About 10 minutes after I decided to try temporarily removing Google from my life—an experiment I hoped would illuminate how much Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL -0.06% giant dominates online existence—I messed it all up.
I spotted a video of Donald Glover, co-star of “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” giving a Millennium Falcon tour. Even on my most careful guard, I still clicked the red play button. A few seconds in, I realized I was watching YouTube—Google’s YouTube.
Google is so woven into the fabric of the internet it’s all but impossible to avoid. It’s where billions of users find, create and store important information, where they work and distract themselves from working. You can quit Facebook or take a Twitter break and barely notice, save for an increased sense of boredom in the Starbucks line. Google, you’d miss.
But even more than other companies offering free services, Google collects astounding amounts of data about you and uses it to sell ads. I’m happy with Google, because to date there haven’t been reports of catastrophic breaches or data-sharing scandals on the level of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica nightmare. If Google sprung a leak, it could be disastrous.
That’s why I set out to leave Google’s planet of intertwined products and services. And when I did, I was surprised to find how many strong alternatives had survived its gravitational pull.
Trading spaces
Quitting Google takes more than just typing “bing.com.” I deleted 16 apps from my phone, from Gmail to Google Maps to Google Photos. I unplugged my Google Home, yanked the Chromecast from the back of my TV, and powered down my Chromebook. Luckily I don’t own a Nest thermostat, or this would have become a construction project.
I’d never realized before how my life had come to revolve around Google products. To replace them, I brought in an Amazon Echo and a Microsoft Surface Laptop. I used the Notion app and Dropbox Paper for notes and documents, and switched cord-cutting allegiance from YouTube TV to Sling. I deleted the Chrome browser from all my devices, and installed Firefox in its place.
Most Google services have straightforward replacements. Microsoft’s free Office Online for Docs and Sheets, Signal for Hangouts, Evernote for Keep, Flipboard for Google News. In many cases you can download your Google data using its Takeout service, upload it to a new app—for instance, bringing email and calendars into Outlook—and hardly miss a beat. iPhone users who switch their search engine to Bing or DuckDuckGo and use Apple’s productivity apps almost never encounter Google.
During my time without Google, I missed Maps, Photos and YouTube most. Other navigation services exist (MapQuest lives!) but even the latest Apple Maps can’t beat Google Maps for traversing the real world. My Google Photos account contains years of memories, and Google’s smart photo search is by far the best.
YouTube, meanwhile, is the only game in town for internet video. (Vimeo has interesting projects, but it’s a handful of sand vs. YouTube’s beach.) Without YouTube, I‘m sure I’ve missed dozens of trailers, music videos, late-night clips and useful tutorials I’d have otherwise enjoyed. That dominance is a concern, especially when YouTube is under scrutiny for allowing—and even recommending—fake and heinous videos.
Avoiding Google was hardest at work. We use Google’s G Suite of enterprise apps, so Gmail, Google Drive, Docs and Sheets contain the majority of my work. I had to force Dropbox Paper on my co-workers, and warned them emailing me wouldn’t do much good. (They still emailed.)
I even encountered Google in unexpected places, like when an app that uses two-factor authentication asked for a code from Google Authenticator. Or when I opened my to-do list app and realized I’d used my Google account to log in.
Give and take
As Google products have taken over, they’ve also become more insular and closed. Google Search tries to answer your questions without ever taking you to another site. Gmail’s best security features are a hassle to use, except for other Gmail users.
The Chrome browser is the worst offender: Some Google services, like Google Earth, work only in Chrome—though Google says it’s changing that.
Chrome commands nearly 60% market share, according to analytics company Statcounter—more than four times as large as second-place Safari. It has outsize influence over the future of the web. Companies like Airbnb and Bank of America have directed users to Chrome for the “optimized” versions of their sites. If you use a Google product in another browser, Google frequently prompts you to download Chrome. (Google says it is dedicated to supporting other browsers.)
By almost any measure, Google collects more data than Facebook. I recommend doing a thorough audit of your My Activity page, which displays everything Google watches you do. You should also manage and delete data through Google’s privacy and security checkups.
On a recent day, Google tracked me in 468 different activities—many that had nothing to do with Google, except that I did them using a Chromebook, Android phone or Chrome browser. Even on one of my Google-free days, that number was still 18—thanks to apps that were logged in via my Google account (and my fiancée opening the YouTube app on our Roku).
I also recommend trying more non-Google software and services. It isn’t like Facebook, where you have to get all your friends to leave with you.
Download Firefox, which has automated antitracking features and some nifty ways to manage and share tabs. Switch to Bing or DuckDuckGo—believe it or not, they are just as good as Google for most things. Take your meeting notes in Dropbox Paper.
You don’t need to stop using Google products altogether—and as I found, you practically can’t if you try. But make sure you’re only using the products you want, and only granting Google access to your data when you’re getting something you value in return.
After nearly a week of not using Google products, I‘m glad to end my experiment. I can finally finish that Donald Glover video, and I haven’t found a better email system than Gmail or a better navigator than Maps. Still, a peek outside the Googlesphere helped me find some excellent alternatives—many with more focus on privacy—to the apps I’d used too often by default. Going forward, I’ll be a better citizen of the internet—not just the one Google created.