alt Hacker NewsIf they go through with this, I will make it my life's mission for the coming months to de-google my personal life and break any dependencies on google at work. Done with this nonsense. Shouldn't take more than a month to remove the tumor.
On my android phone:
My own launcher
My own keyboard
My own sync tool for local net
My own net tools to WoL some devices on my lan.
My own tool to control 3 proxmox servers
My own tool that parses groceries slips
My own tool that keep tracks of my vehicles events/lifecycle/purchases etc.
If they break my launcher/keyboard and my ability to use my phone in my customized way, they will NEVER see me as a client again. None of these apps are in the Play Store, they are signed with my own signing keys, which have never been uploaded to google, in fact, no google account is linked to these apps. These apps are also privacy-oriented (even the keyboard, I ship a 1mb dictionary with and it learns my own words, never transmits anything).
I will not give google my ID , neither Persona or anyone else. I'm very happy to go back to using bank card + chip + pin than use google wallet. Trust me I will walk away. I already move 4 family members off of Windows in the last 2 years, I will get them off google too.
I started de-googling a few weeks ago. I don't really know what I'm doing but it's kind of enjoyable to learn. Graphene OS with F-Droid and I'm most of the way there.
I still use the play store for some apps unfortunately. Also google maps, gmail, google messages (for rcs) and google fi. I'm not sure if theres anything close to the quality of traffic reporting as google maps, so it's hard to give up. The rest I will eventually move away from... Hopefully.
I have a home server with a reverse wireguard proxy for self hosting photos, calendars, etc.
I also have firefox with noscript blocking everything by default, but that's a big pain for an average person. Also it doesn't seem like firefox does a good job of anti-fingerprinting, but I haven't looked too deeply into that.
I even bought a tv that has adb access, and I removed a bunch of bloat, but it doesn't seem possible to remove the google launcher without causing huge system instability. I might just firewall it off.
There are a ton of open source alternatives to google products now, way more than the last time I tried moving away. It's time to leave.