Google Inc. is increasing its influence every year. The times have passed when people shared a link to a new search engine with the exotic name google.com without advertising at all, and then the Gmail invites were worth their weight in gold. Now the situation is completely different. Somehow, Google has quietly grown and changed the business model.

Restore Privacy activists believe that “the entire business model of Google is based on the fact that you are under their corporate surveillance. That's all. All they do is repackage massive corporate surveillance into convenient, free, fancy apps that suck up all your data. Your personal data helps Google dominate the online advertising market. ”

In this model, you are a product.

Activists point out that Google tracks user activity in order to create a profile of each of them. This profile is monetized in various ways, even if you are not signed in to your Google Account:

• Tracking via Google Adsense (all these annoying banner ads on most websites also perform the tracking function).
• Track via YouTube and other Google-owned platforms and products.
• Tracking through websites using Google Analytics (most websites use Google Analytics).

All data that Google collects is usually monetized using targeted advertising. Now Google has grown to the size of the largest advertising company in the world. Your data can also be provided to government agencies upon request.

Given the current situation, Restore Privacy recommends taking the following steps:

1. Delete your google account and collected data .
2. Avoid Google products, and use alternatives instead.
3. Use good tools to protect your privacy online, including the right browser, extensions to block surveillance, and a good VPN service.

Restore Privacy recently published a reference guide, which focuses on the second paragraph. This is a list of alternative services that can be used instead of Google products.

Here are some of them.

Alternatives to Google search

Privacy-oriented search engines that do not record the IP address, search history, user-agent, and unique ID in cookies, as Google does.

• Searx : Universal Private Search Engine
• Qwant : private search engine from France
• Metager : German private search engine
• DuckDuckGo : A good alternative to Google, but keeps search history
• StartPage : as a matter of fact Google, but without shadowing

See also the additional private search guide .

Gmail Alternatives

In terms of privacy, Gmail is one of the worst services imaginable. He keeps all your confidential information and indexes it, and also receives information about your friends. After your authorization in Gmail, Google can easily start tracking you on all sites with Google Analytics trackers installed.

• Mailfence , Belgium, 500 MB for free
• Tutanota , Germany, 1 GB for free
• Mailbox.org , Germany, 2 GB
• Protonmail , Switzerland, 500 MB for free

Chrome alternatives

• Firefox
• Tor browser (now its functions are gradually integrated into Firefox in the framework of the Fusion project )
• Brave browser

Google Drive Alternatives

• Teamdrive
• Tresorit
• Nextcloud

YouTube Alternatives

Unfortunately, there are not so many popular alternatives to YouTube, here are some of them:

• Vimeo
• Dailymotion
• Bitchute
• Hooktube

Hooktube is essentially a proxy for YouTube, through which you can watch blocked videos, download them and bypass all sorts of censorship restrictions. And of course you protect your data from being sent to Google.

To use Hooktube, you need to replace youtube with hooktube in any link.

Google Analytics Alternatives

• Matomo
• Fathom Analytics
• Clicky

Google Maps Alternatives

On a personal computer is best to use OpenStreetMap .

For mobile devices there are such options:

• Maps (F Droid) on OpenStreetMap data (offline)
• Here wego
• Maps.Me : but this application collects some amount of personal data .

Alternatives to the Google Play Store

The authors of the guide say that today the best alternative to Google Play is the F-Droid free software catalog, from where you can download the APK of the Yalp application catalog - and through it download the APK of all the programs in the Google Play Store.


Yalp Store

Google Calendar Alternatives

The best option is Etar . Other alternatives include aCalendar from TAPIRapps, Kin and Fruxx. But the latter two are not recommended to use, because they collect and store user data.

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The authors of the recommendations remind you that, besides Google and other Internet sites, Internet providers (for sale) and government agencies (for control) collect your confidential information. Therefore, it is recommended to use VPN and special tools to protect privacy.