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My Year Without Google
An ongoing effort to live without the ubiquitous tools of the search giant shows that it’s possible — and even necessary — to find alternatives to big tech
18 months ago I went on a quest: to quit, entirely, using all the products of just one company — Google. It should have been a simple task, but instead it took me six months to find enough functional alternatives to make the move and close my nearly decade-old account.
A year later, I’m proud to report that I am still Google free. I’ve not only kept using most of the alternatives in my original article, but have found several others that make my Google-free life even easier. I still feel in control of my own data and digital presence, empowered to play, test, and learn about new tools, and be part of a community that is seeking to restore competition, privacy, and freedom to the global web.
Nevertheless, it’s been an interesting year. I notice every time someone says the phrase “to Google,” dozens of times a day, which is more obvious when you are explicitly not googling. I’ve found that people always assume if you are not using Google products, then you must be anti-Google — which is not the case for me. I just want the freedom to choose which services I use, and not be forced to rely so much on a…
