The GAFA empire is sprawling. These American companies offer ingenious, cutting-edge tools for free. But at what cost?
Why strive for independence when these services are convenient, fast, and free? Is it really so bad to send our photos, appointments, travel info, messages, and all our data to these platforms?
Since 2020, I challenged myself to break free from Google. Imagine if Google changed its policy and made all its content paid, or decided to sell everything we’ve uploaded for marketing purposes. They’d have the right, since we agreed to the terms and conditions.
With more or less difficulty, I managed to escape the giant’s clutches. Here’s how I did it.
Data Storage
Probably the most useful tool in my daily life was Google Drive’s cloud. 15GB of free data, synced to my computer and instantly accessible from my phone.
Instead of sending my photos and files to a data center, I decided to host my own NAS. I set up 16TB of data on a Synology NAS with 4 hard drives. Thanks to the latest data replication technology, I can lose a drive without losing a single file. This costs me about 15% of the total space, but gives me real peace of mind.
Synology has done a great job with connectivity for its iOS and Android apps. I can now access my 2TB of photos and videos remotely, and automatically sync all my latest photos thanks to the Synology Photos app.
Other apps are available on the marketplace, like Synology Calendar, which also syncs with iOS.
Cost: €700
Tools replaced: Google Drive, Google Photos
Search Engine
Google’s powerful search engine needs no introduction. After months of trying the competition (DuckDuckGo, Ecosia) I settled on Qwant. The results get better every day. To go with it, I use Firefox on both desktop and mobile. It’s fast and very effective at blocking tracking requests.
Tracking
We use a lot of online software for free, without worrying about how our data is handled. Tracking allows companies to collect juicy information to resell to interested parties. This includes your web searches, messages with friends, sites you’ve visited, videos you’ve watched, and even how long you looked at an Instagram post.
Address books are sold at a premium to advertisers for targeted campaigns.
There are privacy-respecting tools (Firefox, Qwant), but to really browse safely, you need blockers. These apps block a whole list of requests so they never leave your device.
The best-known is “Lockdown,” which works on browsers and apps (iOS and Android).
To finish with Google, I deleted all my emails from Gmail and switched to an OVH mailbox with the Spark client. Firefox Relay is also very convinient not to share your public email to all the website you signup to.
Maps
The winner is Here We Go, a fantastic app that lets you generate well-designed offline routes—even for cycling!
Calendar
Goodbye Google Calendar. For two years now, I never go anywhere without my pocket calendar and a little pencil.
To be continued…