Why de-Googling my life was a complete waste of my time

De-Googling is simply trading one set of problems for another, which wasn’t worth it for me.

Dibakar Ghosh is a tech journalist at How-To Geek, where he focuses on Linux, Windows, and productivity tools. His goal is simple—help readers at every skill level get more done with the tech they use every day. He began his writing career in 2016 with WordPress tutorials, later moving into digital marketing, where he spent years reviewing complex tools for marketers. His work has also appeared on Authority Hacker, where he’s shared in-depth guides on digital workflows and online productivity.

That experience now shapes his journalism, blending analytical depth with practical, real-world advice.  When he’s not writing or testing software, Dibakar is usually watching movies or playing video games. He’s a huge Christopher Nolan fan and a strong proponent of the theater experience. In gaming, he has sunk hundreds of hours into Insomniac’s Spider-Man series, Returnal, Prototype, Darksiders, and Final Fantasy titles.

Are you thinking about de-googling your life? Worried that Google knows too much about you? Well, I tried it—and here’s why it was a complete waste of my time. Before I get into why I wanted to de-Google my life, I want to make it clear that I don’t think Google is a bad company. And no, Google isn’t bribing me or sponsoring me to say this. Yes, there are many things the company does that aren’t great, but I believe that they’re a net positive overall.

For example, Google Chrome is a bloated privacy nightmare, I agree—but they are also behind Chromium, its open source foundation. It powers some of the best browsers out there, including the one I use daily: Brave. Likewise, Android might be bloated with trackers, but Google is also behind AOSP (Android Open Source Project), which made alternative mobile OSes like LineageOS or even GrapheneOS possible.

So no, this isn't an ideological crusade against the company and how they work. My concern was simpler—and honestly more practical. As Google tracks and captures more and more information about me, they’ll soon have too much data, which, if stolen, could be devastating—think identity theft, financial fraud, lost IP, and so much more. That fear only intensified when I started transitioning to Linux around 2015–2016, which naturally pulled me deeper into the more privacy-oriented and security-conscious circles.

I saw people de-googling their lives left and right, and I figured—I should as well. Google knows a lot about you, but just how much does it know? Here's how to see—and how to delete it. In practice, de-googling my life was less dramatic than it sounds. I only used some of their core services: Gmail, Google Drive, Google Search, Chrome, YouTube, and Android. Now, DuckDuckGo started gaining a lot of traction back in 2014, so I switched to it as my primary search engine.

Proton Mail also popped up as a secure email provider, so I ditched Gmail as well. For my browser, I switched over to Firefox—which was the default browser on most Linux distros. Granted, I wasn’t a fan of Mozilla’s browser—many of the sites I frequented broke or refused to work—so I switched to Brave when it launched back in 2016. Nextcloud also dropped somewhere around this time, and I decided to replace Google Drive and self-host my own cloud storage.

It’s crazy how many of the currently popular security-focused products and services all popped up during 2015-2016, isn’t it? Now, I really couldn’t replace YouTube because all my favorite creators were there, and I also never found it necessary either. If I maintain one point of contact with Google, which shows the company my interest in certain topics—which is constantly changing and evolving—I don’t think that represents a major risk, at least not for me.

Finally, as for my mobile OS, I was beyond the Android vs. iPhone debate—I was using Windows Phone, which famously lacked many Google services, including YouTube. However, when Windows Phone was dying, and I had to migrate over to Android, I chose to root my Nokia 6.1 with LineageOS—an almost de-googled version of Android, or more specifically AOSP. The first thing to crack was DuckDuckGo. It just wasn't reliable enough for my day-to-day search needs, and I kept finding myself manually switching to Google anyway.

Eventually, I stopped pretending and went back full-time. Then came the email problem. I made my first Gmail account way back in 2005. I had subscribed to dozens of apps and newsletters over the years, and couldn’t just dump it. Now, updating those services with my new Proton Mail was an option, but it was a real chore—something I always intended on doing, but never got around to. As a result, I always kept the old Gmail account active and still use it from time to time, so it was never really replaced.

I simply moved my personal stuff over to Proton Mail. Nextcloud actually worked great as a cloud storage alternative, but it really wasn’t a Google Drive replacement. I needed it to collaborate on projects—whether with clients or my friends. Custom ROMs were also cool, but they caused issues with banking apps, especially the ones that I used, so I kept using the default Android OS. Let’s say that I even decided to look past these inconveniences—what’s the point if my friends and family can just undo all of that?

For example, if just one of my friends, or a distant relative, owns an Android phone, and decides to save me as a contact with all my personal information and details, I’ll literally be on Google’s database—despite my best efforts. At this point, de-googling my life meant either changing my friends and family, which isn’t practical, or educating them about de-googling, which is a frustrating exercise—anyone who has tried will know what I mean.

There’s a popular saying in the Linux and open-source communities: “Privacy comes at the cost of convenience.” I was experiencing this first hand, and I had to ask myself—how much privacy do I actually want, or rather, how much convenience am I willing to sacrifice? And I discovered that I really didn’t want as much privacy as I thought. I wasn’t afraid of people knowing where I lived.

Rather, I wanted a security system that would fend off intruders if they targeted me. If you optimize your life for digital privacy, security is automatically guaranteed—if no one knows you exist, they won’t attack you. However, you can still have a secure digital life without putting yourself through all the inconvenience that comes with picking privacy-focused alternatives that have fewer features.

For example, I use different passwords for every account, and have multi-factor authentication enabled on every platform that supports it. Also, in the off chance there’s a data breach, I’ve set up Google Alerts—yes, a Google product—for any cyberattacks relevant to the products and services that I use. Also, instead of trying to avoid Google (or any tech giant), I started focusing on what I actually put online and being more intentional about it.

It’s not just about sharing stuff with Google anymore. If you live online and post publicly, anyone determined enough to profile you can do so by scraping whatever you've put out there, regardless of whether it's sitting on Google's servers or someone else's. The platform doesn't matter as much as what you choose to share. I really wish that we didn’t have to live in a world where you have to choose between productivity and privacy, but unfortunately we do.

The silver lining is that this isn’t the case everywhere. For example, as I mentioned, I successfully replaced Chrome with Brave, and it wasn’t inconvenient nor detrimental to my productivity. As such, I’ll be waiting for open-source, privacy-respecting options that are also feature-rich, and in the meantime, focus on optimizing my life for cybersecurity and better digital hygiene. The open-source movement has revolutionized technology, but is it too good to be true?

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