Some companies are easy to quit. If I decide I don't like Coca-Cola anymore I can simply stop drinking Coke. Sure, the company makes more than just Coke, so I would need to do some research to figure out which products they do and don't make, but it's theoretically possible.
Quitting Google isn't like that. It makes many products, many of which you depend on to live your digital life. Leaving a company like that is like a divorce, according to an expert I talked to. "It's not easy, but you feel so much better at the other side," said Janet Vertesi, a sociology professor at Princeton who publishes work on human computer interaction. "Think of a friend who gets a divorce and is so happy to be out. That could be you. That's how it feels to leave Google."
She'd know. Vertesi researches NASA's robotic spacecraft teams and also publishes work on human computer interaction. In March 2012, after Google significantly changed its privacy policies, she decided to stop using Google entirely. Vertesi also runs The Opt Out Project, a website full of recommendations and tutorials for replacing "Big Tech" services with community-driven and DIY alternatives. She is, in other words, someone who has done the work, so I wanted to ask her for some advice about how someone should approach quitting Google.
Lifehacker has already published a comprehensive guide to quitting Google and a list of the best competitors to every Google product years ago, and that information stands up for the most part. But not using Google anymore isn't just a technical process—it's a massive project. Here's some advice on how to tackle it.