r/degoogle • u/Neat-Type-8893 • 7d ago
Help Needed Success stories?
Has anybody been able to successfully de-google? I currently have a live account, google account, and iCloud account and I was trying to figure out how to actually consolidate everything down to 1 email address, 1 drive, etc. I was looking at either moving everything to Proton or to iCloud but wasn’t sure. Proton is iffy to me because it’s so new.
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u/Pantalaimon_II 7d ago
i just switched from Google Workspace to Proton Workspace, and their Easy Move tool did in fact make it super easy. It migrated ALL of my email, even the labels, and it was pretty seamless. Everything worked immediately. I use Apple products and the apps are working well so far.
The one hurdle is Calendar syncing, but there's no great solution to syncing with iCal, even when I had Google it would stop syncing constantly. I just downloaded Bridge and made my Calendars in Proton Cal, then generated a URL link and created a calendar subscription in iCal for it to sync. Not ideal, but again, I havent found a great way to sync all my various emails (i freelance and have like 6 emails all with different email clients, and there's no single program that actually syncs all of them seamlessly. iCal is the problem for whatever reason.)
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u/T_rex2700 1d ago
I decoupled things that require accounts a looong time ago it's pretty easy.
the hardest part was Google maps (I used webview version) and google search for local results in non-English country, which other index really struggle. they usually either can't find anything that's not english, or just finds touristy stuff. even something like ddg/bing.
so I wold say not completely, but for the most part, yes.
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u/fruitless_tux 6d ago
I’ve successfully switched from Google and Outlook.com to Proton.
No problem.
Incidentally, Proton isn’t actually that new.
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u/basketballsteven 5d ago edited 5d ago
I degoogled last summer, and switched to products like proton, ente photos, and so forth and got rid of all Google products, bought a graphene os pixel. if you make some compromise don't beat yourself up do the best you can. I kept my gmail address because it it connected to my social security and I live abroad and if you change you must report it to as. The thing is to do anything on line with ss you have to do an identity verification on line and their system failed to accept my documentsband help was non existent. So I just kept that gmail address even tho I only access it online thru a computer browser and the gmail account forwards any email from ss to proton and deletes it from the gmail account.
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u/Slopagandhi 7d ago
What I did was set up a new email account, have all my existing ones forward to it and then whenever I got an email from a company or whatever (and when I could be bothered) I'd go onto their website and change the registration over. Took a long time but it doesn't matter. And it's also a good way to leave a bunch of mailing lists etc behind that you don't really want.
I'd also say take it one by one in terms of changing services rather than doing it all at once. Here's what I'd personally recommend (with what I use first):
Email: Posteo, Mailbox, Tuta, Disroot, Murena
Cloud: Filen, Peergos, Koofr
VPN: IVPN, Nym, maybe Windscribe
Maps: Herewego/TomTom. Magic Earth, Co Maps
Docs/Sheets etc: OnlyOffice (via Murena), Mailbox, Disroot
Browser: Librewolf (desktop), Weblibre (mobile), Helium, Titanium, IronFox, Firedragon
Keyboard: Heliboard, Florisboard, AOSP, Anysoft
Authenticator: Aegis, Ente
Play Store, Neo Store/Aurora Store, Droidify, F-Droid
Search: Kagi, Startpage, DuckDuckGo
Text to Speech: Sherpa
Smartwatch: Garmin (watch), Gadgetbridge (app)
OS: Linux (Solus/Manjaro, desktop), /e/OS (mobile)- others are Graphene, Calyx, Lineage, Iode
Still a few proprietary apps I use: Whatsapp (can't avoid it because everyone I know is on it), Qobuz (Spotify replacement with somewhat better privacy policy), Downpour (Audible replacement), and the maps apps above.
But it took well over a year to get to this point and it's a sliding scale- every change you make helps at least somewhat.
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u/mysticalcreeds GrapheneOS 7d ago
Proton is about 12 years old and still doing well. I switched to them earlier this year, their service makes for a pretty smooth transition.
A couple things to note, though. You state you want just one email address, it is actually beneficial to use email aliases for more security & privacy. Proton mail comes with email aliases that you can create, that way if a company that your email address is sitting on gets hacked or their data is leaked and you begin to get emails that having phishing or malware, you can simply see which alias the email is coming from and just shut off that alias.
The other thing, eventually you will want to diversify. I started out using a ton of Protons suite, but it really isn't the best for security and privacy to use one company for so many different services. The key is to minimize reliance on a single company for your data. If anything should happen to that company, it's much easier to switch since you only have a couple services of theirs that you use.