Snippet: How I Fully Quit Google (And You Can, Too) ☇

Nithin Coca for The Next Web:

Over the past six months, I have gone on a surprisingly tough, time-intensive, and enlightening quest — to quit using, entirely, the products of just one company — Google. What should be a simple task was, in reality, many hours of research and testing. But I did it. Today, I am Google-free, part of the western world’s ultimate digital minority, someone who does not use products from the world’s two most valuable technology companies (yes, I don’t use Facebook either). […]

Like many, I was a victim of Google creep. Search led to email, to documents, to analytics, photos, and dozens of other services all built on top of and connected to each other. Google turned from a company releasing useful products to one that has ensnared us, and the internet as a whole, into its money-making, data gathering apparatus. Google is pervasive in our digital lives in a way no other corporation is or ever has been. It’s relatively easy to quit using the products of other tech giants. With Apple, you’re either in the iWorld, or out. Same with Amazon, and even Facebook owns only a few platforms and quitting is more of a psychological challenge than actually difficult.

While I’m not advocating this for everyone, there are a lot of great alternatives to Google that may actually work better in some instances. I think many of us have gone all-in on various technology company silos and the start of the year is a great time to re-evaluate services in our lives.