I've been an Android user since around 2010, and I started using Gmail back when it was in beta and you needed an invite to sign up... That was around 2005... So 21 years of using a single email service. I also had my photos and videos backed up on G Photos and a bunch of files and backups in G Drive.

I have put in months of effort untangling my online life and freeing it from Google services. Once I finally went through and downloaded my entire Photo library and exported most of the content off of Drive, I honestly felt a sense of liberation. Suddenly I was in control of my own content. It was surreal to experience it.

If you are curious how to free yourself from Google and use more privacy-centric services, I looked no further than Proton. I signed up for a Proton email address a few years ago, and started liking it so much that I ended up subscribing. Now that I'm (mostly) off google, I subscribed to their premium service. So I have a hefty cloud drive, a bunch of email addresses that go to one inbox, plus a high quality VPN and password manager.

Sometimes I feel a bit uneasy about having all these services connected to one account, because that is what I am trying to free myself from... The other side of that is that Proton doesn't mine every bit of data I give to it so that it can serve me ads, the way Google does... The other selling point is that Proton is a Europe-based company, and not a techno-feudalistic mega-corp that controls basically ALL of the information. DeGoogling is only enhanced by moving to European web services.

In case you are wondering the process I took to DeGoogle, here is a rough list of steps... 1. Sign up for an alternative email service (like Proton) 2. Go to https://takeout.google.com and go down the list. Choose data that you want packaged up and provided to you. I HIGHLY recommend doing multiple requests, one for each service you want to save. 4. Unpack that data and save it to a hard drive, or where ever you plan to keep that data. 5. In Google Drive, go through and clean it out. Make sure to check the “Computers” section first. If you've ever used google drive to back up devices, all that data is stored there and it's a HUGE amount of data. 6. Go through Gmail, searching for before a certain date, and start deleting. Use this in the searchbar:“before:YYYY/MM/DD” then press the option “Select all conversations that match this search” to make it easier. 7. Unsubscribe from Google One. Stop paying them money.

I am a dreamer. I dream of a world where humanity is not boiled down into datasets and our interests mean more than what an algorithm shoves onto our feed. Where our engagement with a piece of software comes with consent, and doesn't serve some amorphous, pseudo-religious devotion to the technologies known as “Artificial Intelligence.” In the past couple of month, I have been living in the Twin Cities of Minnesota during the occupation by Federal ICE agents. As you may know, shit has been bad here (If you don't know, welcome to the Internet). In that time I have read about the software used by these goons to locate people who are living here, working here, going to school here, and abducting them, often deporting them unjustly, and also terrorizing our communities. These actions are facilitated by the 5 Big Tech companies: Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta (“GAMAM”). So my reaction to that fact? Cut out as much of their services as I can. That's it. I'm done.

I have been an Android user for over 10 years now. You could call me a recovering Google fan. Now, I am on a journey to De-Google my online life. I will also cut out as much of the other GAMAM companies as I can... It is impossible to completely stop using them all, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft host a vast majority of the Internet. This blog will be a memoir of that journey. And a journey it is. I'll try to share insights, context, and hopefully share plenty of apps and services that could help others make this leap. So, join me, won't you? Let's disenshittify our lives.