How to Reduce Google’s Control Over You
Google's AI can mislead users, perpetuate bias, and invade privacy.
Break Free
There’s a huge number of steps you can take to reduce Google’s power and influence over your business and personal life.
Google Search: Mojeek, MetaGer, SearX, Brave Search, Duckduckgo
Google Android: GrapheneOS, CalyxOS
Chrome Browser: LibreWolf, Brave, Ungoogled Chromium, Tor, Icecat
Google Docs: Cryptpad, NextCloud
Google Drive: Nextcloud, Ente.io (Photos), SyncThing
Google Meet: Jitsi, Brave’s Video Meet, Matrix (there’s a new web browser platform)
Gmail:
Self-hosted: Mail-in-a-box, Luke Smith scripts, Mailu, iRedMail
Trusting others: Skiff, Tutanota, Protonmail
Youtube Front-ends: Freetube (desktop), NewPipe (android), Invidious.io
Youtube alternative: Peertube, BunnyCDN, Rumble, Odysee
Note: To avoid Odysee’s ID requirement for creators, you need LRBY crypto tokens)
Here’s a deeper breakdown of these alternatives and mirrors:
Use Cryptpad (or Nextcloud) instead of Google Docs
Knowledge is power
Knowledge is power, so why give Google a glimpse at your company’s plans? Nextcloud is free and open source cloud software that’s real easy to use. Nextcloud lets you not only share files and documents, but edit comments on them for teams to collaborate, just like Google Docs.
NextCloud
You can even make team To-Do lists, schedule meetings with a calendar, and have live video meetings all within the platform.
Self-hosted
Nextcloud is setup either on your own hardware (it could be as small as a Rasberry Pi) or on the cloud. Simplified Privacy offers Nextcloud setups and hosting to make you effortless ready in a few clicks. We’ll setup the server’s security for you and then hand over the passwords, so you don’t have to learn any complex Linux commands.
Don’t use Gmail. And encourage others to avoid it.
Gmail reads every word
You have a lot more power than you think. For example, rather than build an email list, only to have it censored later at your competitor’s wishes, you can build it to be independent from the start.
Give out a free ebook, pamphlet, or even some type of small discount for non-gmail email accounts. Simplified Privacy offers email accounts that give you the complete freedom and control over your own data.
Alternatives to Google Meet
Jitsi
Jitsi Meet is a free and open source video meeting platform that is an excellent substitute for Google Meet since it’s easy to use and can be setup on your own VPS.
Brave Meet
Brave is just hosting Jitsi on their server, but that’s an option
Matrix
Matrix has a new multi-person video web app.
Keet
Keet’s app has multi-person video peer-to-peer
Ditch Google Search
Use Mojeek, MetaGer, Brave Search, or even Duckduckgo
There is no reason to ever use Google’s search engine. Brave search and Duckduckgo provide just as good search results without the tracking. And if you really need to see what’s on Google, then use SearX or Startpage.
Startpage
If you need Google results, then Startpage is a free mirror, that lets you get a glimpse of Google’s results, without Google actually being able to spy on you.
SearXNG
SearX is free open source software that works by getting results from a variety of other search engines, while hiding the IP address of the end user. SearX can be hosted on your own hardware, like a Rasberry Pi, or there are publicly available instances which you can use by just going to their website like a regular search engine.
Farside.link
You can find working SearX instances by going to farside.link
Also, you can set farside.link/searxng to your default homepage, to automatically get a fresh instance going.
Ditch Google Chrome
Use LibreWolf, Brave, IceCat, or open source Chromium instead of Google Chrome
There is no benefit to using Google’s Chrome browser. If you want to use Google’s browser for Google services, then use Chromium which is the open source version. This has less spyware while offering the same benefits.
For anything other than directly signing into a Google account, don’t use their browsers. A huge variety of other browsers are available which we documented at length here.
Use a Degoogled phone
Android is the free and open source operating system created by Google. However, when you get a phone from nearly all phone manufacturers, it doesn’t come with the open source version of Android. Instead it has a version that Google maliciously modified to spy.
Android FOSS
The reason Google even released the original Android code to begin with is to allow app developers to build on top of it. By then not using the original version of their released code, it allows them to give the illusion of transparency while keeping their malicious tracking under the radar.
Root
On many phones it’s possible to “root” or un-do this Google operating system and then put a privacy respecting version of this Android software in it’s place.
Calyx & Graphene
CalyxOS is very similar to the original Android released by Google without the spyware. While as GrapheneOS builds more security and privacy features on top of this framework. Both are excellent choices and both have some advantages and disadvantages.
Beyond alternatives
Even if you use these alternatives, you will undoubtedly encounter people who will try to force Google upon you. Here at Simplified Privacy, we specialize in helping you reduce Google’s power and influence over your business and personal life. Our goal is to make this as easy and simple as possible, so that you don’t have to get a doctorate degree in computer science just to have private and censorship free communications.
We can help you setup an email, Cryptpad, chat, Nextcloud server. Simplified Privacy also offers custom Linux support and virtual machines setups. In your personal consultation, we’ll guide you through your choice of audio, video, or live texting chat on how to meet your privacy needs.
Don’t make mistakes that expose your personal data unnecessarily, or slow down your internet or computer with a bad setup. Your consultation would be end-to-end encrypted on easy to download and use apps like Signal, SimpleX, Session, or XMPP, for anonymous cryptocurrency.
If you really want to learn and take your privacy to the next level, subscribe to our new content via: Session, Nostr, Bastyon, RSS, Ethereum Push
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