I used to use DuckDuckGo, until I realized I was using "!g" far too often.

Then I tried Kagi, and I find that works the majority of the time, including their AI. Someone else in the comments here said Kagi's AI models are bad, but I don't think they are for answering the fairly basic questions that I typically search. I'm not going to have Kagi's AI model refactor code or something though.

It's like a drug - getting off is not so easy for many people. I still use youtube and a chromium-based browser. I want to become google-free eventually.

I don't even use Google's regular search that often... but I'm addicted to Google Books, and nobody is offering to replace that. Google Scholar is also amazing. In those niche spaces, Google is a defacto monopoly.

Brave and DuckDuck have been my defaults for a long time.

There are two reasons I can think I use Google and Chrome for:

- Search: If I want to be sold something - say I’m in the market for an electric heater, I’ll search for it on Google to be tracked and advertised.

- Chrome: because there are some flows and UX that simply don’t work well in other browsers

I haven't kept up with Gmail because I've left it many years ago, but last I heard they give themselves the permission to parse your emails and serve you targeted ads based on contents of emails you receive.

If the thought of privacy doesn't turn you off, you must love the thought of unsolicited marketing emails getting amplified through ads that Google serves you.

I've been piholing everything. Duckduckgo can feel clunky at times and having more than one search engine is a blessing. Duckduckgo is for obscure direct searches where as Google for me is the popular enriched searches.

I tried DDG for a while but got frustrated because it wasn't giving me what I was actually looking for. Now I’m using Google with the Searchonymous add-on, which has helped me get much wider results, uninfluenced by my previous search history.

Leaving googles is for GROWN UPS and independent Individs. The ones that need to see more, to get out of the egg.

I self host (feels damn great) but still check my old, antique, gmail once every 3-4 months. Makes me smile and say, I was one of them.

I hardly use Google anymore. I almost always use Claude. It can do the "higher level task" I often want to accomplish when I go to google.

Claude checks multiples websites, reads them all, and answers my question.

It is very easy to get rid of Google, at least for the kind of person on HN.

Search -> DuckDuckGo

Drive -> Own networked file server

Phone -> Flash Graphene on your Pixel

Browser -> Firefox

Email -> Host your own (this is the hardest)

Youtube -> uBlock Origin (for Firefox), logged out

The last one isn't really a replacement, but Google certainly isn't making any money. Now do the same with Apple and Microsoft by running Linux on your machines and you are close to 100% free of big tech.