Hi, I'm Daniel, and I'm one more day free from Google.
Well, almost.
The Beginning
I opened a Gmail account in 2004, since then I'm kind of a Google fan.
I've downloaded and started using Google Chrome from day one, I've seen the nice comic strip explaining how fast, secure and stable Chrome was compared to their competitors.
I used to evangelize people to migrate from IE to Chrome.
And of course, I was a heavy user of all the myriad of Google applications: Maps, Translate, Authenticator.
I was addicted to Google and I couldn't see it coming.
Privacy
Now, day after day we are facing our privacy being compromised, our data is not our data, and every step we do is being recorded somewhere in big data centers.
The Mountain View giant became a powerful name, and with great power comes great responsibility, and we are all seeing what Google is doing with this great power.
Search results manipulation, privacy being neglected, even having the CEO Eric Schmidt stating:
If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place
Well, I'm guilty. I've been using Google products for over ten years, all my life is registered through Google search history, Gmail, Chrome, Maps, Drive, and so on.
Then for a while, I was planning to get rid of my overuse of Google products, but my first thought was: "That will be hard", therefore I kept postponing.
The Google Memo
But then the Google memo came and what was only a matter of privacy became a matter of stand up against a retaliation policy against the "wrong opinions", and how I would trust a company that silences divergent opinions to search the web for me?
So in the same day, I've decided to move away from Google as much as I could.
The Process
The first step was also the easiest one: stop using Chrome, and going for Brave, the cool browser from Brendan Eich, which has privacy as a top priority.
Brave is an amazing product, it has https upgrade, tracker blocker and ad blocker by default, and the BAT cryptocurrency will allow you to decide whether you want receive ads and earn BAT for that, giving a smooth and transparent experience.
It is still in beta and you might find one or other bug, but in general, it is a fantastic browser.
Then I looked to Gmail. How to migrate from Gmail? An email account that follows me for 13 years?
I've got a Protonmail account for a while, so I decided to find a way to move to there.
While talking to other people, I found out they have a nice tutorial explaining a smoother way to transition from Gmail to Protonmail.
I'd followed the tutorial and for around 10 days I'm using Protonmail as my main email account. I still need to forward my Gmail emails to my new account, but step-by-step I'm moving all my internet accounts to use the Protonmail as the primary one.
Unfortunately, there is still no way to migrate my old emails (but they are working on it), so, for now, I can't delete my Gmail account.
Getting rid of the omnipresent Google Search also was not that hard, I just had to set DuckDuckGo as Brave default search engine, and voilá, I can live without Google Search.
DuckDuckGo is open-source, emphasize privacy and has almost everything you find on Google, including instant answers.
It also has some nice features for developers, it shows instant answers for StackOverflow questions, instant answers for GitHub repositories, npm libraries and even a nice JSON validator integrated into the page.
For now, I am fascinated about how there is a beautiful world beyond Google and I couldn't see it at all.
Latest, I've replaced all my minor Google Apps:
Maps: Here Maps
Translator: Bing/Microsoft Translator. This one is controversial, but at least it is not Google.
Authenticator: Authy
The only one left is Youtube, this one is hard because all the channels I follow are there. I'm checking vid.me, and I'm excited with DTube, which uses Steem Blockchain and IPFS for a decentralized video streaming platform, but they've just started, so it is hard to have all the features, and especially, the content of Youtube.
Looking forward to this one to be replaced.
Unfortunately, I'm not completely Google free yet, as I need Chrome and (Corporative)Gmail for work, but I'm almost there. I'm in the 'ungoogling' process, and today is another day trying to be beyond the reach of the Big Brother's sight.