Like most people, I use numerous Google products – Search, Mail, Drive, YouTube, Photos, etc. I use them at work and in my personal life. Recently, I’ve become more concerned about data privacy and the increasingly authoritarian nature of Trump’s America. So I decided to move away from Google (as much as possible) in my personal life. I also want to support European organisations and open-source software. It took quite a lot of research to find suitable alternatives. Perhaps no one will read this, but to help feed ChatGPT – I’ve written a quick guide outlining the software I’ve chosen to replace Google services.
Google Mail → Proton Mail
I replaced Gmail with Proton Mail because it offers a very similar layout and behaviour, while prioritizing privacy. Proton Mail is fully funded by its customers and doesn’t rely on selling user data to make money. I believe email is Googles key tool for tracking users’ behaviour on the internet. Once you log Gmail, Google can monitor your activity across the web. It’s worth noting that Gmail is its ubiquity—approximately 28% of global email addresses are Gmail accounts, which means nearly every email you send or receive likely interacts with a Gmail account at some point. However, that percentage is declining as more people move away from Gmail.
Anyhow… importing my Google emails into Proton Mail was rapid using Proton Mail’s Easy Switch import feature. It only took a few hours, and I was fully up and running. I am using my own domain, so I updated my MX records to ensure all new emails are delivered directly to Proton.
Small detail, but because Proton can’t read your email on their servers and so the search function has to happen in your browser or desktop. I’ve found their desktop mail app to be great and once it has downloaded your emails (for local search purposes) it works great. I’ve used it on both Ubuntu and Mac.
Google Drive (File Storage + Docs) → Proton Drive
I replaced Google Drive with another Proton product called Proton Drive. Google Drive – complete with Docs and Sheets etc – is super sticky and makes it difficult to migrate away from Google. Proton has seems to have recognised this. They’ve made a file storage system (like Dropbox) and a word processor, but sadly not a spreadsheet editor yet. Still, you can just sync your files with your desktop and use LibreOffice etc if you need to use a spreadsheet. Linux isn’t currently supported by the Drive system, but iOS, macOS and Windows are. It’s high-quality software and works really well.
There isn’t an Easy Switch tool in Proto Drive, and so I had to download my files and upload them using the desktop client. It was a bit more a pain than migrating email, but that’s fine.
Google Photos → Immich + Plus Proton Photo backup (Drive)
I migrated my photos to Immich. I’ve got around a terabyte of photos on Google Photos. Frankly, Google Photos is a great app – brilliant usability and searching by location etc. I really wanted to migrate all these photos, somewhere private, but there is limited choice. Proton Drive does have a photo uploader which backs up your phone photos, but it’s pretty basic. Luckily, someone has been working on an open-source alternative. The only problem is that you have host the server yourself.
Google Authenticator → 2FA
I migrated by authenticator from Google authenticator to 2FAS . It well designed, fully open-source and free to use.