As a public service message and a followup to my previous post on quitting Google, I offer this article from Lifehacker on quitting Google. Lifehacker is not quite a site for the average person but neither is it a nerd site. It’s mostly a place where people can discover unique hacks to simplify their life. My major takeaway from the article is that quitting Google is more mainstream than I imagined. Nerds and privacy geeks are always talking about it but so, it seems, are “ordinary” people.
The article quotes Janet Vertesi, a sociology professor at Princeton and privacy export. She says that quitting Google is like getting divorced: it’s difficult but feels so good when you get through it.
The trick, she says, is to not try to do it all at once. The Google empire encompasses many areas and you’re likely using many of their services, so trying to replace everything at once can be overwhelming. Vertesi says to pick just one Google service—Chrome or Gmail, say—and find a replacement for that. Once you’ve successfully transitioned from that service, you can pick another to replace.
She also says that you shouldn’t just pick another company and replace all Google’s services with theirs. Rather, you want to experiment with new and better ways of performing the tasks that you used to use Google for. Just switching to another ecosystem won’t help you with that.
The article doesn’t suggest alternatives; it’s more about recommending a process for finding alternatives that suit you and integrating them into your workflow in a smooth and stressless way. It’s a quick and easy read and worth your time if you’re looking for a way to rid yourself of Google.