This is my first real shot at a blog/portfolio thing but I’ve decided that it’s finally time to migrate away from using Google as much as possible. Ideally I would like to only rely on a Google account for YouTube and nothing else.
It’s been getting harder and harder to justify using Google services lately and I feel like it’s only getting worse with their – and many other tech companies – recent infatuation with generative AI. But to name a few of the straws that broke the camels back:
- Google is, and always will be, primarily an advertising company. Your interests in keeping your personal data to yourself are exactly at odds with Google’s interest in generating profit.
- They have a near monopoly in the area of browser & search, with some saying that the only reason they haven’t got a full monopoly is due to Apple’s anti-competitive attitude towards allowing anything other than WebKit on iOS.
- Aggressively pushing new web standards to benefit their products, as well as Manifest V3 to weaken the efficacy of ad-blocking extensions like uBlock Origin.
The main purpose of this site was just to get a nice custom domain to use with an alternative privacy focused email provider, but thinking about it, this may be the perfect opportunity to have my own little plot of land on the internet.
As for getting rid of Google search, I found Kagi to be an excellent alternative in many ways. Privacy friendly, and there’s a financial incentive for them to not do terrible things like train AI models with your data.