My Year of De-Googling

Chronicling my noble, doomed quest to leave all Google platforms

In college—wait, I should be more specific—in my senior year of college, I broke my printer in a moment of dreamy idiocy. I was an English major with a final project due, a collection of writings I called, “The Dinner and the Scraps.” Visited by some ancient muse (who of course knew nothing about computers), I was inspired to print my cover page on a paper towel.

I loaded the off-brand paper towel into the printer tray and paused. At his desk a few feet away, my roommate, a computer science major, was teaching a 12-year-old Mennonite boy how to use computers. I remember thinking: I should ask him if this is a good idea—but he’ll just say it isn’t.

I pushed “print.”

The paper towel vanished. In less than a second, the printer sucked the entire thing into its jaws with a loud crunch! My roommate looked over with one eyebrow raised, amused but not surprised, as I hastily explained my decision-making process. He and his Mennonite Padawan scooted over to my desk and began dismantling my printer.

“May this be a lesson to you,” I said to the boy, “not to print on paper towels.”

“Oh,” he said, and gave me a haughty glare, “I already knew that.”

•

The kind of person who tries to print his creative writing on a paper towel is also the kind of person who will one day decide to leave all google platforms in a revolt against totalitarianism. He is a man of IDEALS. A proud Luddite. A follower of backward-thinking future-tellers—of Ivan Illich, Wendell Berry, Neil Postman, Jacques Ellul (whose brilliance he is familiar with, even if he has not taken the time to read their work). He is a techno-minimalist tending the humble garden of his days.

He is bad at computers.

That must be acknowledged from the start. As much as I wax eloquent on the perils of AI and metaverses, I must also admit that I have no instinct for them. I have never lost sleep scrolling through Instagram or stood in line for the next iPhone. I’d rather read a book. I’d rather listen to a podcast interview with a bookish person.

Which is how my year of de-googling began.

It was January 2022, and I was listening to an interview with author Zadie Smith. In a voice so bookish and so British that you couldn’t help but trust her, she warned that smartphones were dehumanizing us and that we must put stricter limits on tech giants like google. Then she recommended The Age of Surveillance Capitalism as the most important book of the century.

I googled the book—and yes, I see the irony—and found this blurb: “The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth.” At this point, you should imagine me leaning into my laptop and whispering, “Go on…” Then you should imagine me googling the book’s author and whispering, “Oh, hello.”

For starters, her name is SHOSHANA ZUBOFF. Rad! Secondarily, her author photo: that lion’s mane, that soul-plumbing gaze. I was about to post a pic of Zuboff here, but when I visited her About page to find a photo to download and share illegally, I was confronted by the header: “They have no right to my face or yours.” Duly chastened, I retreated.

Photo or no photo, anyone who is bold enough to take on an empire like Google gets my admiration. And my money: I bought The Age of Surveillance Capitalism immediately.

One week and 25 pages later I started my departure.

•

What happened in those 25 pages? I mean, there was nothing revelatory in the idea that a company like Google could be corrupt, or that privacy is worth protecting. I already knew that Google collected my data and sold it to advertisers. I already knew that I am not Google’s customer, but rather its product. I knew these things because we all know these things, the same way we all know about plastics in the ocean, or pesticides in food. I am a dutifully alarmed American citizen.

What I hadn’t seen were the consequences to our humanity.

Surveillance capitalism—Zuboff’s chosen term for the power of corporations to predict and control our behavior—is inherently dehumanizing. It sees humans as raw material, targets of “extractive operations in which our personal experiences are scraped and packaged as the means to others’ ends.” This is unlike other technological advances, inventions like books or cars, which also raised a fuss in their day. As Zuboff writes, “Surveillance capitalism is not technology; it is a logic…” When she warns us about Google, she is not merely critiquing the company’s ability to make maps or databases. She is critiquing a logic that is fundamentally anti-human.

It’s possible to understand surveillance capitalism as the most potent iteration of garden variety capitalism. Capitalism has always tended to dehumanize, transforming humans into “consumers” that can be charted on line graphs and tallied in dollar signs. Bookstores have always sought paying readers. Restaurants have always sought paying eaters.

Surveillance capitalism takes things another step. Many restaurants through the years might have infringed on your commute with obnoxious billboards or on your mailbox with unsolicited coupon books, but imagine a restaurant owner who scanned your private emails for burger-related terms, who tracked your car so that they could tell which restaurants you visited and when, who knew your habits well enough to predict what day and hour you were most likely to order out, who found you when your resolve was weakest, who was already sitting on your nightstand in that moment, waiting to show you photos of his burgers. And imagine you couldn’t get him to stop.

That would be creepy, right? Like, deeply troubling.

What makes surveillance capitalism different from other varieties of capitalism is that its reach extends everywhere, and we can do almost nothing to escape it. In the age of surveillance capitalism, corporations know everything about us, while “their operations are designed to be unknowable to us.” If that sounds like Google is a nosy neighbor, peering through our shutters, sifting through our mail, then we have not yet gone far enough. It’s worse than that.

Zuboff writes,

Eventually, surveillance capitalists discovered that the most-predictive behavioral data come from intervening in the state of play in order to nudge, coax, tune, and herd behavior toward profitable outcomes… [They] not only know our behavior but also shape our behavior at scale. With this reorientation from knowledge to power, it is no longer enough to automate information flows about us; the goal now is to automate us.

There is so much to unpack in the quote, but let’s simply observe that it is unprecedented for a single company to wield this much power. And that power benefits from the diminishing of our humanity.

•

Okay, I see that I have ascended an oversized soap box. My apologies.

This piece is not meant to convince you of the perils of surveillance capitalism. (If you want that piece, Shoshana Zuboff already wrote it. You can find it here.) I am not addressing you as some kind of svelt Vegan cyclist recommending my niche lifestyle. My efforts to leave Google have not upped my status an inch.

In fact, to leave Google, you must be willing to appear ridiculous. You will have to tell your new friends that you can’t find their house because the data on your Android-adjacent phone keeps freezing up. Your search engine will be duck-themed, and when you ask it to find you a recipe for yellow curry it goes off on a long mission and returns with Home Depot color swatches. A friend will ask to look something up on your laptop, but she won’t be able to find your browser, because your browser is run by an obscure startup company and is so minimalist that it doesn’t even have a search bar.

When I started migrating off my Gmail account, a select few friends were like, “You go, girl!” but everyone else was like, “Why do you want to break up with Google? I mean, sure, Google keeps tabs on you at all times and exploits you for money, but come on, why, really?”

And I have to admit, Google is so frictionless that every alternative feels horrible. The Venn Diagram of “People Who Try to Leave Google” and “People Who Try to Live Off-Grid” has a lot of overlap, so companies that provide alternatives to Google products are catering to a population that doesn’t mind huge inconveniences. Some of the workarounds I have found are barely workable. Even though I fault the Internet age for turning people into “users”—a term aptly borrowed from addiction circles—I cannot fault Google for making their products so user-friendly.

Trying Google alternatives is like swapping your steering wheel for a squishy joystick because it’s more “ergonomically correct,” which is fine until someone wants to borrow your car. You never realized how easy it was to rattle off your email address and close with “@gmail.com” until you have to spell out “P-R-O-T-O-N-mail” twice a week. You start to suspect that maybe you’re the idiot here.

No other company is this difficult to leave. Think about that for a second. If I wanted to boycott Walmart, I could easily do so (and basically have: I hate that place). If I wanted to get off Amazon I could manage it with gritted teeth.

But Google? I’ve spent the past year trying to get off the platform and I’m still hopelessly entrenched. I wasn’t setting out to conduct a year-long experiment, but that’s essentially what happened, and the results… weren’t great.

---

LEAVING GOOGLE: AN EXPERIMENT
*skip this section if you aren’t interested in google alternatives

Google
Status: Surprisingly doable

We’ll start with the flagship: google.com. In departing from Google proper, I wanted to find a search engine that didn’t track my data, but still worked.

For much of the past year I used Duck Duck Go, which is pretty well-known among people who care about privacy. It’s not the best, but it’s not terrible. I ended up switching to a new search engine a few months ago because Duck Duck Go admitted that they allow Microsoft to track their web traffic. Now I use Startpage, which has also been good-not-great. It’s sometimes glitchy. (When I typed in “Zoom” to find the video chat service, it kept magnifying my browser. I finally typed in “Google” and then googled “Zoom,” which is a workaround I have used on more than one occasion, and that makes me feel embarrassed.)

What’s annoying about private search engines is that they don’t work as well as the ones that track your data. Google’s constant surveillance is what helps them make such spot-on recommendations. (Google will remind you of this if you try to turn off your location tracking or other surveillance features. You may have encountered a pop-up message along the lines of, “Location tracking helps us give you more personalized ads.”)

If you use a search engine that doesn’t track your search history or location, then your suggestions get pretty weird. When I search for local restaurants or shops, I have to type “Colorado Springs” every time because it doesn’t know where I am. For me, this is a fairly painless tradeoff for more privacy, but I realize that’s not true for everyone.

Gmail
Status: A delight!

When I first started migrating off Google, I consulted a friend of mine who has stringent internet hygiene. He recommended I use ProtonMail for my email service, and I have never looked back. I was able to migrate all my old emails with no difficulty, and most of the settings mimic Gmail’s. Plus! It comes with a VPN and a calendar, which was similarly easy to migrate.

Now, when I email someone, I can rest assured that my privacy is being protected… unless I am emailing someone’s Gmail account, which is ALMOST ALL THE TIME.

Youtube
Status: Good luck!

I have yet to find any alternatives to Youtube. Except TikTok, which I’ve heard is the devil. If you have any ideas I’m all ears.

Android OS
Status: My life is ruined!

This is the most embarrassing of the lot, and the biggest headache you can imagine. I have always had an Android phone, and I didn’t want to pay hundreds of dollars to convert to an iPhone, so I went on a hunt for a smartphone that didn’t run on a Google operating system. Halfway through this leg of the journey, any rational person would have been like, “Dude, maybe it’s time to throw in the towel.” But I am not a rational person. Like I said, I have IDEALS.

STAGE ONE: Lightphone fantasies

You know your friend who wants to live in a tiny house but will never live in a tiny house because in reality it would be absolute hell? That’s like me with the lightphone.

I was introduced to the lightphone website several years ago, where I was enamored with their simple design and their promise of a life free of anxiety. The only problem was the price tag. When I was first checking them out years ago, they charged almost $400 for a phone with no Internet browser and barely any apps. Through the years I kept checking in to see if these cute little lego bricks were any cheaper.

A friend eventually bought one, and let me tell you, it’s not great. If your goal is to use your phone less, the lightphone will help you out with that by being a royal pain in the butt. But still, it looks cute.

STAGE TWO: Consider a flip phone

Every time I thought about spending hundreds of dollars on a Lightphone, I would feel guilty and think about my old flip phone. I used it well into my twenties, so I know that it is quite possible to be content with one. In fact, I don’t recall ever being frustrated with it.

But here’s the thing about technology: you can’t go back. Once you’ve driven a car, even if it’s a scrappy old Honda Civic, you won’t want to return to your old horse and buggy. I wanted to be able to text people quickly and to include gifs of that Italian guy from that one thing. I wanted to be able to log into my ProtonMail account!

STAGE THREE: Research de-googled phones

So I went in search of a de-googled smartphone. I found several options, each with a different price-point and different capabilities. Remember how people who care about privacy don’t usually care about aesthetics? Well, all of the phones were pretty janky.

I don’t remember all the rabbit trails I went down looking for the best de-googled smartphone option, but I eventually ended up at esolutions.shop, which is a website I found that was either a Russian scam or totally legit.

STAGE FOUR: Buy a frickin’ Terracube

I hopped around esolutions for awhile, unable to figure out if Murena or Terracube or esolutions were the parent company, or if they were all covers for a crime syndicate. Either way, the phones appeared to be sold out. I added my email address to a waitlist and waited around for several months, continuing to use my Android phone like a total sheep. Finally I got an email saying that Murena Terracubes were back on the market. I bought one for $250.

When it arrived I realized I had bought the version that ran on a Google OS. NOOOOOOOO To make matters worse, the phone was shit. Again: NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

After a few months I couldn’t even take a selfie, because the selfie cam was permanently cloudy. I have a few friends on Marco Polo, an app that exists entirely to let you send video messages to your friends. Every time I sent a video I’d look like I was in a steam room, or as if my living room were on fire. But this wasn’t a house fire—it was a dumpster fire. This hazy selfie is emblematic of how little self-awareness I had at this point in my noble quest:

STAGE FIVE: Refuse to admit defeat

One thing about Terracube: their phones have a 4-year warranty. So you never have to worry about getting a different phone, because you are LOCKED IN to this relationship.

I sent my phone with the broken camera back to Terracube, and they sent me a replacement—only this time they gave me the de-googled version. Success! I now own a Terracube that runs on /e/, which is meant to represent “esolutions” but could just as easily represent a car without any gas.

There are many things my Terracube can’t do. It can’t make a phone call if I’m driving. It can’t take a good photo. It can’t send gifs or emojis. It can’t respond to a group text. Every day it prompts me to install updates that I have already installed. Every day it reminds me that my Murena cloud storage is full. Every third day the data won’t work, and I have to restart my phone.

STAGE SIX: Admit defeat

I’m currently saving up a couple hundred dollars to buy another Android phone, maybe a Samsung Galaxy or something. I’ll send you all a group text when I get it.

Google Maps
Status: Meh.

Turns out, when surveillance is a company’s whole “thing,” they’re going to be pretty darn good at maps. I haven’t found a good replacement yet.

Chrome
Status: So far, so good

After I left Chrome I used Safari for awhile and then Firefox. Then a friend introduced me to Arc, a startup company that is redesigning how browsers look and feel. I’ve been trying it out for a couple months, and so far so good. I like the minimalist design, as well as the ability to split screens or toggle between work spaces. It’s good.

Google Keep
Status: Why can’t I quit you?

Am I the only person who absolutely loves Google Keep? I’ve tried several other notes apps, and nothing even compares to the simplicity of Keep. It might be my favorite thing Google has done. It is also my greatest failure in this quest. My goal was to lock Google out of my private thoughts, but every day I send it notes of what’s on my mind.

Drive, Photos, Docs, etc.
Status: It’s… fine.

Okay, okay, we’re getting into the weeds here. The fact is, I still use some google apps from time to time. I have a lot of stuff stored on Drive and Photos, and I don’t have the time to offload and categorize them. Instead of Google Docs I use Pages, since Microsoft Word charges a subscription fee now.

Still, a ton of the websites I visit are run on a Google platform. Anytime I visit a website and they offer to let me sign-in with a Google account for convenience, I know the two are in cahoots. No matter how much I try to scrub my existence from their records, I know they will keep finding me.

---

So here I am. The kind of person who tries to leave Google, only to find out that it is not possible—at least, not in the way I imagined. The kind of person who is allured by the prospect of moral purity, by the mirage of a garden where every weed has been pulled. De-googling wasn’t my first quest, and it probably won’t be my last.

I have had my vegetarian phase and my fair-trade clothing phase. I have deleted my Facebook account and swapped out my plastic Tupperware containers for glass ones. Every time I get all hot-and-bothered about some new (or new-to-me) injustice, my first instinct is to slash and burn. In Caped Crusader mode I am more prone to amputate than to bandage.

But the work of a Caped Crusader is never done, especially if you’re not great at follow-through. I didn’t even finish Shoshana Zuboff’s book, let alone my quest to conquer Google. Every day I am the victim of moral entropy, of more bad guys than I can take down. I now find myself involved with the foster care system, which provides daily, painful reminders of all that I cannot fix. De-googling a phone is the least of my worries.

If you have watched The Good Place, then you are familiar with how exhausting this struggle is. (Spoilers ahead.) The cast of characters spends three seasons trying to earn their way into the “Good Place” by balancing their record of good points and bad points. “Ending slavery” earns a whopping 814292.09 points, while you would lose 90.90 points for “Ruining an opera with boorish behavior.” As the seasons progress, the characters realize that almost no one can make it into the good place anymore because simply to exist in modernity is to be tangled in a hopeless knot of unethical systems.

The show’s solution—which I found terribly dissatisfying—is that humans just need more time. By the show’s logic, if you find a total asshole and give them more time to be exposed to kindness, they will eventually become a good person who can make a home in the good place until they inevitably grow bored and decide to end their lives. (Yikes.)

Despite the lousy conclusion, I found the characters’ ethical gymnastics all too relatable. They all try so hard and fail so miserably. For Eleanor, the show’s protagonist, the only ray of hope comes in a moment of epiphany, when she realizes:

“Holy mother-forking shirtballs. THIS is the bad place.”

Eleanor has to realize that her efforts to stay in the good place have been a literal demon’s torture chamber. She has been in the bad place all along.

I have that same realization sometimes. There I am, trying to migrate my Google contacts one-by-one into an esolutions account, when I have a moment of clarity: “Wait… This is the bad place.”

In this moment, I can choose between several different options.

1. Re-double my efforts. Burnout again in a month.

2. Give up. Lie down before the steamroller.

3. Switch teams and turn a blind eye. Climb the corporate ladder.

Or there is a fourth option. If I let it, this epiphany brings an exhale of relief. Suddenly I see reality: every time I try to carve out a good place by my own powers it becomes a bad place. Like an addict finally arriving at the first step of recovery, I have to admit that “my life has become unmanageable” and that I am in need of someone else’s care. It feels like relief. It feels like sanity.

---

***I have to give a quick shoutout to WheezyWaiter for his many delightful challenge videos, which were an inspiration for the “experiment” section of this email. His most recent undertaking happens to be on-theme.

No Smart Phone for 10 Days (Thoughts)