There are many people that believe there are no alternatives to the services that are behind the well-known companies such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. You might be surprised but there is a good number of alternatives to pretty much all of those companies' services. Aside from the better privacy, not only are these alternatives good, they are often advantageous in many ways. In fact, there are services where you might think "why haven't I used this all along?".
This list is about giving services a chance that are not part of one of the largest tech companies. But what's so bad about always supporting the same big tech companies? For one, not doing so is for the purpose of supporting the competition: other, smaller companies. More competition means a wider variety of services to choose from with perhaps one better than the other. A lack of competition means that only very few companies have a lot of power over a large amount of users, with little regulation; a monopoly.
The hardest thing might be to get used to the new services and stopping old habits. It may be hard at first but remember that it is possible.
Services listed here generally respect your privacy unless stated otherwise.
- 🔍 Search engines
- 📺 Video platforms
- 📫 Email providers
- ☎️ Messengers
- 📣 Social media
- 📖 Reading
- あ Translators
- 🔖 Browsers
- ⏬ App stores
- 📂 File storage services
- 🌲 Maps and navigation
- 💾 Operating systems
- 💻 Code hosting platforms
- 📝 Keyboards
- DuckDuckGo (bangs, themes)
- Brave Search (themes, independent index, Discussions)
- Startpage (same results as Google but with privacy, themes)
- Ecosia (supports the environment)
- Qwant (EU-based)
- SearX (aggregates results from >70 search services)
- Odysee (has reposts from YouTube)
- Rumble (has creators from YouTube)
- Invidious (has YouTube's videos)
- NewPipe (for Android, has YouTube's videos, background playback, video/audio download)
- Piped (has YouTube's videos)
- PeerTube (decentralized)
- There are others but don't particularly advertise privacy[2]:
- Japanese: Niconico
- Multilingual: Dailymotion
- Proton Mail (free: 500 MB storage, other paid plans)
- Tutanota (free: 1 GB storage, other paid plans)
- CTemplar (free: 1 GB storage, other paid plans)
- Mailfence (free: 500 MB storage, other paid plans)
- Posteo (paid: 2 GB to 20 GB storage)
- mailbox.org (paid: 2 to 100 GB storage)
A note on limited storage.
It is worth noting that there is a good thing to having limited storage such as 500 MB.
At some point you will be forced to delete emails you no longer need
and that naturally makes your mailbox smaller, more organized and easier to navigate through.
It forces you to make sure your mailbox stays clean, and that's good for your own sake.
But even if you don't do so, sizes like 500 MB are plenty of space for the average user.
All these services are open-source.
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Matrix protocol: Element, FluffyChat, Syphon (these are clients for using the Matrix protocol)
E2E can cause you to lose messages if you lose room keys, which can happen if you for example use private windows. Using the client on multiple devices can help prevent this.
Messages are stored on homeservers, end-to-end-encrypted, if encryption is enabled. -
Signal
Requires telephone number; well-suited for real-life people.
Messages are stored locally, in encrypted form. -
Wire
Messages are stored locally, in encrypted form.
All these services are open-source.
All these services offer more natural and accurate translations but don't particularly advertise privacy[2]:
- DeepL Translate
- Papago (probably the best for East Asian languages)
- Firefox (open-source)
- Tor Browser (Firefox-based)
- DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser (for mobile, Chromium-based)
- Brave (Chromium-based)
- ungoogled-chromium (Chromium-based)
Also, have you ever wanted to play the newest games from Japan that are unavailable in your region?
These APK stores make it possible but don't particularly advertise privacy[2]:
- Proton Drive (based in Switzerland)
- Sync (based in Canada)
- Nextcloud (based in Germany)
- Tresorit (based in Switzerland and Hungary)
- Box (based in the United States)
- OsmAnd (offline maps)
- Qwant Maps
- Magic Earth (for mobile, offline maps)
- OpenStreetMap
Worried about whether you will be able to run your tools and games that are said to be Windows-exclusive?
Through WINE, Proton and other technologies support has become very good.
Alongside that and many other things you can enjoy almost never having to restart your computer for updates again.
- You'll want a Linux distribution, such as for example:
All these services are open-source.
Here are keyboards that are popular for Japanese input but don't particularly advertise privacy[2]:
One of the best Japanese keyboards. It works great for other languages too.
Some data is sent to a cloud to improve conversion accuracy but data is deleted within 60 days
and the cloud can be turned off.
Ironically enough, this list is hosted on GitHub, a proprietary service owned by Microsoft. The reason is mostly that GitHub, compared to the alternatives, still reaches a wider audience due to its popularity. Additionally, for most people it is nowadays hardly possible to avoid all of these mainstream services. After all, most of us carry a phone around typically running Android or iOS with the need of creating an account and agreeing to all kinds of policies to get access to basic services we desire. Nonetheless there are still a lot of things we can do as this list shows. The kind of services on the top are the ones we need to start with.
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Although this document only mentions Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, that doesn't mean they are the only companies that face a threat to privacy. They are just examples.
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Note that this isn't supposed to mean that this service is strictly to be avoided. As mentioned at the start of the document, it contributes to and serves the competition.
This document is supposed to collect high-quality services into a small list that is quick and easy to choose from.
If you are looking for longer and more comprehensive lists, have a look at these: