PiHole-Google: Completely Block Google and Its Services

I have been running a pi-hole server at my home for almost a year. We have, at times, around thirty devices on our network, (thermostat (non-nest), several Google Home devices, numerous phones, 4 desktops, 4 laptops, 3 ipads, 1 TV, a chromecast/roku/firestick, a few smart receptacles, and a Xfinity modem) and sometimes the traffic is pretty neat to examine. Its interesting to see which devices phone home.

Whenever a necessary site is blocked it only takes a few seconds to whitelist it. I can also easily blacklist sites. The GUI is very easy to access and use. We have never had an issue with YouTube (YT premium) or anything else really, but occasionally a link will be blocked because of Google or other ad traffic. This has never happened with YT or any other streaming services.

One thing to remember is VPN traffic ignores the Pi-Hole server. Even when the router/computer/device DNS is set to use it. This has never been an issue for us, as only a handful of devices here are using VPN, but I suppose it could be under the right circumstances, but easily fixable.

Another approach is whitelisting. Like a default firewall rule of "block all" and a set of specific exceptions, I find this approach can be easier to manage. Probably not going to work for everyone but works for me.

Figure out what domains I need to access for the content I am after[1] and just allow those. "Block" everything else. For example, I might need something like .googlevideo.com once in a while but I will never need something like googletagmanager.net.

1. To do this, I just go through the logs of a local authoritative nameserver that I run solely for this purpose, i.e. collecting lists of needed domains. Then I add the necessary DNS data to /etc/hosts or another local authoritative server, e.g., tinydns. I believe unbound or pdns_recursor can serve static data as well.

Does the author mention avoiding using Google as a third party DNS service. In the beginning, PiHole, i.e., preconfigured dnsmasq, was pointed at some third party DNS service, maybe Google. Not sure what the default configuration is today. If it was Google, then is there any irony in that a project designed to blocks ads is by default having its users send their IP and ISP location to an advertising company probably hundreds if not thousands of times over in a single day of web use.

This makes me think of the "Cutting the Big 5" article [0] that was on here a few months back. While I agree with a lot of the sentiment here it seems that a complete block is actually impractical. Instead I would love to see these kinds of projects not just blanket cover all of FAMG, but rather target the most nefarious ones. I definitely don't know if this is even possible. But is there a way to use services but cut out a significant portion of the tracking? Those are the curated lists I'd love to see.

[0] https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-l...

Personalization makes it incredibly hard to "watch the watchers," because everyone is getting a slightly different view of what Google is doing. I would like to see a program where users submitted data about their recommendations to researchers so that we could uncover Google's opinions. It would have a lot of financial value to YouTubers and would make it harder for Google to abuse their role as censor.

I could imagine shadow-burning YouTubers without banning them by shrinking their recommendation audience.

Further, it would be good for Google. Every little shift in the weather is going to get blamed on them whether they deserve it or not, now that it's common knowledge that they weild this power in more than zero cases. Google is about to discover why judges write opinions. Administering justice from secret meetings leads to popular dissent more than it leads to justice.

You just made me watch some random, surprisingly interesting crafting dude, use string. On things.