Quitting Google

Today I deleted my Gmail account. That's it--I'm out. I'm 'Google free'...or as close as I think I'll ever get. It's been a long, overdue process. There have been other platforms I've quit--notably social media--knowing it was the right thing to do, and also knowing I'd miss being there afterwards. Not this time, though. While quitting Google is most certainly the right thing to do, I won't miss it one bit. They're the poster child for everything that's wrong with surveillance capitalism. I'm happy to have reclaimed some of my privacy. How'd I do it? In phases. Some were easy, others were more difficult.

Browsers

Chrome got the boot. (So did Microsoft Edge. Right or wrong, by default I don't trust any Chromium-based browser.) Firefox took its place on the desktop and DuckDuckGo on mobile devices.

Email

This was an easy choice--I went with ProtonMail. Ditching Gmail took the longest amount of time. I had a lone holdout account I felt I couldn't delete for a few reasons. One of them was for YouTubeTV. Yeah, I ditched that too.

Web Site

I used the Blogger/Blogspot platform as a blogger for many years. Now I'm here on DaveMason.me. I don't particularly enjoy running my own site, but it's not onerous.

Android

This was a bear. I don't want to discourage any of you from trying to divorce Google from your cell phone, but it is difficult and nerve wracking. I didn't document my experience very well, but I blogged about the experience if you're interested.