Tell HN: I De-Googled Myself

I really enjoyed the old Google, the nerd Google, the "don’t be evil" Google... Google Reader, Android, GTalk, etc. It made communication with my friends much easier.

I had already been moving everything away from the Google ecosystem for about two years, but Google Photos was the hardest part because it contained so many memories that I wouldn’t risk losing.

The final straw was when I accidentally subscribed to Google One with AI, which costs much more than simple additional storage. It’s not that much money for me, but when I found out I couldn’t downgrade, it became a matter of principle to do a Google Takeout of my photos and create a script to import them into Apple Photos (which is also not a nice company, none of them really are) without losing metadata.

I also moved them to Backblaze, where I have already had backups for more than five years, and to add even more redundancy, I backed them up to BorgBase using Borgmatic.

De-Googled! Now all my photos and videos are in the palm of my hand (~238 GB). My email client is not bloated. Well, assuming Apple doesn’t decide to shove AI down our throats in Apple Mail.

The only Google service I still pay for is YouTube. In exchange, I get zero unbearable ads, many of which promote illegal things like gambling websites. My ad blocker solves the problem on my computer, but on TV the situation is much harder, and I’m old enough to spend my time constantly finding ways around this stuff.

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zache6 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you're using something Fire Stick/Android TV, TizenTube Cobalt has been great for me and my family. It has an ad blocker, Sponsorblock, Dearrow, and a few other goodies.

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danshipt 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I liked it until the part about paying for yt. I prefer to not use yt again than to pay for it and make google even richer

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delduca 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I agree, but it's quite hard not to pay for YouTube when you have kids and they watch it on television.

	▲	jayturley 31 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		With streaming balkanized into so many individual providers, it's hard to pay for more than a couple. So the Grandson has learned to discriminate ads from content, and as soon as an ad comes one, we all chorus, "Stinky Ad!" and then everyone rushes to be the first person to get to the remote and skip it. It's not a perfect solution, but it's what we have.
	▲	lwowowx an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It’s very easy to get kids to break habits.

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bythckr 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How did you degoogle Android?

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tripleee an hour ago | parent [-]

I'm using GrapheneOS - very simple to setup. Only actual downside is it only works on pixel devices currently

	▲	Cider9986 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It's fantastic. If you want any app recommendations, lmk. I like to replace the default apps with more up to date ones.

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fsflover 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> it became a matter of principle to do a Google Takeout of my photos and create a script to import them into Apple Photos

Meet the new boss, the same as the old one. If you actually want to make a change, consider GNU/Linux on desktop and phones.

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Leewen 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s cool ,but I can’t to fucking lazy

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verdverm 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm on a similar path, huge Google fan for 20 years. Something has happened under Sundar and Kurian (cloud), maybe some insiders will comment to let us know. What I see is slop across every product line, I assume from over indexing on Ai with insufficient HITL around a model family that is not as good at agentic.

Haven't made it all the way, but I was able to find a way to downgrade my Google One back to the $2/m for extra storage. YouTube will remain to avoid ads. Everything else has been switched or is being worked on, but after 20 years it takes longer than I imagined. I'm giving up tap to pay and headed towards GrapheneOS instead of Apple, where your going to get Gemini a la Siri. OpenCode Go, Fireworks, and OEM Spark for my llms. Still looking for my cloud provide, leaning towards digital ocean.