The Big Tech 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 convenient not to share your public email to all the website you sign up to.
Maps
The lucky winner is none other than Here We Go, a fantastic app that lets you generate well-designed offline itineraries, even for bikes!
Calendar
Bye bye Google Calendar! Thanks to Synology and its Calendar module, I now have my iCal feed hosted on my NAS. All I need to do is use a client such as the Calendar app on iOS.
Instant messaging
WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, and Messenger have replaced text messages. Everyone now needs to have all these apps on their smartphone in order to be reachable. At a time when more and more citizens and activists are rising up against the dominance of social media, such as RASF in Berlin, what alternatives are there to avoid cutting ourselves off completely from loved ones, groups of friends, work colleagues, and associations?
Let me introduce you to Beeper, an app developed by a 13-year-old to make iMessage exchanges compatible between iOS and Android. The app now allows you to connect all the popular messaging services mentioned above in a single inbox. Several options are available: messages can be routed through their servers or be completely self-hosted using open-source modules.
This isn’t sponsored content, but honestly, thanks to Beeper, I was able to uninstall Telegram, Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger from my phone. All while still being able to receive and send messages on those platforms.
Project managment
For the last few years, I’ve been working on some side projects with associations like THF Radio and Radio Sofa or for some other personal project. Every time we were looking for a tool to centralize all data in one place, manage the project, create automations, etc…
I would like to talk to you about two great software programs that are not part of Big Tech.
Ninox is a super flexible tool to manage your projects. I’ve been using it for personal projects, and I really like the highly customizable interface; the data fields are super rich, and the Ninox scripting is insanely powerful. The only downside for the moment is to get to know the scripting language to get the most out of it. But they recently announced a version 4, which has an AI assistant, which I’m really looking forward to .
Airtable is also great; it comes with the same advantages as Ninox but is a bit less customizable. What is currently amazing is the form and automation. You can really get people outside the company involved in the workflows and processes super easily. Kudos to them for making it so intuitive, interactive, and dynamic.