Life without a smartphone increasingly challenging. You have to use either Google or Apple. I use a de googled Android lineage phone but this is always getting harder, as numerous threads on this site will attest. Plus literally every employer I've ever had has used Google services, plus lots of other sites I might have to use implement recaptcha or otherwise invisibly to me share my data or data about me with Google. Also, even if I do figure out a way to stay off Google's radar, they're a powerful force which shapes my world. They hire lobbyists to influence policy which affects me, build data centers which raise my cost of electricity, or sell killer robots to evil people.

I think where people go wrong is treating Google the way they treat their weird neighbor Bob. Bob's damage is limited. Google is an immense, powerful, alien entity, far beyond the control of any person, and with its own inscrutable goals which are the not goals of literally any person alive or dead.

I genuinely don't understand the desire to leave this entity unmoored to wreck what havoc it may.