I’m quite a few years into this de-Googling thing. It’s also pretty much an extension of the de-Microsofting I started when I first tried Linux around 2005 or so. I was one of the original users of whatever Google Workspace was called back when they were still offering it free to Organizations and Families who wanted to use their own domain name with their Gmail accounts. I started de-googling in earnest around the time they first tried to take away this free-forever perk. Lately, I’ve been working hard to get ready for the era of identity verification and the pending Android lockdown. I consider large companies and surveillance-advertisers as my primary adversaries.

I’m down to my last few google dependencies and I’d appreciate your help in trying to overcome them as that lockdown date gets closer and the whole ecosystem will be thrown into chaos. I’d like to have essential services self-hosted and backups of essential APKs and such prior to that date. There are a few items not on this list that are occasional installs (and immediate uninstalls). These are usually hardware companion apps for stuff like my little wireless hotspot.

I wasn’t sure if it was safe to publicly post a spreadsheet from my machine, so please see the image for the bad stuff I have left (the red rows), mildly questionable stuff (yellow), and the good stuff I have installed (green), it’s not necessarily Google itself, but the red and sometimes yellow stuff chains me back to the Play ecosystem. I genericized any financial or health apps, except UHC because it’s super common and fuck them, I want to call out how shitty their app is and point out that their approach to attestation and verifying device integrity must be out of desperation because they themselves have no integrity.

Feel free to call anything out by name in the left column if you:

A. Have a better alternative that maintains good functionality.

B. Commiserate with my plight replacing a particular piece of software.

C. Think that I’ve mis-catagorized something as an undesirable when it’s actually good, or vice versa.

D. Anything else.

I would love to hear from you all.

  • Mike Wooskey@lemmy.thewooskeys.comEnglish
    3·
    1 day ago

    Regarding FUTO voice input, a friend of mine made a transcription app. I know that there are a million transcription tools right now, and many of them are probably good. But I know this guy and his dedication to open source, and this app is very featureful and intuitive. And fast.

    As Scribe on your phone, It downloads a small model one time and then all transcription and all data stays on your phone.

    It can be a standalone app or a keyboard voice input, and it can accept microphone input or any other audio on your device that you feed into it, or both. It even includes diarisation.

      • Mike Wooskey@lemmy.thewooskeys.comEnglish
        1·
        20 hours ago

        Be wary of FUTO. There have been reports of them claiming to be sponsors of FOSS projects when all they did was make 1 small donation, unbeknownst to the FOSS project itself. Plus they have their own licenses which are FOSS-ish.

        FYI: I use and love Immich. But I’m concerned that it will be ruined by FUTO someday.