#google alternatives

[youtube-privacy-union]

YouTube and Other Alternatives Directory

Please note, this document is a work-in-progress. It will be updated often to keep up to date and provide as many alternatives as possible.

Why?

YouTube recently enforced a new AI-powered age-estimation and age-verification policy. The AI will look at user watch history, and attempt to guess if the user is an adult. Any user the AI deems as a non-adult will have their account locked down into teen mode unless the user can prove they are an adult via credit card or government ID.

This directory is intended to provide feasible alternatives for various platorms that are implementing similar policies that may put user's privacy and security at risk. Alternatives on this list must not have similar AI-powered age-estimation and age-verification policies, must be free or reasonably priced, and must not push AI. Some may have generative AI features, but as long as it is not actively pushing AI on users, they will be considered. Further notes for consideration will be labelled under each item as necessary.

All of the following sites have implemented or plan to implement similar policies, and should be avoided if at all possible

YouTube

Google (including Chrome, Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc)

TikTok

Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Whatsapp)

Twitter/X

Bluesky (only in the UK)

Spotify

Reddit

Discord (only in the UK)

Dailymotion

Xbox (only in the UK)

Twitch (only in the UK)

Quick Reference Guide

These symbols are used to quickly communicate some basic information about the alternatives on this list.

💝 - Free, or its paid tier is unnecessary

📵 - Not recommended for moblie

✒️- No AI features

🌐 - Website, no download required

🍎 - Has an app for iOS

🤖 - Has an app for Android

🍏 - Has a download for macOS

🪟 - Has a download for Windows

🐧 - Has a download for Linux

🛡️- Adblocker Recommended

Links to individual alternatives lists

General Recommendations

YouTube Alternatives

Chrome Browser Alternatives

Google Search Engine Alternatives

Gmail Alternatives

Google Play Store Alternatives

Google Suite Alternatives

Google Docs Alternatives

Google Slides Alternatives

Google Sheets Alternatives

Google Translate Alternatives

Google Drive Alternatives

Google Maps Alternatives

Spotify/Music Alternatives

Kindle/Audible Alternatives

Discord Alternatives

Whatsapp Alternatives

Twitter/X/Bluesky Alternatives

Reddit Alternatives

Instagram Alternatives

TikTok Alternatives

YouTube Downloaders

YouTube Front-Ends/Proxies

[thoughtportal]

Alternatives to Google Products - Complete List for 2025

This Google alternatives guide gives you alternatives to every Google product, including Gmail, search, Youtube, and more.

With growing concerns over online privacy and securing personal data, more people than ever are considering alternatives to Google products.

After all, Google's business model essentially revolves around data collection and advertisements, both of which infringe on your privacy. More data means better (more targeted) ads and consequently, more revenue for Google. The company pulled in over $230 billion in ad revenue last year — and that number continues to climb higher.

But the word is getting out. A growing number of people are seeking alternatives to Google products that respect their privacy and data. Since you are reading this, we assume you are one of them.

Small steps to restoring your privacy

When beginning the journey of restoring digital privacy, some people get overwhelmed with all the work involved, and perhaps give up. Don't let that be you. Understand that you don't need to do everything right away. Instead, start small and go step by step at your own pace. With each step in the process, you get more security and control over your personal data, which is a small victory.

So don't be overwhelmed and remember that there's no “one size fits all” with this process. Even small changes, such as using a private search engine and a privacy-focused browser, are victories. So push on in your quest for more privacy and celebrate each step of the journey.

[takeshidude]

tumblr please let me reblog community posts why do we have a bifurcated website?

@indodino

[sympathytea]

Go my scarab

For those that are understandably confused: The embed above is a hyperlink repository of various alternatives to various services that we commonly use, I mostly focused on already well-established, open-source or source-available alternatives. I mainly did this for myself and others that might not know of decent, reliable alternatives (especially for YouTube)

If the link isn't working for you, please reach out to me! I'll try to come up with a solution, right now I'm unsure if Tumblr will let me post the full thing as plaintext...since its really long and usually Tumblr won't allow me to do massive posts like this.

Also I'm open to suggestions for alternatives that you wish to be included in this list! I know that this isn't a complete list in the slightest, since its alternatives that I have personally used (or I've gotten confirmation from others that they are functional!)

Same goes for any that are currently down, reach out to me !

Baiii :3

[hjbender]

I finally got around to emptying out my Google Docs in just another step of un-shittifying my digital writing life. I uploaded my docs to Proton Docs, which has improved so much from the last time I tried it out that it's almost identical to GDocs now. Minus the AI and lack of privacy.

Here's a tutorial if you'd like to do the same.

Moving Your Fics from Google Docs to Proton Docs

You will of course need a Proton account for this. Please note that the instructions below are performed on desktop.

Part One: Getting Your Stuff Off Google

1. Navigate to your Google Drive.

2. Under the big Search bar, you'll see a dropdown menu called Type. Click it and select Documents. This will display all of your documents.

3. Click on one document to highlight it, then hit CTRL + A to Select All.

4. Right click and select Download.

5. Your documents will download into a zip file. Unzip the folder and extract your files to another folder on your computer.

NOTE: Google uses its own file format to handle documents. When you download your documents, they will be Word (.docx) files.

Go through your downloaded documents and make sure they're all there before deleting them from Google. You can delete by selecting all using the method above, right clicking, and hitting Remove.

Part Two: Upload Your Fics to Proton

1. Navigate to your Proton Drive (proton.me/drive). It comes free with your Proton email.

2. On your PC, highlight all the documents that you want to upload and simply drag and drop them into your Proton Drive.

3. You're ready to rock and roll.

NOTE: When you upload your documents to your Proton Drive, they will retain the .docx file type described in the above note. Once you open a .docx file in Proton Docs, a copy will be made of that file. You will see this when you navigate back to your Proton Drive. You may delete the extra .docx file and continue to use the Proton document instead (recommended).

Additional: You can download the Proton Drive app for mobile and enjoy the same cross-device reading and editing capability as Google.

[officeobject]

Tutamail is against Chat Control, the CEO has written a blog thing about it (I think), they like privacy or something, and also they make memes I guess:

Here's their Chat Control criticism:

Chat Control is back & we've got only a few weeks to stop the EU CSAM scanning plans. | Tuta

The EU Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse, first published in May 2022, has become the "most criticized law of all time". H

LOVE art that depicts privacy stuff with object-heads (even if my office-staring beholder brain platonically loves that kind of stuff a little too abnormally much) - and I was really giving a compliment to an artpiece I really liked about it, and then my sex-repulsed self, got someone reblogging, WITH MY ADDITION, about their horny feelings - like, I CAN'T EVEN - so in a panic, I deleted that image, and couldn't find it again, so I like seeing that kind of stuff again. Anyways, I kinda fear getting a squish on like, someone from Tutamail or something, but whatever.

[schrodingersjigsaw]

I think in light of recent events it’s important for everyone to move away from google and Microsoft ecosystems. I suspect the next 4 years are going to be rampant with big corps being allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, and as your local tech nerd I have some suggestions:

(Also, none of these feature AI tools as far as I’ve been able to tell!)

Search engine suggestions

The popular one I see is duckduckgo, but they’ve had a number of scandals at this point. The one I currently use is startpage, which is based in the Netherlands. The EU has much stricter data privacy laws than US based search engines. It operates off google but hides your data from google, so you get the benefit of google’s search engine without them knowing every single little thing about you.

Browser suggestions

The one I personally use is Vivaldi because aside from a once a day ping to count active users, they track no user data. It also has a built in ad and tracker blocker that works well in my opinion. It also hasn’t had any major scandals. (Please for the love of god don’t use operaGX)

Email suggestions

The one I currently use is Proton Mail. The proton ecosystem also features a VPN, Drive, Calendar, and other tools- it’s essentially a 1:1 replacement for most google/office 365 tools. To have a good amount of storage you do need to pay, but it’s not terribly expensive and most people can get by on the free tier. You can also have it reroute emails from your Gmail to proton, so you can benefit from their encryption without nuking your Gmail.

Other suggestions

Linus Tech Tips has a series on how to “un-google” your life. YouTube took down all videos except the first one (another example of big corps being fucking wild), but they can be found on blogs if you look up the series.

Stay safe yall 🩵

[reallyintoscience]

Auditioning Google Docs Alternatives

I'm transitioning off gdocs - my final straw is the anecdotal evidence that sudden account deletion for "terms of service violations" is increasing. That's credible when AI is used to scan Drive contents and we know how wrong bots get it. That in addition to government attitudes to sex and queerness means I'm also no longer comfortable with my data being on US servers.

I also discovered yesterday that .gdoc and .gsheet files don't save offline. So local sync of my Drive misses Google native files despite its reassuring green checkmark. Single-location copies of files isn't acceptable so. Here goes a long process.

Drive Alternative

I settled on a free account at Filen.io as my first test for a file storage alternative. So far: upload is incredibly slow (observed 16kps - 6mps but most often in the kilobytes range). Right now my priority is just having a secondary backup location, so I'll live with it.

Running a NAS (network attached storage - your own cloud run from your house) isn't something I'm prepared to do. Security requirements these days are more than I want to deal with.

Docs Alternative

Ellipsus for general word flow and betaing is fine, but I need something that can handle more complex formatting. (And as I've said before, Ellipsus is not a secure enough platform to store work in so I need somewhere to paste work over to.)

MS Word is not a consideration as it has many of the same problems Docs does.

Proton Docs immediately failed. 100 words and ten minutes into my first trial it froze and its sync to Proton Drive failed. I couldn't even highlight what I'd written to copy it. I expect spottiness related to file size sometimes but this didn't qualify and this failure mode was unacceptable.

LibreOffice seems like a good local alternative to Word and rest of the MS suite and I like it so far, especially since it looks able to handle academic footnoting requirements, but it doesn't have a hosted cloud option. I'd prefer to have that option available so I'm still looking.