De-Google

Here I'm outlining my road to removing Google from my life and world. Though it's a lot more than just Google; we're ruled by oligarchs, and I want to some participating in their charade. No more Amazon, or Facebooks or Apple; as best that I can ... so I guess we'll see what that looks like.

Google has been cancelled; and this is admittedly a big lift.

We were using Google Workplace for Domains, which was costing $7.20 per month, not a ton of money, but it adds up. And it is less than the going rate, because we were "grand-fathered" in; meaning we had an account from when they were free, so we got an additional discount.

Though in the age of oligarchs, there are certain precautions that we can all take to defend, and protect our online identities. No solution is perfect, or guaranteed; though it can be helpful to be aware of what's out there, and how systems work.

• BetterBird
• K9 Mail

Steps:

• Share Important GoogleDocs (done)
• Convert YT Channel Ownership (done)
• Copy Google Drive (done)
• Export Contact List (done)
• Cancel Subscription - Need to wait 7 days to create new Primary Owner for YT Channels.

Posteo Email (1 EUR / Month 2GB)

I couldn't get away from paying for an email address, and you're right; it's not my domain email address; but this is a truly a personal email address.

Additionally, everything about the company is eco-centric.

There are apps, and ways to remove the need to use Google on a phone as well; and at that point, this email address will truly be able to come into its own.

But I'm not there yet.

@Duck.com Email

This is a service provided by DuckDuckGo, and anonymous web search engine, that really is just a wrapper around bing.com, that anonymizes your information.

Either way, they provide additional spam filters, and enable you to not have to use your real email address for online forms; or anything else you don't want to.

The Apps

I'm using two apps to manage my emails, BetterBird (which is a fork of Mozilla's Thunderbird); and K9, which is a mobile app for email management.

I'm pushing all of my email to an old unused email address; and using Betterbird to filter emails and direct them accordingly. This means, some emails will have their addresses amended to go to the new Posteo email address; others will remain at the canin@dreamfreely endpoint, while others will be unsubscribed and deleted.

GoogleDrive: NextCloud ($5 / Month 1TB)

So admittedly, I have created another Gmail account, that allows me to more easily interact with others who use GoogleSheets, or GoogleSlides; while presumably I need an Gmail address for my cellphone.

Nonetheless, for the primary virtual storage I'll be using a NextCloud instance, as provided by Hetzner, based out of Germany.