to start: this is not some post about moving everything to self hosting, or, how I've completely ripped Google out of my life. instead, this is a post about trying to be pragmatic, removing a singular point of failure from my digital life, and a justification of the options I chose.

I write this mainly because hopefully this serves to show that doing this isn't totally impossible; and if you are somewhat technical, you can probably do this (or, help out a friend that wants to do this).

requirements & nice to haves

I'm splitting these in two, just as I think there's some things I'd like... but, I have to be pragmatic here. The goal isn't for this to be fixing all of my digital life... but rather a first step towards reducing reliance on my Google account continuing to exist.

requirements

these are things that I consider essential, if only just for how I live my life:

1. cloud service (see below)
2. ran by a company which doesn't have a perverse incentive to mine user data for ads
   • no google, no microsoft
3. (for photos) auto backups from my phone overnight

nice to haves

I'm OK to give up some of these for the time being, as long as the things I end up using are easy enough to migrate away from.

1. hosted in a country with GDPR
2. data is encrypted at rest
3. supported by rclone

the last point may sound odd, but, rclone has helped me out so many times with big data copies to and from my Google Drive. being able to keep those scripts (for the most part) is one less hassle.

why not self-host?

self-hosting is will tick all of these boxes. i will, also, not be doing it - primarily as right now it isn't super feasible for me.

1. my home internet isn't great.

many flats in the UK missed out on fiber to the box, and, are being upgraded directly to full fiber. this is great if you are lucky enough to have a flat with full fiber. i am not lucky enough, and, as such, we use a router with a 5G sim in it.

this means:

• port forwarding is a pain (the raspberry pi I do have I access via Tailscale)

• the speed is incredibly variable.

  • early morning I can sometimes get 300mbps down (!! this is incredible for the UK)
  • whereas, in the evenings YouTube videos can struggle to load in 4K.

as such, i have fears I'd lose data while my network is playing up (e.g. breaking my phone while on holiday, and the photos not having backed up the night before).

2. i rent my flat!

realistically, renting in Brighton means moving every couple of years. yes, I could buy a mini PC or small NAS.. but I really don't want the hassle.

3. i worry quite a lot about data-loss

even with best intentions and good backups... this is still something I wouldn't be able to shake. yes, I know with good backup practice this is a non-issue, but, combo'd with not owning a home makes this somewhat tricky to rationalise!

4. i am not morally opposed to the idea of cloud services on principle

i like cloud services! they're handy! i have enough stressful things in my life, and I really do not need being a sysadmin or Oops I Lost My Photos For the Last Ten Years to be one of them.

plus - if done right, the economy of scale works out that for individuals ¹ the cost of a cloud service is lower than the equivalent cost to run & maintain a self-hosted alternative (once you account for backup fees). I'd love to go fully self-hosting at some point, but, this isn't a blog post about that.

what do I use Google for?

before this migration, I was using the following Google Services for personal data:

• email (gmail) - around ~1gb or so
• drive (for cloud docs & forms) - around ~450gb or so
• sign-in

when I had an Android phone, I also used Google Photos. When I got an iPhone, I switched to iCloud Photos because Google's made my phone worryingly hot overnight; but there's still 150gb of photos there.

I also use YouTube, but, that's a bit trickier to cut out; so I'm going to helpfully pretend it doesn't exist.

in total, this works out as 600gb of data (!!) to migrate out of Google. i wanted to start with what I thought would be easiest, and then moving slowly onto the harder parts.

email

now, considering I've used Gmail as my only email account ², this sounds like a tricky one!

however, 6 years ago I setup an auto-redirect from my consumer Google account to a Gsuite account, all under a custom domain. as such, I just really need an email provider with custom domain support... and I'm sorted!

my considerations were:

• Proton Mail
• iCloud Mail

I ended up ruling out iCloud Mail, just as while I'll use iCloud for other things (e.g. Photos), email is so absolutely vital to existing that I really want it to be on it's own service. Proton also won out on the nice to haves for email!

end result: I've signed up for Proton Mail's plan for just email (which is £3.99), changed some DNS settings, and all is fine. Proton has a good reputation, and, they have an auto import tool that handled the import for me, on their servers. the work on my side took around 20 minutes.

I am not a 100% fan just yet; I get why it's needed, but, I'm not a fan of needing their mail bridge to use my own email client. Gmail's auto-categorisation was also really nice; although Apple also has their own auto-categorisation, and, it's a good motivation to unsubscribe from mailing lists.

On the plus side, Proton Mail's iOS app is totally fine! And, their web client is servicable (although not amazing for handling large amounts of emails at once, where I'd recommend a desktop client... but I had the same logic about Gmail too).

Also - I'm really grateful I made the painful switch to a custom domain route for email a few years ago! It's made me more confident I can switch to something else in the future, if I decide I don't love Proton Mail.

files

Apple won out here. I gave Proton Drive a shot, but, their servers kept playing up with Rclone, and there was no way I'm migrating 400gb of data via downloading it to my machine and then reuploading it. I'm going to keep an eye out for alternatives though, because I really do think I can do better than iCloud Drive...

Also - I do think I'll need to keep my Gsuite account for some Drive features. Hilariously, after looking at my files - I think the big blocker is Google Forms. Apple's Invites app gets close for planning things for friends, but, for larger things Google Forms is still pretty good.

photos

I considered a few options but again, iCloud won out.

It's also another one where I really want to move to something else, but, the Apple Photos app is super convenient, integrates nicely with photo editors on my iPhone (e.g. Pixelmator), and, I already use it for photo backup on my iPhone.

I am also, sadly, an ecosystem girlie ³, and having Apple Photos on my Mac a nice sell.

Given I'm extremely unlikely to switch back to Android, I've just got to be hopeful the DMA (and the UK's equivalent Digital Markets, Competition & Consumers Act) will force Apple to add alternate Photo Library provider apps.

As for the transfer process... mixed reviews. For my old, free, Google Account - it's a really simple process. You sign in with your Apple ID on Google Takeout, and, click a button. It then all gets moved for you, and you get an email a few days later saying all your photos were successfully moved.

However for GSuite on my custom domain... this feature is intentionally absent (which makes sense for the target audience of businesses). I am still in the process of just downloading all my photos locally (see: my comment about bad network speeds), and will then have to upload them all to iCloud again. This isn't the end of the world, but, not super ideal.

sign-in

for the most part, I've been going through the list of apps I have authenticated with my google account and resetting passwords, or just deleting accounts I don't use anymore. this has been, mostly, fine!

the exception here is Tailscale. Tailscale only supports social logins on their free plan, and, doesn't let you change login provider. I think my best option will be to delete my account, make a new account, and then setup my Tailnet + invite all the guests on my Tailnet back on. I get they don't want to store passwords but... this is pretty silly.

do I recommend this

For the most part, this has actually been fine. If you're on a free Google account, you most likely can migrate to other services just fine - e.g. Google Takeout will handle Photos for you, and you can setup a Mail redirect. The problem is Google is, sadly, pretty good at the whole cloud docs thing, in a way nobody else is! I'm going to have to still keep a Google account for Google Forms & sharing Google Docs. This also doesn't even account for YouTube, which I guess I'll need to keep my account for.

But - the point isn't so much completely ditching Google, but, rather that I have other options. If my Google account were to implode this time last week I'd be totally fucked. Now? I lose my YouTube subscriptions and Google Forms data. I'll take that trade-off :)

footnotes

¹

I say individuals, because, there's a lot of really interesting projects focusing on community driven hosting. I really need to dig out the SSH key I use for https://tilde.town/, as it's a project that's really very cool.

²

This is excluding the Hotmail account I made when I was 8. Said account's history is quite funny, as it was an early escapade of getting around restrictions and then being caught out.

Premise: My parents (for good reasons that as an adult I 100% agree with) did not want me having unrestricted internet access, but, did realise that the internet was important (even if just for looking things up for homework). They also assumed I'd probably bypass whatever parental control software they had... and so formed a revolutionary approach to parental control software called "ethernet cable".

Essentially - if you have to use internet, ethernet cable in the living room. In theory this is bullet proof - I could still watch movies & play games on CD & DVD, but, it meant any internet access was supervised in the most common area.

"In theory" being a key quote - because this is somewhast undermined when the neighbours don't set a password on their wi-fi. I would've also gotten away with this scheme, if not for my Dad borrowing said laptop to play Civ... and then getting hit with a Windows update. In the middle of the Summer holidays. When I supposedly hadn't connected the laptop to the internet in weeks. Oops.

³

Look, I'll switch back once PC laptop manufacturers ever invent a laptop that:

• features speakers & a trackpad that don't totally suck
• has similar performance & battery life to my M4 Max
• doesn't scare everyone else in the coffee shop with my RGB GAMER LIGHTS

Sadly, I am yet to discover such a device. With that said - I use a Framework 13 as my laptop I throw in a tote bag - and I'm writing this post on it, while sat on the couch - but it's a device which I cannot in good faith recommend anyone else to purchase.