How to leave Google and why
jach.me
How to leave Google and why
1–10 of 146 posts
Re: How to leave Google and why
#2One of the biggest problems is probably that there's almost no way of using an android phone and purchase apps without a google account (which will be then linked to purchases and activities).
Re: How to leave Google and why
#3One of the biggest problems is probably that there's almost no way of using an android phone and purchase apps without a google account (which will be then linked to purchases and activities).
Using is possible with microG [1], but it’s not stable yet and purchasing is indeed very rarely possible (the only Android App I have bought outside the playstore is Titanium Backup)
[1]: https://microg.org/
Re: How to leave Google and why
#4One of the biggest problems is probably that there's almost no way of using an android phone and purchase apps without a google account (which will be then linked to purchases and activities).
Maybe try FDroid?
Re: How to leave Google and why
#5One of the biggest problems is probably that there's almost no way of using an android phone and purchase apps without a google account (which will be then linked to purchases and activities).
> just use iPhone, FDroid or a dumb phone, duh
Honestly, we need a optimised non-custom rom alternative to smartphone operating systems, which is not iOS or google/android.
While the custom-rom development has come a long way, it's to fiddly, often lacks long-term support, shortcomings in terms of stability (network/singal disruptions, battery usage, crashes, bricks)and even privacy.
Re: How to leave Google and why
#6One of the biggest problems is probably that there's almost no way of using an android phone and purchase apps without a google account (which will be then linked to purchases and activities).
This isn't true.
There's two caveats: (a) it's a little unstable with no Google account but using a throwaway Google account fixes this, and (b) it doesn't get you away from Google because they still have a lot of ways to track you in Android without an account, but...
You can disable Play services and install Aurora Store from F-Droid and have a very reasonable Android experience with no Google account.
Aurora Store is a Play Store client that doesn't require a Google account, so you can get access to all the "normal" commercial apps and games that are absent on F-Droid. The developers use a central account for API access which can get rate limited and get blocked sometimes (they recommend you sign in with your own throwaway Google account to avoid this), but otherwise it's better than Play Store in many ways.
Some apps will not work without Play services but I've found that in most cases it's either a matter of:
- some annoying notification function of the app doesn't work but the rest of the app works fine
- in some rare cases, apps with a strong reliance on Play services have alternative independent builds available as apk from their own website
You can also just leave Play services enabled and simply never log into your Google account (the Aurora account login is separate, it doesn't link into the rest of the device) BUT if you do this Google will plague you with prompts to login for all eternity.
Re: How to leave Google and why
#71. The title mentions only Google.
2. The article then talks about both Facebook and Google and links to some of Facebook's most egregious incidents like data sharing, Cambridge Analytica, WhatsApp.
3. The article then proceeds to tell you how to leave Google.
It just comes across in a bad way. Don't mix up the two companies - they aren't equivalent. And if you want to give advice on leaving Google, do that instead of this switcharoo that uses Facebook's scandals as a reason to leave Google.
Re: How to leave Google and why
#8One of the biggest problems is probably that there's almost no way of using an android phone and purchase apps without a google account (which will be then linked to purchases and activities).
> just use iPhone, FDroid or a dumb phone, duh Honestly, we need a optimised non-custom rom alternative to smartphone operating systems, which is not iOS or google/android. While the custom-rom development has come a long way, it's to fiddly, often lacks long-term support, shortcomings in terms of stability (network/singal disruptions, battery usage, crashes, bricks)and even privacy.
The 2005's rang, they want their phones back. My Sony Ericsson 500i was my edgy love of my teenage college years. Every provider had their own phone with their own firmware. Android appeared and nearly-all of them got in to bed with Google.
And so here we are, living in a world of a million different sized rectangles; all running Android.
> Honestly, we need a optimised non-custom rom alternative to smartphone operating systems, which is not iOS or google/android.
Symbian was way ahead for its time. But I'm just glad we have some developments such as PinePhone and Librem
Re: How to leave Google and why
#9Author missed a spot, still using fonts by Google, and their MX.
Re: How to leave Google and why
#10I recently closed my Google account after a few months of an automated message informing anyone that the address would be closed soon (using the "Vacation responder" functionality from Gmail settings). In the meantime, I started using my new email address for all my online accounts and I passed it on to all my contacts. Another thing I did, was to download all my Google data (I saved the archives on my NAS at home and on my Nextcloud instance on Digitalocean).
Since then, the only time I needed a Google account was when someone wanted to collaborate on a Google Docs file. I created a "burner" temporary account for that, which I subsequently closed.
Every now and then I might watch something on Youtube, but I never really need to be logged in.
It's funny because before closing my Google account, I imagined it would have been so hard, when if fact it was quite uneventful.
During the last 12 months I also closed Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. It feels really good. I don't waste time during the day, I'm more focused during working hours and after work I have more time to do whatever I really like doing (as opposed to wasting time watching someone else doing those things on Youtube or Instagram).