Life without Google

I said goodbye to Google yesterday. I’ve had Gmail accounts for as long as I can remember (at least since 2008ish, as I was heading off to college) and it feels weird to not have it. Two years ago I completely switched over to iCloud email, and still I hung on to my Gmail accounts. Because what if I needed it? Ugh. I wasn’t getting a ton of mail there anymore, but anything that did hit that inbox was forwarded to my iCloud account. From there I unsubscribed from anything I didn’t want to continue with. Any emails I wanted to save were downloaded for my records. I’ve been slowly removing myself from Google products and Gmail was the last one. I don’t even use Chrome anymore, I use Duck Duck Go as my browser. Subsequently, I also discovered that I can add my favorite Youtube channels to my RSS reader and be updated when they upload new videos, completely sidestepping Youtube’s subscription model and required Google account. I highly recommend this approach! It’s also helping me to not…