Alternatives to Google Products – The Complete List

[tao]

It’s been fun Google, but it’s time to say goodbye.

 

Have you noticed?

 

Google’s entire business model is based on you surrendering to their corporate surveillance. That’s it. All they do is repackage mass corporate surveillance into convenient, free, trendy applications that suck up all your data. Your private data helps Google dominate the online advertising market.

 

You are the product.

 

The other key issue to consider here is that Google is tracking and recording your activity in order to build a user profile, which can be used for various purposes. Google has many ways to track your activity, even if you are not logged into a Google account:

• Tracking through Google Adsense (all those annoying banner ads you see on most websites also function as tracking)
• Tracking through YouTube and other Google-owned platforms and products
• Tracking through websites that use Google Analytics (most websites use Google analytics – but not Restore Privacy)

All the data that Google collects about you is usually monetized through targeted advertising (Google is now the largest advertising company in the world). Your data may also be provided to government authorities (Google has been cooperating with governments for mass surveillance since 2009).

 

In other words, Google is working to track your every move online, even if you are working hard to avoid it.

The solution to this problem basically entails:

1. Deleting your Google accounts and data
2. Avoiding Google products and using alternatives (this guide)
3. Using good privacy tools, such as a private browser and a good VPN service, which will help protect your data from third parties

[...]

 

If interested, please read the complete guide to alternatives < here >.

[Rekkio]

This site unfortunately is absolutely misleading its users:

 

They claim to tell you how to have more privacy while telling you to do things that will turn all surveillance agencies on you:

 

You should not do what they tell you, don't delete your Google account because it'll have no effect on Privacy.

 

You have an unique browing behavior, so no matter which VPN you use and which browser you have your behavior's signature is the same.

 

Even your keyboard typing behavior cans distinguish you in a population set of a billion individuals (I no longer have the source for this).

 

If you do what they tell you, you'll at best have no effect and at worst you'll trigger all surveillance agencies because of your more than unique (and uncommon) behavior.

 

Privacy is when we know what you're doing, but you're uncomfortable with being seen doing it.

 

You can for example hide your browsing habits by using uBlock Origin & Ghostery if you're uncomfortable with Ad agencies knowing what you do.

 

If however your threat model (what you're protecting from) is an high-level entity like governments, you need Anonymity:

 

Anonymity

 

That means you blend in a defined population set in such a way that you become invisible, indistinguishable from someone else.

 

1. When you become Anonymous, everything you see, hear or write online stays in the Anonymous personna (and everything that originates from it).

 

You cannot interchange any kind of information between you and your anonymous self.

 

You cannot read a news online from your Anonymous personna and talk about it using your casual one: your casual self has never read it, so he cannot talk about it.

 

2. Anonymity comes at a loss of freedom. When you're Anonymous, you're not free: you're Anonymous; you're everyone else.

 

You cannot use anything if that thing isn't already used by millions of people, otherwise you're one of the few who use it.

 

You must be like everyone, which means you use Google, Windows 7 / 10, Firefox / Chrome but you cannot use Linux, Brave Browser, Chromium, and anything that is not common enough.

 

You're goal is to reduce your uniqueness from one in a billion to e.g. one in a thousand people.

 

3. If you're unsure or cannot properly manage an Anonymous personna, don't do it.

 

Seriously. Don't even try to be Anonymous if you're not sure about what you do.

 

Any mistake and all of it is gone. No errors are permitted, and you'll get uniquely flagged for it.

 

That paragraph is long enough yet I didn't really cover anything, just scrached the surface: that gives you a preview of how complex Anonymity is.

 

If you cannot do that, don't try to hide from a government - merely by not hiding you're doing like everyone else, so you're better off keeping things that way.