So, in the wake of Google's latest display of ideological nonsense, there are probably plenty of people that are looking for alternatives to their products or at least ways to minimize or eliminate any benefits Google could reap by being a user. I've been divesting myself of them wherever possible for several years now, since they started to get very heavy-handed with their business habits (remember when they tried to force everyone to use Google+ ?), so I'll just go over some of the changes I've made to adjust. They may not be for everyone, but hopefully they'll give folks some ideas and help them get the ball rolling in avoiding Google and its products.
Email
This one is arguably one of the easiest since there are so many alternatives to Gmail out there. There are the obvious choices like Outlook.com and Yahoo. Some folks like GMX, and there are others who still use things like Mail.com. My favorite, though, is now Protonmail. Founded by MIT graduates who were formerly working on CERN, this is a Swiss-based service with a heavy emphasis on privacy. This is thanks to a one-two punch of Switzerland's laws on the matter being so strict and the developers implementing quite a bit of encryption into their service. I've had no issues with Protonmail since signing up, and I very much like the privacy it provides. Moreover, its a service I can use that helps me avoid just signing on with some other email service attached to a large company that could feel compelled to implement totalitarian ideological policies at the drop of a hat.
Browsers
Here's another area where there are a lot of options available for folks who want to get away from Chrome. A big question, though, is just how far do you want to get from the browser because a lot of the alternatives out there run on Chromium, an open-source browser project that forms the basis of Chrome. So, depending what browser you choose, you may not be as removed from Chrome as you might like.
With that in mind, I'll go over some of the more well-known Chromium browsers first so that readers know upfront that technically they aren't Chrome, but some of the stuff under the hood may be strikingly similar. These will be listed in point form for brevity as I don't have a lot to say about them, and just want people to know what some of them are when making their decision on a new browser.
Vivaldi
Sleipnir
Slimjet
UC Browser
Opera
Brave
Cent Browser
Yandex Browser
Fun Fact: People who play PC games may be interested in knowing that Steam's client software is based on Chromium. However, I don't know if GOG's Galaxy client does the same.
Of the browsers listed above, I've only spent time with Vivaldi, but it worked well for my needs. That being said, I've been slowly switching to Mozilla-based browsers of late. For people looking to do this, one of the most popular options is FireFox, which has been around forever.
Personally, I'm not a fan of FireFox and try to avoid it, instead favoring other iterations of Mozilla. At the moment, I am using Pale Moon quite a bit, which is an offshoot of the browser from before the most recent iteration of FireFox. For people who don't like the layout changes and whatnot that hit FireFox about 8 years ago, something like Pale Moon may be something to consider. Another Mozilla browser that I've begun spending time with, and considering switching to, is Waterfox which has a number of interesting tweaks to it.
Granted, some people will want to go all-in and use Tor Browser with a VPN for maximum privacy, which is certainly an option. I haven't gone this far myself, so can't comment on the experience, but there is plenty of info floating around the web regarding this option for those who might be interested. A few simple search engine queries should get the ball rolling for most with regard to that.
Search Engines
This, of course, brings us to search engines. Google got its start as one, and expanded from there. The very process of looking things up has been described as "Googling". This is where Google is most heavily entrenched for a lot of people. Nevertheless, there are plenty of alternatives out there.
There are a number of easy go-to options here with DuckDuckGo, Bing, and Yahoo leading the pack. A number of smaller, less well-known search engines also exist, but I've never found a reason to use them. DuckDuckGo works extremely well, addressing my needs just fine.
Mobile Phones
Mobile phones is an area where things get sticky because even if someone wants to avoid Android, they're still likely to have to sign on with some other major corporation that has their own problems. So, sure, there are plenty of options out there that allow people to avoid the grip of Google here, but it comes of the cost of entering Sony, Apple, Nokia, or some other large company's camp instead. There isn't really an easy answer here, so in many cases folks will have to decide which poison is easiest to swallow here.
Social Media / Video
While Google+ was an abject failure, Google still has their finger in this arena thanks to YouTube, so in the very least that needs to be addressed. There have been alternatives for years, but none of them have come close to toppling YouTube. Sure, Daily Motion, Vimeo, and the like exist, but no one of note ever bothered to adopt them, and anyone who tried never really got traction at those places since their viewers didn't follow.
That being said, we've finally begun to see a slight shift in this area in 2017 thanks to the Adpocolypse on YouTube. When that got underway earlier in the year, there was a large number of people who started hedging their bets, creating accounts on Minds and Vid.me, uploading their content to those services. Most importantly here is that a decent number of people actually followed them, which doesn't usually happen. This actually helps these services gain a following, and ensure people actually use them, rather than being a graveyard for content that never gets seen or commented on.
This is a golden opportunity for both platforms. Granted, Minds is not a dedicated video platform, but it does support the medium, which is good. Meanwhile, Vid.me has the potential to be a very good YouTube alternative (granted, I'm holding judgment on that since they are reluctant to allow political videos to gain traction in their trending section).
So, these services are growing thanks to political, anti-PC commentators hedging their bets against YouTube now. Better still is that they are both starting to see content in other areas start to become more prevelant, which I think is important for both platforms to grow. I don't want Minds and Vid.me to be too one note and have 95% of their content to be about politics. Things like art, science, history, video games, anime, and the like all interest me, so a robust service with people talking about all of these things is much more likely to retain my, and I'm sure others as well, over the long term better than being only about one topic.
Ad Blocking as a Last Line of Defense
This final suggestion of mine will likely be controversial for some, but I do think it will be necessary. For some people, it may be impossible to completely divest of Google services for whatever reason. So, how can they still fight back against Google? My suggestion is to use ad blocking software, since it'll hit Google where it hurts: their ad revenue. This is still where the company makes most of their money, but if more people use ad blockers, it will eat into that.
A lot of folks already do use these things as a matter of course, but there are still people out there who don't even know how to set these add-ons up. I marvel at my friends who actually have ads running while browsing the web. They aren't even doing it out of some altruistic want to support various sites. They just don't know how to turn them off. The people need to be shown how this is done.
For the more tech savvy people who already have ad block on but use whitelisting, I'm sure some will argue that content creators will suffer if everyone starts using ad blockers. My answer is yes, they probably will in some cases, but how many of them have switched to crowdfunding over the last year or so as ad revenue has declined or places like Google have simply demonetized them? They likely aren't losing much if anything from people adopting ad blockers en masse. Moreover, there'll come a time when people will have to make a choice: Is it more worthwhile to support these content creators or is it better to put pressure on Google's ad revenue before the company becomes even more Orwellian than they already are? Personally, I'm much more concerned about Google's reach and omnipresence, and how that can impact the population than I am about some content creators' ad revenue going down. For me, the choice is clear. Google needs to feel the pain in the ad revenue department in order to change. It's unfortunate that some people will lose ad money, but the good outweighs the bad here in my eyes.
Conclusion
Anyway, that about does it for this long, long blog post looking at alternatives to various Google products. It's something that I've been fiddling around with for several years as I've been increasingly concerned how big the company has been getting, and wanting to not be completely reliant on them. This was by no means meant to be totally comprehensive and I'm sure I've missed some things, but hopefully this will help people looking for some alternatives in light of Google's massive growth and heavily ideological mindset in recent years. Spread the word, help friends and family get off the Google bandwagon. There are a lot of alternatives out there that are quite good, and regular folk will need some help getting there, and that's what friends are for.
