ProtonMail, Fruux & EteSync

Keep – Any.do, Pocket, pinboard [would like Standardnotes but doesn’t work at work 😦 ]

Drive – Dropbox (& soon ProtonDrive??). [Would use mega.nz but it needs qt5 on Arch – nup I’m a Gnome boy so don’t want qt on my system]

Docs – LibreOffice, zoho

Maps – Openstreetmap & Here

Storage – NAS to Backblaze B2

Music – Spotify

Photos – synced to Computer using Syncthing & then to B2 [not Flickr anymore as API for flickrsmartsync hasn’t worked in ages]

Youtube – Vimeo (not really close) so best I know of is to use YT without being signed into Google, or as per comments, HookTube

Reader – Newsblur

Translate – Deepl, translate.com

Image search – tineye.com

Trips – Tripit

Mobile

Android – LineageOS for microG

Play store – F-Droid, MicroG & Yalp

Android root – Magisk Manager

VPN – ProtonVPN

Authenticator – andOTP with OpenKeychain for secure pgp backups

Passwords – Bitwarden

Maps – map.me & Here WeGo

Youtube – Sky Tube

Messages – Wire & Signal



Docs – LibreOffice viewer

Calendar & contacts – Fruux & EteSync

Tasks/Notes – Any.do, Pocket

Pay – My own banks NFC

Podcasts – AntennaPod

Weather – BOM Weather (Australia)

Drive – Dropbox & Dropsync [would like to use mega.nz but as I don’t use it on my computer as above, no point]

Twitter – Twidere

Cloud Print – Android CUPS Print (although hit & miss with working for me)

Other

Last.fm – listenbrainz



Alerts – trailwalker alerts

Plus I removed nearly everything from Facebook, like pages I follow, groups I was part of, any connected app, and old old acquantices (not really friends) to leave behind a small grooup of current good friends. But then I’m still uncomfortable with everything Facebook is doing, so I deactivated it – hope to delete it in a while.