First step on the long road out of Google
by Jeremy French
I’ve been on this interweb thing for a while. I remember what it was like before Google came along. You’d have to try half a dozen search engines, wait forever and still not find what you were looking for
Webmail was amazing, I think people forget that mail used to require a dedicated app and you could often only access it from a location. Hotmail was a breath of fresh air. Then it was bought by Microsoft put on windows NT and then crashed. Plenty of other webmail came along but you’d need loads of folders as the search was terrible. I somehow got an invite for Gmail and it was amazing in comparison.
When Android Nexus came along, Nokia was dying and iPhones were a bit cultish and if you bought into the Google ecosystem it seemed a safe bed as Google has a motto “don’t be evil”
Chrome was the best browser as Firefox had really lost its way. So it made sense to use that too. That was all a long time ago. The motto has long been officially dropped. The chrome is tarnished with advertising. Google search is full of ads and doesn’t find what you want.
The easy and guilt fee option to buy into Google has long gone. It’s just another huge power hungry corporation. Like Microsoft or IBM before it.
So it’s past time to think about getting off the Google train and de-tangling yourself from it. I’ll post odds and ends about how I’m doing on this journey. I’ve taken some easy first steps but it’s going to get harder. Some things may no longer be free and some things I may have to compromise on.
An open web, free of corporate control, is possible. But you need to work to be part of it.
Just a short list of things I need to include
- search
- browser
- phone
- photos
- DNS
- fitbit
- maps
I’ve done a few of these and some will take more work.
tags: degoogle