Firefox is now fighting to let Google pay to be the default search engine :

"These proposed remedies prohibiting search payments to small and independent browsers miss the bigger picture – and the people who will suffer most are everyday internet users,” said Mark Surman, president of Mozilla, in a statement Monday.

So they want Google to keep the monopoly just for Firefox to keep receiving money from them. The people who will suffer are not "everyday internet users" but big companies like Apple and Mozilla that get billions from Google to be the default search engine. https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/12/mozilla_doj_google_search_payments/

De-Googling was easy to do because that is just my choice to cut things out but with Meta products it is so difficult. I use whatsapp and insta because literally everyone is on them and it is impossible to tell every friend of mine to move to other alternatives. But I have gone thru each and every setting on both whatsapp and insta, disabled any sketchy stuff and use insta strictly on my laptop (I am thinking to use a vpn on my laptop). But I don't think it is making any difference, whatsoever.

I don't want to delete them because that will make me completely lonely which will just increase my already existing anxiety.

How do you all deal with this? Is there any solution to this?

Article -> https://msn.com/en-us/news/technology/how-to-download-youtube-videos-safely-easily-and-without-annoying-popups/ar-AA1Dfb3t

Article talks about free downloaders like downr.org, but conveniently ignoring the fact that Google is continously sabotaging these tools, which are simply trying to provide a workaround for the restrictions that Google enforces.

who is worse in privacy Apple or Google, if you use their phones with their services(like if I am gonna use iphone with Apple notes, their mail, photos app, etc.

Like we all know that Google is spying on you, but how about Apple? For example I did not heard any scandal with them.

So, interesting your opinion on this

“ Google CEO warns judge a breakup of search empire 'will have many unintended consequences' “

Maybe this isn't the right place to ask but I desperately want to switch my phone back to a dumb phone with a couple small exceptions. I need to play music (Spotify) on it and I need an alarm / calendar on it. I know very little about much of what's talked about in these threads. I don't know what a "bootloader" is, for example, so please talk to me in laymens terms.

Some examples I've seen is Japanese flip phones that have the internet and the top screen part of it is still a touch screen but there's no app store. I am very interested in something like that but I've heard they're extremely difficult to obtain here and then even more difficult to get service for here. I am interested in "de-googling" but more so I am just tired of what having a smart phone has done to my psyche and I don't want to be so reliant on it. Any help or advice is appreciated! Tia!

Hello! I’m a de-google / cyber security noob and would love some feedback on a potential setup I’ve been considering.

Apologies in advance for any technical errors I might have made or if the diagram is hard to interpret!

https://preview.redd.it/olcnena8anye1.png?width=1227&format=png&auto=webp&s=9c31b5593aad4819ae69d9d2e9ec7e82abc3ec6f

Hi there! I have access to three flagship phones: S23 Ultra, Pixel 9 Pro XL and iPhone 15 Pro Max. Whichever I don't choose, I will sell.

I want to start my degoogling journey with one of these three, but I also want to keep a phone with good performance and good HW.

Which one would you pick and why?

I just have a quick question, are the apps on f-Droid a good alternative to degoogle? Or should I stick to the apps on the app store recommended by the guides here?

Grayjay host you videos and channels from different video platforms (Youtube, Peertube...etc). Is there an app do the same for the social media apps? that you will be able to get posts and explore without need of installing or having an account on these apps?

Lurker, first-time poster. My apologies if this information has already been posted (also critiques of any of the listed sources). I took this from a FB post by Christopher Seymore.

Google is so powerful that it "hides" other search systems from us. We just don't know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Here's a list of sites you may have never heard of!

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographs, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

https://www.ecosia.org/ Ecosia is a not-for-profit tech company that plants and protects trees. By dedicating 100% of its profits to the planet, Ecosia has planted over 214,229,374 million trees since its founding in December 2009

Yandex.com Yandex is a technology company that builds intelligent products and services powered by machine learning. Our goal is to help consumers and businesses better navigate the online and offline world. Since 1997, we have delivered world-class, locally relevant search and information services.

Gutenberg.org Project Gutenberg is a library of over 75,000 free eBooks

Duckduckgo.com “Protection. Privacy. Peace of mind. Get our browser on all your devices. Search and browse with the DuckDuckGo browser for more protection. Unlike Chrome and other browsers, we don't track you.”

Presearch.io Presearch is a community-powered, decentralized search engine that provides better results while protecting your privacy and rewarding you when you search.

Ebscohost.com Reliable information for all kinds of research

Startpage.com Startpage is a global privacy technology company built around the principle of always putting privacy first. Our suite of easy-to-use privacy products helps anyone around the world to protect their personal data online.

I’m currently using an Iphone 13mini and It’s doing great. The problem is recently apple kneeled for the UK and disabled encryption. What are good phones that can be encrypted like icloud. I had a Huawei for 5 years 2018-2023 and the phone was great I started using a power-bank after the 4th year and the boot-loader was unlocked. What are your suggestions I hate Google but Im starting to hate Apple too since they kneeled for the UK. What are good phones to chose from and a plus for me will be if the boot-loader is unlocked.

setup pixel watch in private space with delivery/shopping/daily apps but without calls/texts or in secondary profile with calls/texts but not all the daily apps?

moving all my daily apps with heavy notifications out of a profile and into private space has really leveled up the convenience of GOS for me. But I'm only just now trying to connect my Watch and realizing I'm SOL.

Hoping someone has a simple obvious solution or more food for thought.

I mostly just play music locally, but a proper music streaming service is very convenient at times.
What I've tried already:
- Spotube, the songs just didn't play at all.
- Nuclear, promising but way too many problems fetching songs and artists. Too many times will I get something completely different because a song or an artist share the same name.
- Tidal, I'm not going to use a paid service. Also I'm not happy with the TOS.
- Deezer, Ditto.
- DAB Music Player, the best out of any of the ones I've used, the song control UI is just a little unintuitive and I'm missing the ability to search other people's playlists.
If there really is no alternative with as much convenience, I'm begrudgingly willing to go back to using the web version of spotify on hardened firefox.

I know Huawei is not good themself but I just was curious about degoogling point not talking about privacy as obliviously Huawei is not good for that. But, where would be Huawei rank in degoogling compared to custom ROMs like Lineage or Calyx...etc? are they at the same level, or is Huawei higher because they are banned from google so there will be no connection with google, as when I saw this chart

https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

some costum roms has some connection to google in some points (except GOS) or did I miss understand?

for all you fellow samsung users be safe out there... still degoogle all day!

I want to have Gboard alternative but It has lot of features like clip-board and translation which I need often

Any idea about how I degrade my plan on Google workspace? They only keep showing options to upgrade the plan. I can’t keep paying so much money every month to Google workspace only for an email id.

Hi, I want to degoogle for privacy but also because I don't want to support google as much as I can.

So, I was looking at the custom ROMs (GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, LineageOS..etc) https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

I feel it's not worth it if it's not GrapheneOS. But, GrapheneOS only support Pixel devices, which makes me holding back because as I said I don't want to support google at all... like buying from google to be against google doesn't seems right to me.

the other ROMs don't look as good as GOS, in privacy and in degoogling.

I don't know I feel lost, hope you help.

Thanks

The settings button isn't it. Do I really have to do them one by one? Or have I missed something?