There’s a huge number of steps you can take to reduce Google’s power and influence over your business and personal life. You would get a lot out of subscribing for free to our new content by email, by Session messenger, via RSS feed, uncensored Ethereum push notifications, or on Nostr. Some of these include:
| Tyranny Service | Freedom Alternative |
| Google Search | SearX, Brave Search,Duckduckgo, Startpage |
| Google Android | Graphine OS or Calyx OS |
| Chrome Browser | LibreWolf, Brave, Icecat |
| Google Docs / Cloud | Nextcloud, Skiff, Ente.io (Photos) |
| Google Meet | Jitsi, Brave’s Video Meet, Matrix (there’s a new web browser platform) |
| Google Ads | Gab’s Ads, paid in Bitcoin. Minds.com ads, swap Eth for Minds (although we can not endorse any particular controversial content) |
| Gmail | Self-hosted: Mail-in-a-box, iRedMail Trusting others: Skiff, Tutanota, Protonmail |
| Youtube Front-ends | Freetube (desktop), NewPipe (android), Invidious.io |
| Youtube alternative | Peertube, BunnyCDN, Rumble, Odysee (To avoid Odysee’s ID requirement for creators, you need LRBY crypto tokens) |
Here’s a deeper breakdown of these alternatives and mirrors:
1) Use Nextcloud instead of Google Docs
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.
You can even make team To-Do lists, schedule meetings with a calendar, and have live video meetings all within the platform.
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.
2) Don’t use Gmail. And encourage others to avoid it.
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.
3) Use Jitsi instead of Google Meet
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 doesn’t require an account sign-up.
All your team has to do is click a link and they’re ready to chat right in the web browser.
4) Pay for Ads in Bitcoin with Gab, & Reject Google ads
Gab is a free speech Twitter alternative that offers ads that can reach millions of customers. Not to mention, you can build a following for your business by just posting content on the platform for free. If you want to use ads, you can pay in Bitcoin.
Paying in Bitcoin is important because it allows you to reject government-backed fractional reserve banks which abuse citizens with rampant inflation that creates inequality.
Please note that Gab contains content that some may find controversial. We can not endorse any particular controversial content, but neither do we dismiss entire platforms because there is some content we disagree with.
5) Use Brave Search, Duckduckgo, Startpage, or SearX
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 is a free mirror, that lets you get a glimpse of Google’s results, without Google actually being able to spy on you.
If you really want to get private, you can try SearX. 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.
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.
6) 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.
7) 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.
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.
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 OS is very similar to the original Android released by Google without the spyware. While as Graphine OS 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. To help reduce tracking, we recommend a VPN, Linux, virtual machines, and other open source software tools. You would get a lot out of subscribing for free to our new content by email, by Session messenger, via RSS feed, uncensored Ethereum push notifications, or on Nostr.
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 a Nextcloud server or give you an email account that doesn’t decrypt the emails until it’s on your device. This prevents ANYONE, not even the email server itself, from seeing your conversations.
Simplified Privacy also offers custom Linux support, VPN advice, 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, Session, or XMPP, for anonymous cryptocurrency.