Look 110: I won't waste time
Fellow angler,
Since I know you’re keeping close track, I’ll come clean. Yes, I did miss a post last week. Thank you for keeping me accountable. Here’s my excuse:
A week and a half ago, there began a large water leak in my building. The unit below me took the brunt of the damage but as luck would have it, the broken pipes were most accessible through my apartment. My kitchen walls and floor were opened up, and they remain open while I wait for my wealthy, New York City landlord (a race of creatures so loathsome and conniving that when the world is destroyed by atomic bombs, they will emerge from the dust and find a way to subsist on the rent they squeeze out of the surviving cockroaches) to decide they can hire a contractor to fix my apartment.
The situation is a mess and has drained me of considerable mental and physical energy over the past 2.5 weeks.
In my free time, instead of doing any sort of work or writing, I’ve been going deep on an effort that started small and has become nearly all-consuming for me in the past month: de-googling.
Why I dislike Google
My job involves creating content with the goal that it will rank high in Google search results. Since most people barely scroll through Google search results, there is a multi-billion dollar industry dedicated to creating articles, reviews, websites, etc. that show up at the top of search result pages. (Are your bullshit job alarms ringing yet?)
This work gives me a first-hand look at how much Google search results suck. They’re wrong more often than you’d expect (especially now that Google is using AI to give answers), the algorithm doesn’t always prioritize showing you the best result, and the page has become so clogged with ads and unnecessary features that I’d argue it has ceased to offer a pleasant experience.
But that’s just me complaining. Back to the point: Google runs a lot of useful and user-friendly products. Search, documents, sheets, email, translate, maps, calendar, YouTube, and the list goes on.
For a company to own so many wonderful and powerful products must be pretty expensive, right? Yet all the services I listed are completely free.
Yes, they show ads. Google makes a lot of money from ads. But even in the case of ads, the reason Google makes money is because it’s collecting all your information. A company pays Google to show an ad because Google promises to show that ad to relevant searchers, something it can do because it has built a profile of your interests, personality, and previous internet activity.
If you have an Android phone, it’s running a system based on Google’s code and services. Google knows which apps you’ve downloaded through its app store, and how long you spend on each of those apps. It probably uses your voice, typing habits, and location (even if location services are turned off) to train its products to make them even more powerful at surveilling you.
I don’t want to get too Black Mirror on you, but the point is that Google is worth trillions of dollars while offering all free services because you are the product. Taking and selling all your personal data is how Google makes its money. This is also called surveillance capitalism.
The start of my de-googling journey
Regardless of the stupid decisions Google has made as a business (like showing the Gulf of America to US map users as a way to appease an ass named Trump), I just find it gross that a company is getting rich from harvesting and selling my personal information.
That’s why I’ve started the process to get rid of all my Google accounts. It’s tiring. I fully intended to start small but got too excited and dove right in. People in online forums are very knowledgeable but also have very strong opinions that are hard to make sense of when you’re new to privacy.
I’m currently testing different email providers, app stores, calendar apps, photo apps, cell phone carriers, and basically everything else. I already haven’t used Chrome (I use Firefox) or Google search in years (I use Ecosia because I like their mission to support the environment, but I’m trying others like Qwant, Kagi, and Good). But I’ve owned Android phones and Google Pixels for years.
The main challenge, which I think will keep most people from de-googling, is it means you have to pay for stuff. If you’ve been getting gmail for free for years, the thought of spending $50 per year on an email service that isn’t the most user-friendly (since that title goes to gmail) is a hard pill to swallow. It’s also hard to try new services instead of choosing the one service that everyone just knows and trusts.
But if you aren’t paying for a product, it’s because you are the product. So far that it feels liberating to know that I’m taking more control over my own data. I won’t share my results yet because I've only recently started, but it’s shocking how many Google products I use without realizing it.
At some point, I also hope to decrease my reliance on other big tech companies — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta (Facebook) — who traffic in my data. For now, let’s finish with something lighter.
Title song
Your song this week happens to be brand new. It was performed Sunday during the Oscars by host Conan O’Brien and I can’t get it out of my head.
Until next time,
Happy fishing!
Lots of great links here, thank you!