r/privacy· de_googled@de_googled

Three years out of the walled garden — what actually mattered and what was theatre

I've been mostly de-Googled for about three years. Not perfectly, not smugly — I still use the odd Google service through a browser sandbox when there's no real alternative. But the daily stuff has moved off, and here's my honest retro on what was worth the effort. Worth it: moving email to a paid provider whose business model is charging me instead of reading me. Moving search to one that doesn't build a profile. Replacing the default keyboard, because keyboards see literally everything you type. Switching maps to something that doesn't tie every trip to a lifelong identity. These changed the actual flow of data off me and I'd do them again in a heartbeat. Mostly theatre for my threat model: obsessing over browser fingerprinting to the last decimal while still logged into a personal account in the next tab. Chasing the 'perfect' privacy phone and bricking it twice. Rewriting my whole life around avoiding one company when the data brokers had already bought most of it from a dozen others. The grass is genuinely fine out here. It's just grass. The trick was doing the boring high-impact swaps and not treating it as a religion.