BTTR is independent. We may earn a commission if you buy through our links. Why trust us?
Google as a company is synonymous with the Internet. But the company that once declared a motto of “Don’t be evil” is now very much drawing on the power of the dark side to maximise its profits and limit competition.
Now that a US court has found that Google illegally monopolised Internet search, I feel it is time to de-Google my life.
Across a series of guides, I’ll be sharing my journey to remove my reliance on Google. I’ll compare alternatives, test them out and try to find the best alternatives for my needs.
The news that Google will start charging Pixel 9 Pro users a subscription fee for Gemini Advanced after a year really cements the fact that Google given up any goal of delivering a superior product to its customers. Instead, it wants to squeeze them for every cent, by making its products worse, and doing everything possible to crush competition illegally.
One of the key markets Google has used to become one of the biggest tech companies in the world is by dominating mobile phones.
There are three different levels to this.
Firstly, at the hardware level, Google offers the Pixel smartphones and tablets. These devices often have a deeper integration with Google services.
Secondly, at the operating system level, Google is the driving force behind Android. Core functionality of Android is tied to Google’s services, like the Play Store and Gmail.
Thirdly, there are apps and default services. Whether you use Gmail, or Google Docs, or even just leave your default search engine as Google search, there are several places you need to consider updating as you de-Google your smartphone.
So let’s start at the top:
1. Smartphone hardware
Google has been selling its lineup of smartphones since 2010. The first Google phone was known as the Google Nexus, and it was manufactured by HTC.
In 2016, Google retired the Nexus brand and instead launched its hardware under the Pixel brand, and has been releasing Pixel phones, tablets, and laptops every year since then.
The first step of de-Googling your phone is to not use a Pixel smartphone. It’s pretty straightforward. There are dozens of brands offering smartphones, and even though Google manages both the Android platform and its Pixel devices, they aren't the best phones on the market.
Dealing with de-Googling your phone’s OS is a much harder prospect, however.
2. Smartphone operating system
For better or worse, smartphones fall into two camps: iOS and Android.
iOS is exclusive to Apple iPhones. While Apple does have a slightly better track record when it comes to users’ privacy, it’s also another big technology company, with its own monopolistic tendencies.
While Android smartphones are available at a wide range of price points, iPhones are typically all in the $1,000+ price bracket. There are exceptions, if you buy an older device or something that has been refurbished, for example.
However, Apple markets and distributes itself as a premium technology company, which means it will not be the ideal alternative for plenty of people.
(That said, I use an iPhone 15 Pro as my daily device at the moment, so this particular decision doesn’t impact me).
Android, on the other hand, is largely built on an open-source software known as the Android Open-Source Project (or AOSP). That means you should have the right to use, modify and distribute the phone’s core software.
While that sounds like the opposite of what Apple offers, most Android smartphones ship with a proprietary version of Android, which is developed by Google. This Android version comes with a bunch of closed-source software pre-installed, like Google web services, the Google Play Store and Google Chrome, for example.
To make it even more confusing, Google owns the trademark for the Android name and its logo. So while AOSP is free, the reality is that most Android phones are intimately tied to Google’s services, and therefore its data collection policies and practices as well.
The biggest example of this is the Google Play Store and its billing system. Last year, Fortnite publisher Epic Games won a landmark court case which saw the jury deliver its verdict that Google held an illegal monopoly in the Android app distribution market and its payments system.
While we are still awaiting the final breakdown of remedies, but we do know that we can expect to see Google "tear the barriers down" on its app store monopoly.
Outside the iOS and Android duopoly, there isn’t really a mainstream alternative. Microsoft officially killed off its Windows Phone platform in 2017, and BlackBerry 10 effectively died in 2016 when the company stopped making its own smartphones.
Even Symbian, one of the first real smartphone platforms, didn’t make it past 2013.
There have been a few other smartphone operating systems that have come and gone over the years, but they have typically always gone. Turns out, it’s quite difficult to crack into a market dominated by a couple of massive players.
There is an option for those who don’t want to use either Google or Apple’s platforms. And that is installing an Open-Source platform on your phone.
Open source? Sounds risky
In my younger days, I relished the thrill of playing around with things like installing open-source platforms on my devices. But as I’ve gotten older and more time poor, I definitely feel more risk-averse.
The reality is that it is entirely possible to turn your expensive smartphone into a shiny piece of glass by making a mistake while trying to override its OS with something open-source.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give it a go. But it’s not something I’m prepared to tackle within the realms of this guide.
I will, however, point you to a few of the bigger options out there for open-source mobile operating systems.
A quick note here. If you do decide to try to install a custom mobile operating system on your smartphone, make sure you have backups, and follow detailed installation guides from the OS developers.
Even if the installation goes smoothly, there will be plenty of things to get used to, including the selection of apps and games available. There are ways around this, obviously, but you need to do so at your own risk.
These are powered by the open-source part of Android, making them familiar to Android users, but they have stripped all the Google parts out so you don’t share all your data with the search giant. There are alternatives powered by a version of Ubuntu, but they are much less popular.
LineageOS
LineageOS is one of the most popular open-source mobile operating systems. It’s based on the Android mobile platform. For anyone who has been around for a while, LineageOS is the successor to the popular OS CyanogenMod.
/e/
/e/ markets itself specifically to users who want to enjoy an Android experience without Google’s influence. It is built with privacy at the forefront of the mission, building upon the AOSP foundation, and offering support for Android applications.
GrapheneOS
Like /e/, GrapheneOS offers a privacy and security focused mobile OS built on AOSP. That means you get support for Android apps, but with no pre-installed Google apps or services. However, the list of supported devices is almost exclusively unlocked Google Pixel devices, limiting its actual availability.
CalyxOS
CalyxOS also promises a privacy-first Android experience, and like GrapheneOS, the list of supported devices is primarily unlocked Pixel devices, though some older Motorola devices also have support.
3. Apps and default services
Even though I use an iPhone as my day-to-day smartphone, Google is still everywhere.
From an apps' perspective, I have Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Home, Google Calendar, Google News, Google Authenticator, Google Sheets, Google Docs, Google Family link and Google Chat installed. Oh, and YouTube!
If you use an Android device, that list of apps will be significantly longer. You can replace some default apps easily enough, but a lot of what makes the standard version of Android run is based on your Google account.
I can easily delete those apps from my phone, though removing my reliance on the Google ecosystem behind a lot of those apps will be the subject of future De-Googling guides.
Probably the most important change here though is with Safari.
As you may have learnt from the ruling that Google is an illegal monopoly in Search, Google pays Apple somewhere in the order of $20 billion per year to be set as the default search engine on Safari for iPhones.
Fortunately, it is straightforward to change the default search engine on your iPhone.
Simply head to the Settings app and scroll down to Safari. Select the Search Engine option and change it to one of the alternatives listed (I recommend DuckDuckGo).
The process is the same if you use an alternative browser as well.
So what have I actually done to de-Google my phone?
I constantly test Android smartphones, so I won’t be deleting my Google account completely. But I am going to try and severely limit my reliance on Google platforms.
As an iPhone user as my primary device, this is definitely a bit easier. But this is certainly a work in progress.
To start, I replaced Google as my default search engine. Easy.
From there, I deleted most of the Google apps from my phone. I intend to remove the rest eventually, once I have migrated the services properly.
For example, I currently use a Google Wi-Fi mesh system for my home Wi-Fi. If I delete the Google Home app, I have no way of controlling my Wi-Fi network.
Similarly, I have a number of sites and platforms set up for MFA in Google Authenticator. I will likely migrate them to 1Password, but until I have the time to do that migration, I need the Authenticator app on my phone.
I also still use Gmail for both my personal and work email addresses. I’m actually a little daunted at how I will manage that migration, given there’s almost 20 years of email in that personal account.
But that’s a challenge for another guide.
Did I miss anything? Are there other mobile operating systems that should be considered, or hidden Google settings that you should think about when trying to de-Google your life? Let me know in the comments.
Latest smartphone deals
