How to Be a Google Reducetarian

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Exiting the Google ecosystem — as we explored in Soonish Episode 4.11, Goodbye, Google — is 1) a process, and 2) a continuum. You can’t do it all at once, and you can’t really reach the end. Rather than trying to cut Google out of your life entirely, it’s better to think of the metaphor of reducetarianism, the commitment to spare animals and the planet by eating less meat rather than zero meat.

Here are articles from reputable sources like The New York Times and MIT Technology Review explaining why you should consider leaving Google and how you can reduce your reliance on the search and advertising giant. Below that, I itemize the alternative sites and services I’ve chosen for myself as one possible template or checklist for listeners.

The Case Against Google

Dina Srinivasan, Google Is Dominating This Hidden Market with No Rules, The New York Times, June 21, 2021

Greg Bensinger, Google’s Privacy Backpedal Shows Why It’s So Hard Not to Be Evil, The New York Times, June 14, 2021

Laura Morton, Google Seeks to Break Vicious Cycle of Online Slander, The New York Times, June 10, 2021

Steve Lohr, Once Tech’s Favorite Economist, Now a Thorn In Its Side, The New York Times, May 20, 2021

Kashmir Hill, A Vast Web of Vengeance, The New York Times, The New York Times, January 30, 2021

James Kerr, Why Is Big Tech Under Assault? Power, The New York Times, April 21, 2021

James Vincent, Google is poisoning its reputation with AI researchers, The Verge, April 13, 2021

Beyond The Search: The Biases Inside Google’s Algorithms, PBS Nova, April 8, 2021

Daisuke Wakabayashi, Google Dominates Thanks to an Unrivaled View of the Web, The New York Times, December 14, 2020

Tim Hwang, Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet, FSG Originals, published October 13, 2020

Kashmir Hill, I Tried to Live Without the Tech Giants. It Was Impossible, The New York Times, July 31, 2020

Kevin Roose, The Making of a YouTube Radical, The New York Times, June 8, 2019

Asher Schechter, Google and Facebook’s “Kill Zone”: “We’ve Taken the Focus Off of Rewarding Genius and Innovation to Rewarding Capital and Scale”, ProMarket, University of Chicago Booth Stigler Center, May 25, 2018

Marco Arment, Why Not Google?, Marco.org, May 29, 2015

How to Get Off Google

Brian X. Chen, If You Care About Privacy, It’s Time to Try a New Browser, The New York Times, March 31, 2021

Tony Forcucci, How to get off Google and redo your personal tech stack, Medium, January 16, 2021

Lee McGuigan, This tool confuses Google’s ad network to protect your privacy, MIT Technology Review, January 6, 2021

Brendan Hesse, How to Quit Google Completely: The Comprehensive Guide, Lifehacker, November 8, 2019

Nithin Coca, My Year Without Google, OneZero, September 4, 2019

Nithin Coca, How I Fully Quit Google (And You Can, Too), Medium, July 9, 2018

Harry Guinness, How to Remove Google From Your Life (And Why That’s Nearly Impossible), How-To Geek, April 16, 2018

A Checklist of Alternatives to Google

These are my personal favorites, and they reflect the fact that I’m firmly embedded in the Apple ecosystem, for better or worse. Consult GoodReports.com for a more comprehensive list of alternatives.

  1. Search Engine — DuckDuckGo

  2. Browser — Mozilla Firefox

  3. Email Platform — Protonmail

  4. Mobile Operating System — Apple iOS

  5. Streaming Music — Apple Music

  6. Maps — Apple Maps

  7. Calendar/Appointments — iCloud Calendar

  8. Collaboration Suite — I don’t use them. I exchange Microsoft Word or Excel documents over email.

  9. Cloud Storage — Dropbox

  10. Photo Storage and Sharing — Flickr

  11. Video Storage and Sharing — I’m gradually transitioning off YouTube to Vimeo for sharing, but I still use YouTube as a viewer.

  12. Podcast Player — Pocket Casts

  13. Password Management — I have a system but I’m certainly not going to talk about it here!