US'exit - Leaving GAFAM and other american big tech services


2025-03-06 - πŸ• 20mn

Important updates

Outline

  • Introduction
  • Motivations
  • Psychological barriers and method, or why doing things halfway matters
  • Where to find alternatives and how to choose them?
  • Examples of alternatives by usage
    • Office software and collaboration
    • Email
    • Maps, navigation, street view
    • Web browser
    • Search engine
    • Operating system
    • E-Ink tablets and Ebooks
    • AI assistant (coding)
    • Miscellaneous

Introduction

In this article, I explore the omnipresence of GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) in our digital lives and the European or open-source alternatives available. I've been looking into this topic for about a year now and have gathered my notes here to try to provide solutions for those looking to migrate to other services. It's a long-term effort, and I myself still have dependencies on GAFAM, but you just have to tackle them one by one.

Caveats

  1. This article is far from exhaustive and covers what I've researched for my personal use and what I've discovered and learned along the way.
  2. Some parts are opinions expressed on ways of proceeding and not recommendations. Since each experience is different, the sole purpose is to share information, resources, and ideas.

Motivations

The reasons for reconsidering one's use of GAFAM and american companies tools in general and seeking alternatives are numerous and not necessarily related, but here are a few:

  • Privacy protection: Given American laws and the power of these companies, control over personal data is at best relative and at worst nonexistent despite GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
  • Fighting monopolies: I recommend reading BIG, Matt Stoller's excellent newsletter on monopolization in the United States. It's very US-centric, but archives from a few years ago were very educational on the economic and financial mechanisms at play and societal impacts. The Counterbalance is more European but less prolific. SOMO's work (Netherlands) on "Big Tech" also addresses these topics. And John Oliver also presented the issue for Big Tech nearly 3 years ago, if you have 25 minutes.
  • Service degradation (aka enshittification): Relatedly, monopolies hinder innovation and tend to degrade services or products sold (who hasn't cursed their printer despite the technology being decades old?). I would also recommend Ed Zitron's newsletter (more AI-oriented but with interesting Microsoft or Google topics) or Louis Rossman's YouTube channel (very involved in the Right to Repair movement in the US), which shares many practical cases of what I'd call legal scams. The recently created Consumer Task Force wiki is starting to list interesting examples in many areas. There are surely many other examples. Find many people complaining about a product, and you'll likely find a monopoly. But sometimes it's not even visible because alternatives are virtually nonexistent, and innovative companies have been bought out and/or killed in the cradle (GAFAM acquired over 700 companies between 2000 and 2020 according to this study, or over 1000 in 10 years according to SOMO, some clearly to maintain their dominant position).
  • Open protocols and service interoperability: I discuss this further regarding emails and messaging services, but briefly, some uses would benefit from regaining standardization as simple and general as email instead of exclusive and incompatible services; GAFAM maintain their "walled gardens" at the expense of user experience.
  • Information security compliance: Your employer's internal information security policy or that of your clients may impose constraints on data hosting and processing (incompatible with the CLOUD Act or with data hosting abroad), and using European tools and service providers can simply be a data protection argument and even a commercial argument.
  • European payment methods: Assuming alternatives to American payment methods take off (like Wero or the new free instant transfers perhaps! πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΊπŸŽ‰), they will more likely be managed by European companies before American ones that would stick to classic payment networks or services (MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, Stripe, ...). And even if transaction fees are regulated in France and Europe and much lower than in the US (whatever I write here, everything is worse in the US), competition must play its role.
  • Supporting European (or open-source) tech industries: Redirecting subscriptions or license purchases to European (or free) tools supports their development, strengthens the ecosystem, and ultimately the European economy (or free software).
  • Your own opinions and personal or professional reasons
  • Simple curiosity
  • Liberty! ✊

Psychological barriers and method, or why doing things halfway matters

Observation

When you start looking at the software and digital services you use daily, you realize the omnipresence of American companies, especially GAFAM, in our digital lives. Think about it: among your email, browser, search engine, office software, operating system (computer and phone), personal and professional social networks, instant messaging app, video conferencing app, video and music streaming services, mapping and navigation app, AI application, e-reader and ebook purchasing platform, video game purchasing platform, mobile app store, code/site/content hosting, how many are not American or not from a GAFAM?

Probably very few, maybe even none.

You might be using Spotify or Deezer, have a PlayStation or a Vivlio e-reader to borrow books from your local library. If you have two more than that, congratulations, you're an anomaly and on the right track! Otherwise, fear not, there are plenty of solutions.

The elephants in the room...

Now that you've seen the elephant and the space it takes in your (digital) living room, it's easy to think that freeing yourself from GAFAM is simply impossible in practice. If only because many of us have three oversized pachyderms: our very personal one, the work one, and the one we share by association in all our digital exchanges. While we can make choices for ourselves, it's difficult to migrate everyone, even simply your employer, where things are yet structured and common to the team or organization.

On top of that, GAFAM are both reassuring and coercive in the sense that they give an impression of timelessness ("Gmail will always exist, maybe not another email") and necessity ("everyone has Word and Excel and sends me files in these formats").

... and how to show them the door

The simplest is to start with your own software and services since the only obstacle is the time for research and transition. It's better to handle one topic at a time and get used to its daily use. Habits take some time to anchor, make the effort when you have some free time. Some of the easiest examples to change: browser, search engine, maps, local office tools, email inbox (with a caveat, see the dedicated paragraph). If you want more impact, migrate first the services you pay for.

Then, motivating colleagues to initiate some transitions may take a bit more time and be limited to a few simple use cases but has the advantage of raising awareness among more people and weaving the beginnings of a liberated web.

Finally, for interactions with others, you may have to accept two communication channels: a "liberated" one with those who have also left GAFAM and the old one that will survive as long as necessary.

In any case, you probably won't be able to get rid of all GAFAM or not without spending a lot of time. That's okay. I started leaving Google a little over a year ago (Android, browser, search engine, maps, Waze, and email), but I only really migrated as much received mail as possible to my new address in recent weeks. And I can't yet delete my Google account because I still need to extract my archives and share work documents there (my office suite is the next big piece).

In short, doing things halfway is already a lot of work.

Where to find alternatives and how to choose them?

If you're looking for alternatives to a particular service or software, a search on your usual search engine will yield many results. Nevertheless, here are a few sources among many others grouping alternatives by themes:

In the following section, I list some alternatives I use or have noted for myself when I have the time to look into them. The selection criteria for alternatives are the following, without being exhaustive or highly structured:

  • preferably European,
  • preferably open-source but without excluding European or non-GAFAM closed-source alternatives,
  • with encryption and/or protection (no commercial use) of personal and stored data,
  • preferably hosted in Europe and not by a GAFAM (AWS, Azure, Google cloud, ...) when I searched for and found the information.

Examples of alternatives by usage

Office Software and collaboration

There are several very credible alternatives to Microsoft Office and Google Docs:

  • Libre Office: for desktop use only, but the project is maintained, continuously developed, and quite widespread; open source.
  • Infomaniak (Switzerland πŸ‡¨πŸ‡­) :
    • complete cloud suite (with good free level): documents management, emails, calendar, video-conference,
    • classic office suite based on OnlyOffice,
    • synchronization with local folders on Desktop and mobile,
    • allows sharing and simultaneous collaboration.
  • Cryptpad (France πŸ‡«πŸ‡·):
    • only online and in the browser,
    • includes many tools: spreadsheet, text, presentation, drawing, diagrams, kanban, forms, markdown editor,
    • enables files uploading and sharing,
    • encrypted data,
    • allows simultaneous collaboration,
    • open source and self-hosting possible,
    • here's a good article reviewing the service.
  • CollaboraOnline (UK πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§):
    • based on Libre Office and reportedly the largest contributor to Libre Office source code,
    • includes desktop and online tools (via browsers and mobile apps) for a basic office suite: documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and drawings,
    • open source and self-hosting possible,
    • integrated into many cloud services from partners and many other tools, including numerous European ones,
    • but it is difficult to find a provider with a simple user/client onboarding flow.
  • Only Office (Lettonie πŸ‡±πŸ‡» / Russie πŸ‡·πŸ‡Ί ?) :
    • ⚠️ OnlyOffice could be a subsidiary of a russian company and its development could be done in Nizhny Novgorod in Russia; its capitalistic structure changed in 2023 to become part of a holding registered in Singapore, but it was previously a subsidiary of a russian company; I keep them in the list for information;
    • offers desktop and online versions (the desktop version can also open remote files),
    • allows document sharing and simultaneous collaboration on a document, even between desktop and browsers clients (demonstration),
    • has an office-only service offering and a broader one for project or team management (email, calendar, kanban boards, CRM, ...),
    • open source and self-hosting possible.

Email

SMTP: the value of norms and standards

An interesting point about emails is that the SMTP protocol specifying their transmission was standardized as early as 1982, long before the rise of the GAFAM era. Many protocols still foundational to the internet today were designed at that time with openness and interoperability in mind. Thus, sending an email is as simple as sending physical mail: we don't worry about where the recipient hosts their emails or what client they use. It's completely transparent and obvious.

Yet, this isn't the case for other equally simple uses like messaging apps. SMS is as compatible as email, but not WhatsApp (by Meta, aka Facebook), nor Facebook Messenger, nor iMessages (Apple)...

Imagine having to use different postal services depending on the destination, having a phone subscription per operator to communicate with everyone, an email address per mail service, or an app per discussion channel or group (oops). It's absurd but it's exactly the same. GAFAM consciously make this choice.

Thank you SMTP! πŸ₯°

Service provider or custom domain?

When creating a new email address, you have two options:

  • create an account with a free or paid email service provider (laposte.net πŸ‡«πŸ‡·, tuta mail πŸ‡©πŸ‡ͺ, proton mail πŸ‡¨πŸ‡­, lilo πŸ‡«πŸ‡·, many others πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί) : this means replacing an @gmail email address by an @tuta.com, @protonmail.com, @lilo.org, ...
  • or create your own custom domain and choose where to host your emails afterward (also possible with previously mentioned solutions).

Creating your domain frees you from the fate of the email host, though the most common ones probably have a lifespan as long as Gmail. Thus, you are free to migrate between hosts whenever you want while keeping the same email address! You can even self-host your mail server if you have the skills, though I'd avoid it to prevent being blacklisted by other servers and risking not receiving or sending certain emails.

On the other hand, you would need to buy and renew your domain name regularly (look for one on Gandi or other registrars to get an idea of the price) and set up the necessary DNS records. There are always explanations of how to do this (tuta, protonmail), but it's a bit more work to do and context to know.

Choosing a mail client

Next, you need to choose how to access your emails, to avoid having to manage them in too many different places. Each provider will probably have at least a browser interface to manage your emails, like in gmail. But you also often can use a desktop client and a full-fledged mobile application if you wish.

Tuta Mail requires using their client (desktop or mobile app) outside the browser because their end-to-end encryption makes them incompatible with IMAP.

Proton Mail has a workaround (Proton Mail Bridge) to connect another client to proton mail accounts.

But generally speaking, mail servers and clients (desktop or mobile app) are compatible thanks to the IMAP and POP protocols(for example for lilo.org). This allows using a single client that centralizes all accounts. There are many lesser-known mail clients, but the most obvious remains Thunderbird, developed by Mozilla, available as desktop and mobile apps.

Migrating

Finally, you must change your accounts on all platforms and online services one by one to update your email address. It's very easy but also very long. Start with the most obvious ones and take 2 minutes when you receive a message on the old address to update the concerned account.

If you have a password manager, you can search for accounts with your old address and take this opportunity to delete some. It's an opportunity to invoke GDPR and assert your rights to request the deletion of your personal data from services you leave along the way. It allowed me to clean up my data from some former energy/internet/phone providers..., out of my hundred accounts or so to migrate.

While you're migrating, you can set up a redirection from your old mail to your new one to remedy this and receive everything in one place (for example for Gmail).

And if you wish, you can transfer your email archives and contacts by exporting them from your old account (for example for Gmail) and importing them into the new one if the functionality exists (check before if it is possible in the targeted subscription level).

Maps, navigation, street view

Replacing GAFAM also means replacing Google Maps, Google Street View, Apple Maps and Waze (acquired by Google in 2013 and now fully integrated into Google's other teams). These services are free and monetized through advertising, which affects the presentation of map elements and search results. Choosing an alternative will thus mean making similar concessions or using a service based on the common content of OpenStreetMap. This article from the cartes.app blog addresses the topic better.

Among the most interesting alternatives, I would list:

  • cartes.app (France πŸ‡«πŸ‡·): open source, uses OpenStreetMap data, emphasizes public transportation data (by choosing the "Transports" map layer), integrates street-level photos from Panoramax, allows displaying elements by fairly precise categories.
  • panoramax.fr (France πŸ‡«πŸ‡·): an initiative to create an open database equivalent to Google Street View, powered by community contributions like OpenStreetMap.
  • Organic Maps (registered in Estonia πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ͺ): open source, a very good mobile app allowing offline map downloads of entire regions (initially created for trecking).
  • Mappy (France πŸ‡«πŸ‡·): more oriented towards navigation, monetized through partnerships with brands (highlighted notably in filters and search results), has a very good 360Β° street view but only available in certain cities.
  • ViaMichelin (France πŸ‡«πŸ‡·): geared more towards driving navigation, also includes ads on the maps.
  • There are others πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί.

Web browser

Did you know that almost all current browsers are derived from Chromium? That said, some are strongly oriented towards data privacy protection and detached from Google beyond the base Chromium project.

Aside from these, Mozilla Firefox is the only independent project at the code level. But Mozilla receives hundreds of millions of dollars from Google to set Google as the default search engine. And they recently revised their terms of use, probably to resell navigation data as well. If you prefer Firefox but want to avoid data transmission, LibreWolf is a fork (derived from the source code) that doesn't send telemetry to Mozilla.

Search engine

Much like browsers, Google overwhelmingly dominates the search engine market. Bing follows far behind. Russia and China have national alternatives (China having notably closed its digital market early on, possessing national equivalents for all these services).

Then there are niche search engines emphasizing features such as tracking protection (DuckDuckGo, Qwant, StartPage, Brave) or "green" searches (Ecosia, Lilo). However, almost all rely on Google's or Bing's web page indexes, essentially serving as a front-end to GAFAM.

I've found very few search engines using their own indexes:

  • Kagi (USA πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ): paid, to avoid serving ads.
  • Mojeek (United Kingdom πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§): building their own index gradually (8 billion indexed pages), but you need to set up the use of other search engines, and results are not on par with others.
  • Qwant and Ecosia announced they began work on a european search index; its advancement and quality will be interesting to follow.

But even making a small dent in Google's overwhelming dominance and their astronomical advertising revenue is beneficial for trying to rebalance the situation. To give you an idea, the lawsuit against Google Search in the United States in 2023 revealed that Google pays Apple over 20 BILLION dollars EVERY YEAR (36% of ad revenues related to the partnership) simply to be set as the default search engine on Apple devices (which dissuaded Apple from further developing its own search engine).

Operating system

Linux

For computers, it's pretty straightforward: leaving Windows and macOS means choosing a Linux distribution, with installation challenges for the general public, as they are rarely pre-installed commercially (which is unfortunate). I won't elaborate further; there are many rich resources elsewhere.

Android

For smartphones, it's perhaps worse: at first glance, it's either iOS or Android (I'll let you check market shares), and the overwhelming majority nearly all Android devices in circulation run a version dependent on and feeding data to Google. Moreover, smartphone manufacturers make their own modifications but rarely offer long-term support and updates. My previous Wiko device was 5 years old with no hardware issues, but hadn't received updates for at least two years, and applications became increasingly incompatible. Did someone say planned obsolescence?

The only valid alternative I know is using a cleaned-up version of AOSP (Android Open Source Project, the base for all Android versions) with minimal Google dependencies. Examples include LineageOS (still uses Google Play) or /e/OS (French πŸ‡«πŸ‡·, a LineageOS fork completely independent from Google services). There is also a full range of Android distributions.

Like Linux, the choices can be overwhelming without some technical knowledge, and installation is even more complicated. The simplest solution is purchasing a device pre-installed with one of these systems, such as Murena smartphones, or attending a flash-party where someone installs it on your phone. I've been using one for over a year and am very satisfied, intending to keep it running for 10 years or more!

E-Ink tablets and Ebooks

Kindle e-readers are very integrated with Amazon and do not allow reading e-books with DRM (Digital Rights Management) purchased from sources other than Amazon. However, there are many other e-reader manufacturers such as Vivlio (France πŸ‡«πŸ‡·) or Kobo from Rakuten (Japan πŸ‡―πŸ‡΅).

As for e-books, if they are not from Amazon, they will likely have DRM managed by Adobe (whether purchased or borrowed). This is a vast topic in itself, but if you want to avoid Adobe, you should look for books in an open format (epub, PDF) and without DRM. It is sometimes possible to get one directly from the publisher or some distributors.

AI assistant (programming)

If you're a developer using an AI coding assistant, Mistral (France πŸ‡«πŸ‡·) produced Codestral: a coding-specific model regularly updated. I still need to try it as a replacement for GitHub Copilot instead of renewing. The model integrates with several IDEs via third-party plugins, notably:

Miscellaneous

  • Amazon: look directly at sellers' websites or use other platforms.
  • Messaging : the Matrix protocol maintained by the Matrix foundation enables to create interoperable messaging applications and use the client of your choice to interact with other users of the protocol; I still lack a good overview of the topic.
  • Streaming movies and series: Mubi (UK πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§), TV channel services (arte.tv, Canal+, M6, ...)
  • Music streaming: Qobuz (France πŸ‡«πŸ‡·, French and Canadian investors), Deezer (France πŸ‡«πŸ‡·, 36% US-owned, then rest mostly in France and Luxembourg), Spotify (Sweden πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ͺ, cofounders have 25%, multiple american and british funds have a few percents), SoundCloud (Germany πŸ‡©πŸ‡ͺ)
  • YouTube: no exact equivalent, but PeerTube (Framasoft πŸ‡«πŸ‡·, ActivityPub protocol) is interesting, allowing synchronization of videos from other platforms.
  • X/Twitter: Mastodon (Germany πŸ‡©πŸ‡ͺ, federation via ActivityPub), BlueSky (USA, incomplete federation, but non-GAFAM).
  • Hosting & cloud services: OVH cloud (France πŸ‡«πŸ‡·), Scaleway (France πŸ‡«πŸ‡·), Hetzner (Germany πŸ‡©πŸ‡ͺ), many others πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί.
  • Video games : gog.com (Poland πŸ‡΅πŸ‡±) to buy games for real (without DRM like steam and other platforms).

For other aternatives on those topics and any other, you can check the alternative sources mentionned earlier in the article.

More than 21,000 words to scratch the surface. But hopefully worthwhile if you've read this far. Good luck!

Fin