I feel like I've been slowly de-Googling for many years now.

A decade ago I was all-in, Chromecast Audio, Android, GSuite for a personal domain, Photos, Maps, Home products when they emerged. I'd made a bet that software could improve faster than hardware and chose to be as free in my choice of hardware as possible (Linux on a variety of machines and to bet on web software) rather than choosing a potentially more polished but closed world (Apple or Microsoft). Google for me, offered a third way.

But all I learned is that the massive disconnect between units within Google would result in an experience that worsened itself on a continual basis.

At first I thought it was all due to the "Google for your Domain" account as it became clear that GSuite was becoming a corp only thing.

So I migrated to a Gmail account https://medium.com/@buro9/one-account-all-of-google-4d292906...

But... that didn't solve things!

I got more things working, but they then felt like they diverged with limited experiences in different areas. The recognition that a home is multi-person came very late, and it's clunky.

Google Music shuttered, and I could no longer upload the things that I had which they did not. So I moved to ripping my own CDs (this took 3 years!!!) and then a NAS + Plex (love this!).

Gmail removed all of the personal domain things and a big redirect chain from GSuite through Gmail made debugging a missing email a pain plus so many stories about email being closed and shuttering the whole account, so I moved to Fastmail (love this!).

Photos got worse (and BTW you cannot get the photos out at the same quality as you put them in unless you individually download each one!!!), so I'm now using Syncthing + NAS + Plex (it's OK for photos, not great TBH).

Drive felt like it stagnated and improvements in GSuite (my work accounts) didn't feel like they hit the personal accounts (the GMail one). I moved to Syncthing + NAS (love this!), and actually opted for a Microsoft account for Office 365 (but I don't use OneDrive).

Home automation was severely dented with the Sonos battle, so now all of that is Home Assistant for me (it's pretty good — still more for the advanced tinkerer than the average person in UX though).

As the Sonos battle produced it's outcome I realised that actually running different things like bluetooth or PlexAmp headless works better for remote control... and honestly, Google weren't providing a great audio experience (Cast doesn't play media at it's highest quality levels and you can't get a raw digital out signal from Google's own products except a TOSlink on Chromecast Audio which is now unsupported and locked the rate to 44Khz and required upsampling in the subsequent DAC).

By Google's constant fumbling here I am a decade later with very few Google products in my life. I'm down to maps (which I keep because of stars) but am increasingly using OsmAnd+, Android (but I'm open to considering an iPhone next time as case availability is an issue with Pixel devices after 1-2 years and my phones last longer than that), and my Nest doorbell (don't get me started on how bad the Nest integration has been!).

I'm not rejecting Google as much as they seem to be rejecting their users. I'm just listening to what they seem to be telling me... which is that they really do not want end consumers as customers, and that's fine because many companies do and things like Fastmail, Plex, Syncthing, Signal, etc are all phenomenal and I pay or donate to all.

This isn't death by a thousand paper cuts, it's death by a million paper cuts. Other products may be a little worse, but as they aren't causing paper cuts constantly they feel joyful to use by comparison.