I'm DONE with Google

Maybe you're wondering why is it wearing that cool hat. It's cuz the tech overlords are listening. Now I can finally say Google smoole. What are you going to do Google? You're completely powerless now. What's that? Google owns YouTube. I would Google that, but I literally can't. What are they going to do? Censor this video? Demonetize it? Bury it under the algorithm so no one can find it? You're completely powerless. Google, you got nothing on me. So, the past couple weeks, I've completely deooled. I don't use any of Google's so-called free services except YouTube. I literally can't escape. It's surprisingly hot to wear a tinfoil hat. I don't know if you guys knew this. Well, you never worn a tinfoil hat before. Now, this all started because of privacy concerns. Being tracked with it, literally everything I do just feels kind of odd. mainly cuz I wanted to also regain control over my software and not to be at mercy of what the tech overlords decide to do just one day. But most importantly, I don't want to pay 20 bucks a year for 100 GB storage. Not happening. I realized since swapping to Linux, my life has just been going upwards. I'm practically ascending next step. But I realized there's always an open-source alternative and a lot of times they're better. They just don't have a billion dollar budget to market themselves. So, I went down the dele rabbit hole and I want to share what I learned because by the end of this once you know what I know, bro, you're going to want one of these cool hats as well. So, let's go through the delegalization. I want to be honest and share what I think you should absolutely change and maybe what was more hassle than worth. Number one, your search engine. Change your search engine right now. You can do it now while I keep yapping. Just go to your browser settings, find the search default browser, and change it to doc.go. It's a search engine that doesn't track what you do. It just works. Boom. Maybe you prefer everything you do online to be tracked and logged. I don't know. Maybe you're in that ballpark. I think just most people are either oblivious or lazy. So, I'm telling you now, don't be lazy. Number two, your browsing. When I told you to change your default search engine, you did not just do that inside of Google Chrome, did you? Say you ain't think so. There are way better browsers out there. I use Firefox. It's kind of B tier, but you can lock it down into S tier. A lot of people swear by Brave browser. I never tried it. My point is this is super easy to change. And have you ever thought why browsers are free to begin with? Why is Microsoft so why do they want you to use their browser so goddamn badly? You know, why do they all make it free for you? Could it be cuz they track everything you do online and sell or trade your data? What? What do you mean they don't make this out of the goodness in their heart? You're telling me Google isn't just a trillion dollar charity? What? I found online that in 2023, Google paid Apple to be their default search browser in Safari. Guess how much? 20 billion. Jesus Christ. They definitely want you to use Google. So, just don't. It will take you 2 minutes. Go do it. Number three, the third thing I changed. Like many of you, I've been using Google Mayor for years and years and years. And apparently up until 2017, that's when they stopped scanning your emails to serve you ads. So now Gmail is a little less creepy, you know, but uh if you think about it, it is probably the most invasive service that they run. Like and there are free alternatives out there like Proton. I haven't tried it out. I decided to send this and get my own email. I paid a small fee. It was fiddly as hell, but at least people won't think I'm poor and have like Google Schmoogle in my ad domain. Number four, with me deing lately, I realized it's time for me to d something else. D's I don't want to say the joke. Anyway, I started working with G-Fuel 6 years ago. GFuel sponsor. [Music] We created the greatest flavor of all time. GFuel Lingberry. Lingon Berry is out and it's really, really good. Honestly, I'm so proud of this flavor. Yuzu slash legendary moment. Yuzu Slash Baby, Sour Green, PewDiePie. So many great memories, so many great slurps, so many great memes. But it's finally time to retire this guy, Sayanara Jusa, cuz we're introducing a new tub and t-shirt. Same energy, new armor. Get the collector's box. You get the t-shirt and the new tub. You don't want to be tubless this summer. I tell you that much. That's worse than having Google in your sub domain. It's available right now. Check it out. Link in the description. Finally. Don't miss this opportunity to be part of history. We got many more exciting G-Fuel announcement coming up. So stay tuned. Number five, your phone. I have a Google phone. God damn it. Everything is Google. It's crazy. I didn't realize how deep I've been swept into this ecosystem without realizing it. My goddamn TV is Google. I thought it was a Sony TV. You open up, it's like Google TV. How did that happen? I don't know about you, but I feel like I'm supposed to be enamored by the phone, how amazing it is with it incredible hardware and how powerful it is. But if it's so great, then why do I feel like I'm the product? Huh? I hate my phone. notifications just feel like they're there to suck me in, not to tell me anything useful. All these apps and features. I feel like my uh attention span is just getting mushed the more I use my phone. I hate it. It's just one big giant distraction device. So, I have a Pixel 9 and it is a good phone and I already own it. So, instead of switching it out to like a dumb phone or something like that that I know a lot of people do, I want to install a custom OS on it. There was a lot of them to choose from, but I opted for Graphine. Graphine mainly because it felt like the biggest point the finger to Google. You know, it's an operating system focused on privacy and security apparently. So much so that even Edward Coen uses it. Did I get that right? I would Google it, but I can't. But here's the thing, okay? For some reason, I feel like I'm the crazy one. Huh? What? Why do you want to Google so bad? Huh? Where do you got to hide? Huh? This guy got graffine on his phone. What What's up with that? I feel a little judged. Okay. But after using graffine, I realize, no, this is how it should be. I'm not the crazy one. There's a few features on Graffine that I really like, and these are just to name a few. Especially with security, I really like how they amped it up. But the fact that I close an app on Graffine and it closes the app. Crazy. A lot of times on your phone if you think you've closed an app but in reality running in the background and still tracking whatever it is they want to graphine nuke that [ __ ] is gone. Such a crazy concept right? I'm the crazy one. Number two I control exactly what the app has access to. You can use file or storage scopes I think it's called. And if I want to give an app access to a certain type of files I pick which folder? Not the entire device as it should be. Not some vague little popup going like, "Hey, do you want to you want to give them access to this?" No. Complete control. Number three, whenever you install an app on Graphine, it asks you before installing it, "Hey, do you want to give this app access to your internet?" Cuz a lot of times the answer is heck no. Not happening. I realized I was trying desperately to find a keyboard that has Japanese, Swedish, and English. I really like the Swift kind of typing, you know? I just couldn't find an open source alternative and I was like, what do I do? And then I realized the alternative is Microsoft or Google. Okay. And I realized the keyboard that they offer is connected to the internet. Why? Why? Imagine you bought a physical keyboard and it was secretly connected to the internet sending big tech everything you type. We're not doing anything weird. Just trust us, bro. It's so messed up. On graffiti, I still have the option. And if I want to take a Google app, I can starve it. Put it in one of those. I still don't like that I use a Google app, but uh no, actually it's good. Google is at my mercy for once. Feels good. Another feature that I think is kind of obvious and most people would appreciate. But there was a fourth hidden feature on graphine that I love that it is not a feature, but for me it ended up being one. Like I talked about in the beginning, it feels a lot of times when I use a phone, it's such a distraction. There are some some apps that you probably have to use. Maybe it's for work or because of friends and you want to connect, whatever. You're going to have to use certain apps that you don't really want to use. So, I decided to put all those apps and you can do this as well actually on a different profile. The good thing about Graphine is that on a different profile, all these apps are contained in that profile. They can't connect to anything else on my phone or run in the background or anything like that. That's what great about Graphine and that's why to me it felt like a good solution with all the apps that I don't want to use. But what this ended up doing was that, okay, now I need to use this app that I don't like to use. It feels intentional going there. I don't even see these apps when I use my phone on a regular basis. And it made so that my phone starts feeling like it's serving me again, like an actual useful tool that it supposedly is, right? So yeah, huge fan. I'm so glad I swapped out. It's probably the best thing I did so far, but it gets better. Okay, I had to ride this couple weeks. I tell you what number is it six or five? I I don't [ __ ] I lost count. Uh anyway, password managers. What do you mean password one two three isn't going to cut it? I hate password managers. Why? Because they cost 6 to7 to host a 5 kilobyte size document. I don't think so. This whole video is me just doxing myself for being cheap. It's not happening. I'm not paying that. I almost had a heart attack when I found out. I'm paying what? But you need a password manager. That's just the reality of today. I thought I was so smart. I was like, "Okay, fine. I don't need to do these. I'm running Linux." I downloaded a backup. I made it into an HTML and then I encrypted it and then I had an alias. So, I unencrypted when I need to use it and then quickly encrypt it. Is it Is it unencrypt or decrypt? It doesn't matter. Bada bing, bada boom. I saved myself 67. If I live for, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 years. That's like I saved myself a lot of money. Multi-millionaire is a cheap assmp. That's what I should call this. But then I realized I need this file on other devices. I need it on my phone and my laptop. And what if I go abroad? And that's when I discovered Glorious SH self-hosting. I can just host this on another device. I feel like ever since I did my Linux video, so many comments have been like, just wait until it discovers self-hosting. it's going to be game over. And yet, you were right. Okay. What? I started off on a Raspberry Pi 5. This thing is relatively cheap. It's got Ethernet. It runs on low power and it's powerful for its size. Can do more than enough for what I wanted to do. I found an open- source uh alternative, which is Volta Warden. You can host your own password manager. Basically, the problem was I have no clue what the heck I'm doing. What is a reverse proxy? What do you mean I can't just put my IP address in my browser and be done with it? Volt Warden is so secure that it wouldn't let me connect to it unless I set it up properly. Every time I thought I did it, I kept seeing the spinny circle and I saw that circle for two goddamn days. But once it finally worked, magic. I have done it. I had saved myself 67. Tears running down my eyes. It was beautiful. My first successful selfhost. My god. No more subscriptions, no more sinking drama, just my own secure vault. It felt like I was finally breaking out of the matrix for real. And the thing is, once you start understanding how this works, it's really not that bad. If anything, it became super fun because with compatibility layers like Docker, you can so easily just pick and choose what open source software you want to download, keep trying out different ones. The world is your oysters. Just pluck them from the trees and everything just works. So, I needed a note takingaking app. I found one called Yaplin. That's how you say that, Yaplan. It had a desktop app and a phone app, which is exactly what I wanted. But when I installed Yoplin, this is where things got weird. Do not judge me here, okay? This is, you can probably relate to this actually. Have you ever been so lazy that you try and find another alternative, but then that leads you on a road that was 10 times more complicated than just not being lazy? The image that I was trying to install on my Pi was not compatible. It was 86x 64. This is ARMbased structure. It doesn't matter. Not compatible. I can just find another one. But I thought, hey, why don't I just quickly install this on something that does run 86x 64. And I look around and I'm like, oh well well, well, my Steam Deck runs 86x 64. So, you may be asking, "Helix, did you use your portable handheld gaming console to host your note-taking app?" Yes, but it get it gets worse, actually. Steam runs Linux. Beautiful. It actually runs Arch, which is the dro I use on my desktop. Match made in heaven. But, uh, I thought to myself, well, it's filled with all this like steam bloat. I should probably uninstall Arch so I can then install Arch. I don't know what's wrong with me. Don't ask. And I did this, of course, just so I wouldn't have to. Uh, find another image of my note takingaking app. But anyway, it works. At the end of the day, that's all that matters. Now I got my notes app running beautifully. Number seven or eight. It was time to say goodbye Google Drive. Goodbye, Jotto. 20 bucks for 100 gig? I don't think so. I'm not going to pay you to hold my data hostage forever. Not happening. What if I live for another 600 years? Think about how much money that's going to be to Google. No more subscriptions. Redundant subscriptions. Instead of Google Drive, I set up File Browser. The thing that bothers me about all these free online stoages that gives you a certain amount at least is that first of all, it's not safe. Second of all, I don't know what they're doing with that. Thirdly, I hate how it's used. I don't know if you can relate to this. Maybe this is like a me problem, but let's say I'm out. I've gone outside, I've touched grass, I've taken all these photos and videos, and then I sit down in front of my computer, and then all of a sudden, internet goes down, and I'm like, what happened? And then it's like, oh yeah, my Google Drive decided to back up every single photo and video I've ever taken, and it's like, I don't want that. I want certain images. Let me pick those first. And I don't want you to suck up my entire bandwidth. With file browser, I can throttle the speed and I can do it when I want to, which files I want to. I went a little nerdy and overboard surprise. And I wrote a bunch of aliases and shell functions so that I can define push or pull to download or upload which device, my phone, laptop, desktop, deck, and which subfolder. And I do all this with glorious SSH. It actually solved another problem for me, which is always sharing files between my phone and my desktop. I never know how to do it. Apparently, I didn't know this. I feel like everyone is tuning out because I'm talking about SSH again, but you can run it on your phone. Look, I'm connected. And then I thought, and now I gotta do an opposite script on my phone. But then I realized I can just connect to my desktop to run the script. It doesn't matter. Okay, it's cool. Just trust me, it's cool. Number nine, AI. We have to talk about AI. I don't know about you, but I don't like using AI. It feels like I'm kneeling directly to the tech overlords. And not to mention the goddamn subscription fees. I feel like I'm spoon feeding the machine that has stolen all my data. More of my data. Here you go. Nice and fat. Here you go. Not happening. But I got curious and you know I built my own computer not long ago and I spent a lot of money on it. Why don't I just see if I can run it myself? It's a beast. So I set up a local language model called Mixstro. Emphasis on local which means it runs on my computer completely offline. It's beautiful. Now I can search whatever I want and I can ask it dumb questions like why is my left toe bigger than my right toe and no one knows about it. Not Google, not AI overlords, not even you. Step 10. How many steps are there? And we have so much left. PDFs, Google Docs, calendar, contacts. I was honestly getting a little tired at this point to try and find an alternative to all of these, but that's when I discovered NexCloud. It's an open source self-host beast, and it does all of this for you. Maybe there are better singular alternatives, but the fact that I can get all of this baked in one was exactly what I needed. And just one quick install and it was done. I was completely out of Google and it felt amazing. Finally, I'm free. From here on on is when I needed to tighten things up a little bit. I actually bought a domain. I know I paid a subscription fee, but it's worth it. If you're self-hosting, it's actually worth it cuz you can get a domain for five bucks a year. It means I can get better security features and I can put all these services in subdomains. So like docs.mmysubdomain.com and password.mmysubdomain.com like all all these different things I made I can access easily. I don't have to type my IP address for each one. And I started to tighten down the security as well. Especially cuz I was looking online. I'm like, I'm getting a lot of bots that are pinging me. I don't like this. Everything is locked in with the password already, but I added another layer of zero trust, so you can't access anything. Uh, unless you have another login. I locked in my IP address with tail scale. Beautiful tail scale. I could make a whole video. I had a failure ban. It was definitely worth spending some time locking things down. And I think I found a good balance of it being secure, but also not like a huge hassle every time you want to access either. Now, swapping out all these Google services, there's one that I just can't escape, and I don't mean YouTube. There's one that sucked the most to get rid of, and there was actually Google Maps because Google tracks you so well. It is so good at predicting traffic. And since I drive a lot in Tokyo, I really rely on that to get on to places on time. You can't be late in Japan. It's like a death sense. The first time I used my open source alternative, I ended up 30 minutes late. And that's when I realized, hey, maybe big brother tracking everything isn't so so bad. Maybe surveillance has its perks. But I stuck to my deing and I the best alternative I found was just using my car's GPS. It's a it has all this Japanese services built in. Anyway, I ended up using my Pi to replace my Google TV and I'm running Kodi on that. I haven't really fully set it up yet, so not much to say about it. And you may remember I'm doing all of this on my Steam Deck. I added an extension so I can plug it into Ethernet. That way it runs on less power. It runs completely headless and I can monitor all of it on my safe network system that I have. But then I thought it'd be kind of cool to use the display so I can use that for monitoring. I ran T-Max and Btop on it and it looks so cool. You know, this all started because I wanted to de Google and try what that what that was like. And by the end of it, my Steam Deck looks like it's a detonator for a bomb or something like that. And before you ask, yes, I can still game on it. All right, it runs 2% of my CPU. It's like this weird home lab abomination at this point. But I love it. I love looking at it. I got it sitting next on my desk. It's just a vibe, man. Every time I see it, I'm happy. Another fact that I like using my Steam Deck is the fact that I can just use whatever I have around me. People have these like super sick home lab setups, which are awesome. I get it. But I my point with this is that if you wanted to de Google, you can use whatever you have at your disposal. It shouldn't cost you any extra money. Like I'm not going to pretend that Steam Deck is the ultimate self-host device. You're probably better off using a Pi, but maybe you have some device laying around at home that you can run Linux on. Bring it back to life, you know, instead of throwing it away. And I hate to be that guy, but it's better for the environment. Yes, it's a lot of tinkering, but you learn a lot. And by the end of it, it's done. Like, I don't have to touch it. Google's mantra is don't be evil, but I still think they have a lot to do to qualify for that title. I feel like on your phone you have all these settings with privacy and give permissions and all these things that they ask you, but it kind of feels like one of those toys that Bern has that it's just like a bunch of buttons that doesn't actually do anything. Unless you go all the way with privacy, it doesn't mean anything. Don't call it privacy. And for me, it's not even necessarily about Google. I think it's more about big tech in general. I hate where software is going. Unnecessary subscriptions, ads, locking, updates being changing the entire UI because you're more prone somehow to give get more locked in. With YouTube, you know, it's been constantly changing for years and years and years just because they figured this is the best way to suck you in. If I host my own apps, there's none of that. So now I got my own home lab abomination and I love it. I'm finally free from the tech overlords. It was 100% worth it. And look, bro, I made you one, too. You've earned it. Here you go, bro. This video is sponsored by SY. I am a huge fan of SY cuz it genuinely makes traveling for us so much easier. This time when we were on our way to Savannah, Marcy asked me about it and we literally set it up on the flight because it had internet. For those you don't know, SY is an eim app, which means electronic SIM. So if you're traveling almost anywhere in the world, over 60 countries, you get access to internet through this app. M said just open the app, pick the country, picked how much data she needed, and of course use code PewDiePie, which gave her a 15% discount, and bada bing bada boom, instant internet as soon as you land, which is what I want. The first thing I want when I land is internet. I genuinely hate I hate standing in line when I land renting a Wi-Fi box. How is that a good solution? You just have to carry another thing when you're traveling that also have to worry about being charged. Or if you opt to just buy a physical SIM while you're there, you still have to go and actually find where to buy it, set it all up while you're there, and you have to worry about losing your original SIM. At least I do. It's kind of important. I don't like removing it. SY just solves all the problems. It's an amazing service and I highly recommend it. You can use the QR code to download it or use the code PewDiePie at checkout for 15% discount. If you're planning a trip anywhere, you can download it right away, set it up all now, and don't even have to think about it. You need internet when you travel. So, I just love that it removes that stressful element to me. So, thank you Sy for being an amazing sponsor and you guys are welcome.