Google and their services have become nearly ubiquitous pieces of modern life. Between emails and video calls, navigation, smartphones, internet searching, and watching videos, one can spend nearly their entire time online using a Google service on Google hardware.
I used to use as many services as a possibly could, mostly because they are free, work incredibly well, integrate seamlessly with other services, and contained great and wide-ranging recommendations: from videos and movies to restaurants, email composition, and, of course, advertisements. Google is primarily an advertising company and make most of their profits from showing these advertisements to their uses. So, the ultimate cost of using their services is seeing their targeted ads. Paradoxically, as you use more of their free services, the more it is likely to cost you as the advertisements become finely tuned to you.
Google is a huge player in digital services and faces few competitors. Even in the heyday of American car manufacturing, General Motors had to compete with Ford, Chrysler, and more. If Google disappeared tomorrow, there is no one firm that could fill the void. We have reached this point of digital supremecy held by just a single corporation because of the reasons listed above–their services perform and are designed incredibly well. They don’t even cost the consumer any money! But I can’t help but think that by having all of our personal data concentrated with just one company we are missing the forest for the trees. I fear that the real costs of this are are far higher than we may initially think.
First, this is a pretty big security risk. If a bad actor gets this data, they will know where I work and live, what I buy, what I see, and what I think about. If we diversify our investments, why shouldn’t we diversify our most personal information? Sure, maybe it isn’t the end of the world if someone targets me, but what if a malicious actor targets a high profile leader or politician? Cyberattacks are a major concern for every country.
Second, Google has a monopoly on a lot internet activity. Monopolies stifle innovation, but under the current “consumer welfare” standard initially proposed by the late Supreme Court Justice Robert Bork in The Antitrust Paradox and espoused by the Supreme Court today, I do not see much potential for any antitrust actions. There is a lot to talk about here, and it is perhaps a topic for another post, though.
If you still aren’t convinced that the cons outweight the pros, Google has fairly recently allowed users to view their data from Google and I highly recommend everyone try it. When I downloaded my information (it took a few days to prepare and was over 10GB!), I found out that they had a log of every single purchase made, YouTube video watched, place visited, photo taken, app downloaded, website visited, and much more.
Ultimately, this post is less about why you should be worried and more about concrete steps that you or anyone can take to wrangle back a degree of control from Google. I have listed a few alternatives to many Google products and services. I have used all of them and can recommend them. The process is not extremely hard or time consuming, and many changes can be made slowly and incrementally. A few will cost extra €/$, but allow you to have an ad-free experience.
Feel free to skip around to different tools that interest you; here is an index with links.
These are services that are applicable to everyone, including
The big one. The breakthrough that brought Google to where they are today. There are several good alternatives.
Gmail is able to be free partly because every email is scanned to show more accurate adverts. Most alternatives that don’t do this will also include calendar and contacts applications that you can uses.
If companies try to build competitive moats, Youtube is an ocean. It’s the entire platform, not something simple to change like a browser or email client. Other video hosting platforms like Vimeo exist and are nice if you would like to upload and share you own videos with family/friends. If there are specific videos or people that you want to watch, the best option is probably to create a separate account. This is a pretty easy option if you use a password manager.
Chrome used to be the best browser. It would seem like Firefox has taken that mantle back from Chrome.
A bit nicer than a standard dictionary as it allows you be a bit lazy and will translate entire phrases(or websites!).
I used to use Google Photos to back up my photos in case I was unable to get them from my phone for any reason. I ended up buying a cloud backup software so that I could backup my computer in addition to my entire phone.
The 21st century thumb drive. In theory one could always revert back to thumb drives but that would defeat the point, I suppose. I just ended up using my cloud backup software.
There is a dizzying array of messaging and calling options from Google that seem to be recycled every two years.
This both a hard problem to address and somewhat more difficult than switching some of the other options. While Android is open-source, it is pretty much controlled and developed by Google. There are several complicating factors in switching completely to something open source, but it is possible. Perhaps the easiest option is to disable Google services and switch to F-Droid instead of switching the entire OS.
How to replace the Google Play App Store? Thought that it was impossible? Turns out that there is a very nice alternative that does not involve downloading APK’s from shady websites.
I would suggest turning off location data for every app that you have and then only turning it on for the apps where you really need it. Aditionally, I would recommend turning off “Google Location Accuracy”. This is where your phone uses Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections that are available to you phone to pinpoint your location (Google collected this data while their cars drove around taking photos for Streetview).
A lot of home automation software that is connected to the internet freaks me out. It is susceptible to hacking and attacks, and in general I don’t think it provides that much advantage. Do you really want your kids to be able to be spied on by some random hacker or your thermostat to know exactly when you are or are not home to find the best time for a burglary? If you insist on some home automation software, I would recommend using something air-gapped from the internet.
For Google Home/Assistant to work, it is always listening. Of course, anyone who is in the room with you can use your account as if they were you–reading emails, events, etc. But wait–it’s even possible to shine a laser from hundreds of meters at the microphone to give specific commands like “open the garage door”! Seriously! Sure, you could unplug it when you don’t want to use it, but isn’t the entire point that it is super easy to use? If I need to reach to plug it in then I might as well just put on Walk Like an Egyptian myself.
Chromebooks are a nice concept. Not super powerful computers, but many people just need a Facebook/email/internet machine. However, with a Chromebook, you are locked in to the Google ecosystem.
If you want to have your own domain for a site or email, you will need a domain registrar.
I am still looking into this, but I will link this article from LWN.net.
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to me.