Why I've moved away from Google's services and why you should, too.

I'm going to start by talking about why I've moved away from Google's services, and then talk about what I switched to. If you only have time to read part of this, please read the former. It's pretty important.

Why I've moved

The Terraria Incident

On February 8th 2021, Terraria creator, Andrew Spinks, posted a tweet stating over 3 weeks prior, Google disabled his Google account and Andrew still has no idea why, nor is Google helping resolve the issue.

As you can see, Andrew has lost 15 years worth of data from Gmail, all of their Google Drive data, their YouTube channel, and any purchases they made, such as their movie library.

Eventually Google responded and overturned the ban, but that's only because Andrew cancelled the Terraria Stadia port. Unless you have something to take from Google, and potentially cost them millions of dollars, Google will most likely not give you your account back.

Treatment of Google Pixel customers

As someone who currently uses, and has used/owned every Google Nexus/Pixel device, the treatment Google gives to their customers is borderline illegal. Actually, it probably is illegal, but what are you going to do, sue Google?

What am I talking about? Well, Google offers their phones for direct sale from their website. The problem is that a large amount of people over the past ~13 years (yes, the Nexus 4 was released in 2012 and for sale on Google's website) have reported the carriers, such as FedEx or UPS, delivering empty boxes. The people receiving said boxes then go to Google support immediately and report the issue. This is where Google should issue a refund/resend a new phone, but instead Google makes it the customers problem to figure it out. When the customers reach out to the carrier, wouldn't you know it, they tell the customer to reach out to Google.

After a bunch of back and forth and no end in sight, the customer does the only thing they can do, and that's charge back with their credit card company to get a refund. After all, Google Pixel devices aren't cheap. My latest Google Pixel 8 Pro cost me $1450 CAD, and that's not even for the highest storage option.

Why is this a problem? Well, doing a charge back is a death sentence with Google, as they will immediately ban your Google account. Some people claim Google just bans your payment account, which means you're unable to make any new purchases, but others have claimed that Google straight up bans your entire account, similar to what happened with Andrew Spinks.

Now I am not a lawyer, so I don't know who is responsible when it comes to missing packages, but I will say that I run a small online business where I ship things across the world, and on the off chance a package arrives damaged or goes missing completely, my customers have no control. I am the one who has to contact the shipping company, launch an investigation, and submit an insurance claim. So it would only make sense that Google needs to be the one to reach out when an empty box arrives to a customer. Not to mention Google can easily ban the IMEI numbers associated with the phone, so even if someone was trying to game the system and receive a free phone, it would essentially become a paperweight.

Why I've moved TL;DR:

Google has a ton of services that all require, and are linked to, your Google account. When Google decides you've broken a rule, you're done. All of your data is gone. Google will not help, Google does not care.

When you buy a Google device and it goes missing in transit, you better suck it up and eat the costs. If you dare try to use your credit card to reverse a charge, as you should, Google will go nuclear and destroy your account.

Google does not care.

What I've moved to

These are what I've moved to and why. I'm not claiming these to be the best, I'm not saying you should move to these exact services, and I am not paid to talk about them. I just think you should move away from Google services, and this part of this post may open your eyes to alternatives you never knew existed, or perhaps kick start your own journey to finding your perfect alternative.

Email

Email was the biggest one for me. I needed to figure out a solution and fast. You may not realise it, but your email account is your main access to everything.

Signing into your social media accounts? Please click on the link in your email.

Trying to sign into your bank? Please click on the link in your email.

Receive an e-Transfer from someone without auto deposit? Please click on the link in your email.

Trying to update your accounts email address? Please confirm the change by clicking on the link in your email.

The last one is important to note. Many companies are combating malicious account takeovers and hacking by requiring you to confirm an email change via your "old" email, before it'll accept your new email. If Google bans your Google account, including Gmail, you're not going to be able to just login to your Instagram and change it to your new email address (okay, maybe you can right now, but more and more companies are making these changes, and so losing access to your email is dangerous).

So I looked for alternatives when I stumbled upon a thread that discussed using your own personal domain and the benefits of it. An email is like a phone number, right? And you're free to take that phone number with you to other providers. Rogers service sucks? Take your number and go to Bell. Now you're using Bells services, but people can still contact you through the same number.

Using that same concept, you can do that with Email. Buy a domain, pick an email host, and every email that gets sent to your custom domain will be stored on your email hosts server. The benefit is that if that email host bans you, goes bankrupt, or turns evil, you can simply point your domain at a different email host, and all of your future emails will be stored on the new email hosts servers.

While it's possible to host your own email server, and that's what I wanted to do, I learned there is a lot of maintenance and issues that come with it. Mainly trying to get other email providers to stop marking your emails as spam. Even though I am moving away from Gmail, the truth is, most people still use it. What's the point of Email if nothing ever gets delivered?

So I decided to go with Proton Mail.

I switched to Proton Mail on February 13 2021 using a custom domain. I didn't switch due to their privacy and encryption, but instead because the company seemed to have pretty good reviews. I wasn't worried, after all, like I mentioned, I could switch to any other email host within minutes and keep my email address. I was free. Free from Google, free from being locked out, and free to explore.

Fast forward to February 4 2024 and I am still with Proton Mail. I will admit, the 3 years I've been with Proton Mail hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows. While my data and email have been safe, Proton AG, the company behind Proton Mail, is HORRIBLE at managing their development teams and reaching nearly any goal on their road map. The ability to search your emails was not possible at the beginning, but finally became a thing after being limited to certain tiers (more about this later), and the Android app only started becoming decent in the last month or so when they finally started rolling out the beta of their rewritten Android app. The app was talked about in their 2022 road map, by the way, published March 23 2022, and is finally entering the incomplete public beta stage now.

Photos

Google Photos is great, and that's why a photos replacement was hard to find. I've tried all of the normal alternatives; PhotoPrism, Piwigo, Lychee, NextCloud, Photoview, but none of them were as nice as Google Photos.

It's important for me to backup my photos and be able to effortlessly view them, but also be able to do so easily on my phone as well. Searching for photos was also pretty important, as Google Photos has an amazing ability to search for anything nearly instantaneously.

Initially I settled on Photoview, but wasn't happy. It was merely okay to say the least. I knew I would never be able to let Google Photos go if Photoview was the best alternative.

That's when Immich hit the scene, and wow. When a developer loves Google Photos but wants their own self-hosted solution, you get Immich.

Immich is highly inspired by Google Photos, has a similar UI, is constantly improving, and even has a full fledged Android and iOS app to go with it. It has the ability to create multiple users with their own separate library, which is great for my family to use. Since it's all locally stored, I don't ever have to worry about any accounts being banned and losing all of my memories.

Immich also has a tool by GitHub user simulot called immich-go, which allows for easy upload of photos from Google Takeout.

Drive

While I don't rely on Google Drive that much, as I store all of my files locally on my Unraid server, when I want to share files with friends, or want to backup a file to as many places as I can to ensure I never lose it, I will upload the file to Google Drive. As we've learned with Andrew Spinks, that's not a great idea.

So I've switched to Proton Drive.

Proton Drive was released just over a year ago in September to the general public. It's essentially no different than other cloud storage options, but everything is end-to-end encrypted (E2EE). It currently has Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS apps. No Linux, but that's a pretty common theme with Proton AG. They seem to leave out Linux a lot with "Linux app/support/build/versions 'planned'".

December 7th 2023 Proton AG added support for photo backup to Proton Drive, but as per usual, only available on Android at the moment. That's one thing you need to get used to with Proton AG, they never release their features cross-platform at the same time. Their feature set is extremely staggered across different devices and platforms. iOS users are waiting for features that Android users have, Android users are waiting for features iOS users have, Windows users are waiting for features Mac users have, Mac users are waiting for features Windows users have, and Linux users are just simply waiting.

That being said, I have Proton Drive photo backup enabled. Even though I use Immich, I figured why not. I have 520GB Proton Drive storage available to use anyway.

Calendar

You may start to see a theme here, as I use Proton Calendar.

While there are plenty of self-hosted calendar alternatives, Proton Calendar just makes the most sense. It integrates nicely with Proton Mail, allows me to see my upcoming events while writing emails, and allows me to 1-click add appointments from my email to my calendar.

To me, a calendar needs to be fast, simple, and effective. If I need to manually import appointments from my email into my calendar, it's not simple, and it wont work for me.

Documents

This one was hard. Google Docs is just so convenient. It works on any browser and phone, has a nice UI, and is overall a really great product. However, using Google Docs requires me to use Drive, so it's gotta go.

Truth is, I don't really edit many documents. I am not a student anymore, so
I don't require really any collaboration. I mostly have a handful of documents that I use to.. well.. document stuff. I have a handful of spreadsheets that I keep, mostly just for fun, and so I realised as nice as Google Docs is, I don't actually need it.

I tried a few alternatives, such as NextCloud, but it's so bulky and overkill. That's when I settled on LibreOffice. Yup. LibreOffice.

I have to use my computer to open and edit documents, which is okay, because when it comes down to it, editing spreadsheets on your phone isn't fun. I simply open my documents in LibreOffice and save them to Proton Drive via their Windows app. I also save a backup to my Unraid server, of course, but I use Proton Drive so that I can easily access my documents anywhere I need to.

I tried OnlyOffice, but I personally don't like it. I know a lot of people these days are starting to prefer it, and maybe I will some day, but for now I am just going to stick with LibreOffice.

Notes

I've tried a few alternatives, but unfortunately nothing comes close to Google Keep. To this day I still use Google Keep. I don't keep (haha, get it?) important info in Keep, so if something was to happen I wouldn't be too sad.

I mostly just use it to jot down random notes and to have an easily shareable grocery list with my girlfriend.

For private notes that I care more about, I use self-hosted flatnotes, but since they're not easily shareable, and there's no Android app for easy access, it's not convenient to use.

Even if Proton AG ever releases a notes app, I probably wont ever switch, as I am sure a live updating grocery list note wont be possible. Even if it was, my girlfriend would more than likely have to have a Proton account, which she doesn't, making the whole process a mess.

VPN

Google has a VPN, which I've never used and I highly suggest you don't, either.

I am just posting this part just in case people are using Google VPN and want to know better alternatives.

For a long while I was using Mullvad, which is great. I'd recommend it to everyone reading this. I did switch a few months ago to Proton VPN, which is decent. I only switched because I noticed that upgrading my Proton account to the highest tier that includes everything, and cancelling all of my other memberships, I would actually gain more Proton Drive storage, have good alternatives, and save a few bucks per month.

Password Manager

This story is very similar to above. Google has a password manager which you shouldn't use.

I was using Bitwarden, which I also recommend to everyone reading, as it's one of the best password managers and has a self-hosting option. I only switched recently to Proton Pass for the reason described above. I cancelled my Bitwarden plan (It's free, by the way. The paid tier just has a few extra goodies) to save a few extra dollars per month, which went into the higher tier Proton account plan which included Proton Pass Plus.

Proton Pass is good. The auto fill is pretty bad, but the integration with SimpleLogin is awesome. If it wasn't for SimpleLogin, I would be a lot more disappointed with the current state of Proton Pass. That's why I recommend Bitwarden.

Browser

I switched to Firefox. I don't want to lose my bookmarks, but also Google is a threat to the open web with their Manifest V3. I may post a blog about this separately, but for now a reason I switched is for bookmark safety.

Final thoughts

Before I get into the "negatives", I would like to point out that many of my alternatives are most just putting my eggs in a different companies basket. While true, keep in mind I still maintain full control over my email, which is the most important. I also keep local backups of my drive content and photos.

Also Proton AG is not known for completely banning the worlds #12 best selling video game developers account and ignoring any attempt to reach out for help.

In the email section I talked about Proton AG limiting things to tiers and said I would have more on this later. Now's later.

My biggest gripe with Proton AG is how they manage their business. I talked about how they can never hit their deadlines, and their road map promises are often YEARS late. I also touched on how their feature set is inconsistent across platforms, like how the Android Proton Drive app has photo backup but no other app does yet, or how the iOS Proton Mail app has a bunch of features missing from the super delayed Android app.

The biggest gripe I have is how they release their features to different tiers at different times. Most people may think that a slow roll out is good, and I agree, but isn't that what beta testing is for?

For example, when Proton AG added search functionality in Proton Mail on August 25 2021, they limited it to their Lifetime and Visionary plans only. It wasn't until November 11 2021 when they rolled it out further to their Professional plans. Over 2.5 months to release the worlds most basic email feature - SEARCH - to their other paid plans. As of February 2024, as far as I can tell, searching for email is NOT available on a free plan, either. It's also all stored locally, so it's not like it's putting extra strain on Proton AG's servers. Really bizarre.

Many may think that the people that pay more should gain access to features first, but I'd disagree. I think that BETA testers, regardless of plan, should gain access to features first, to flush out the kinks before they release it to everyone else. The higher paid plans already get more for their money. More storage, custom emails, VPN connections, etc. It seems strange to lock basic features behind higher tiers and slowly, over multiple months, trickle them down. Not to mention Lifetime and Visionary accounts are no longer purchasable. I currently own the highest plan available, and yet I am made to wait months to get access to features.

Conclusion

Move away from Google. You should probably move away from other big corporations too, such as Microsoft, but definitely move away from Google.

At the very least switch your email to somewhere you can control it. It's more important than you realise.