@mensrea @futurebird

Same here. It's basically become my digital identity and the prospect of migrating off of it gives me unpleasant shudders.

@futurebird

i have a Google account because i own an Android phone, but i have all of the privacy options possible enabled, i use DuckDuckGo for my search engine, i never log in to the google account on my computers, i do not use gmail. Except for the bare minimum required to keep my phone operational i avoid google as much as is possible. (And for those now thinking about it, i have reasons for not doing business with Apple, too, so please don't suggest i get an iPhone.)

@GinevraCat @weirdfish @futurebird I went to the DeepL website and plugged in an address but it didn't open a translated page. Unless you need to copy/paste the text into their service.

@futurebird only have an account cuz folks use google meet.

@futurebird I have a Google account for work. I use Google search without AI as a last resort, my default search engine these days is Ecosia. I do watch YouTube videos (without an account, with an ad blocker and reject all cookies).

@futurebird I have a Google account for YouTube, that actually existed before the link was made and was just a YouTube account when I made it, but apart from that, and YouTube Music through a frontend app, and Google Maps, I don't use anything else Google related

@roknrol @futurebird Huh. I haven't run into those yet. I just assumed FreeTube was working around them, but I try to stay away from news and politics on YT so maybe that's it.

@futurebird I have grapheneOS and use proton for email and cloud storage. I have a legacy gmal account but rarely log in. Just to check anything old that came in.

I try to use organic maps as much as I can but google maps traffic is too valuable sometimes so I often eject to my "google" profile for that.

I still watch YouTube but am trying to take my usage down and rotate through smaller services like curiosity, floatplane, etc

@Linebyline Usually it's music videos and a few videos by Simon Whistler (one of the more recent vids was an expose on a particular criminal gang).

It's not stuff that I miss too much, but it is annoying when it shows up in my feed.

@futurebird

@privacy_guru @GinevraCat @futurebird true, it's only copy and paste

@moriel @futurebird This is me exactly - thanks for saving me so much typing!

@futurebird I've gone the other way. I have chosen to allow exactly one evil corporation to spy on me, so I'm letting Google have it all and I'm avoiding Facebook/Meta, Twitter/X, Apple, Amazon/everything else.

@futurebird I don't aspire to be Google-free, but I am absolutely working on migrating the vast majority of my photos off. also contacts.

@futurebird youtube is a hell of a drug

@futurebird

I clicked 2 and 3.

I have a gmail account but it's only connected to my phone for playstore, which I avoid as much as possible,

On my PC I use YouTube and Streetview occasionally, but in their own container tabs separate from everything else. I never log in.

@futurebird
I feel like you might appreciate the French word dégafamisation (and the reflexive verb se dégafamiser) where "gafam" means "Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft"

@futurebird I use my Google account exclusively to log into YouTube via browser to be able to change from auto translated videos to original language and just focus on channels I am following. I switched my mail account a couple of years ago and gave up on Android phones after a Samsung galaxy 2. For car navigation I use Google Maps on an iPhone without login or Apple Maps. I mostly ride by bike or train and for last mile navigation I use @organicmaps.

@darkling @futurebird running your own mail for 25 years is impressive.

@futurebird

i have a gmail account, and i use youtube a lot. the gmail account is being slowly put out to pasture so that nothing important ever lands in it. the amount of spam it gets is absurd.