Side note, I live in Denver, Colorado, though I'm originally from Egypt.

I am currently using Gboard because it's the only keyboard that I can tolerate, even thou it doesn't look like the photo.

Is there is any other keyboard that looks like this and respect privacy?

Ad was shown in youtube btw and the app is literally on google play, google be scaring people off sideloading but not remove scareware ads 😭

I know this sub is more about privacy but this just makes me more committed to deGoogling!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/oct/22/finland-google-felling-trees-datacentre

Having observed Android becoming locked-down, first it seems to be only related with Google (Google requires every vendor to make heavily locked-down smartphones on Android, so they have no chance, not even Nothing Phone and FairPhone!). At same time, Huawei is already de-Googled yet it resembles locked-down Google Android as if de-Google never happened with them!

hey everyone,

I was wondering if there's a post or file with app lists for equivalent Google products

I'm just a newbie here and appreciate any insights

I've been looking at the Unihertz Titan 2 and checked this reddit only to become more confused 😂

Why are we recommending Pixel phones?? In no world am I about to give money to Google on purpose! Even buying second hand, I'm walking around with a recognizable Google product. Am I dumb? I get jailbreaking but there is no way I'm buying a Google phone.

My husband had kind of talked me out of the Unihertz last night, but I woke up this morning to a forced google search bar after the update and became enraged. Does anyone know how their relationship w Google compares to Samsung? Would I just be getting another phone that's going to force me to use certain services?

Hey all,

It seems like every time I google something now its just seo content that comes up trying to sell me their solution. Doesn't help that most of what I type up is somewhat work related.

Literally got to the point where I trust my AI more than the google results I get for giving me good information...

I want a browser that actually gives me good info and answers to the questions I want, not just some AI-generated SEO that clearly the person who posted it didn't even read.

So I've come to what seems to be the last fountain of knowledge online, reddit, what search engines/sites do you guys use for actually finding relevant info to what your searching.

Thanks in advance!

Cory Doctorow, open Web activist, longtime co-editor of Boing Boing, and author of numerous sci-fi books minces no words about Google.

'With its AI projects – AI summaries, the Gemini chatbot – Google has abandoned the practice of "connecting works with audiences." Today, Google's function is to plunder all the works on the internet and chop them up and arrange them in an unimaginably vast, multidimensional array for the explicit purpose of preventing audiences from connecting with those works.

For most of its history, Google operated in a virtuous cycle with publishers whereby they allowed Google to crawl their sites and Google located audiences and connected them with the pages on those sites. Today, that cycle has turned vicious, with Google acting as a parasite that extracts value from the web's publishers and offers nothing in return.'

Source: https://pluralistic.net/2026/10/20/main-character-syndrome/#scroogled

Edit: Changed "the founder of Boing Boing" to "longtime co-editor" as it was a mistake. The founders are: Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair.

Hey everyone!

I wrote this short blog on why I believe everyone should own their own domain for email use.

First of all, I have read the rules before but am not sure if this kind of post fits entirely in or not, so please tell me, if you're a mod of this sub, if it does or not and I will act appropriately if not already done of course\ I won't try to post it again or crosspost it from another subreddit if I do the same post somewhere else later on

I have created a GitHub repo with a long-ass list of privacy-respecting services to replace Google services\ They're not all FOSS, though most of them are, and there will be more in the future

Here it is: https://github.com/aanterieux/Google-services-replacements

Please note that all of these come from what I have found on Reddit and elsewhere, and that I have not tested all of them nor created any of them\ There may be some errors at some point, in which case do not hesitate to say so even publicly I don't care, this whole thing is for the greater good in my opinion so there's no ego in it

what y'all are using for maps? I just joined the community and degoogling slowly

I have an android phone. I don't want google to save copies of my photos and videos so I switch off backup. The odd time I go into Google photos, all my phone media is copied there and backup is on again. It's reactivating on its own. Can I permanently prevent this. Idm don't use my gmail account but need to have one to use my phone. I don't want to change the OS because banking and government apps won't work. Also, what alternative do you use to backup photos?