My thoughts on migrating away from using Google

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This article is a work in progress. - November 2019

I have long been using Google's free products for a long time. They are free, easy to use and reliable. But Googles privacy practices are frankly disturbing.

See articles:

among many other articles online.

The problem isn't just Google it's just too tempting for any cloud based service to misuse the data they collect about you. For this reason among others I have endeavored to create my own cloud using servers and resources in my home using a business class account and in some cases virtual private servers on hosting providers but using encryption.

Note I am Apple user and developer but I am having issues with Apple as well.

Also your house is not a data center (power loss , redundancy and hurricanes oh my!).

Suggestions for replacements:

Google product Suggested replacement My notes about the transition
Fitbit fitness tracker Apple Watch or Garmin https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/cIntoSports-c571-p1.html
Search https://duckduckgo.com/
Email https://tutanota.com/
Google drive and storage https://syncthing.net/ + FreeNAS + ZFS (hosted and or at my house)
Google Photos Frankly I am writing my own but I can recommend https://piwigo.org/ for self-hosting.
Google Docs TBD
Google Maps https://www.openstreetmap.org/
Phone Apple iPhone or Sony phone and SailFish OS Keep in mind I am somewhat limited by the apps I require