I finally made the switch to Brave desktop yesterday. It's been what I've been using on mobile for awhile.
I'll be giving DDG another go.
After this and the Chinese search engine, I'm looking to de-Google my life. I wish there was a good gmail replacement. I might just have to finally spin up my own server.
Logging into a browser with email reminds me of AOL.
Yeah, its always opt out at first. Google has shown their true colors over and over again. Where they really messed up is not making it opt out in the first place. That seems to be the winning strategy. Make a change that will be unpopular with the privacy aware crowd, add an opt out option to appease them while default is opt in for those that dont know any better. Then after people have forgotten/moved on, remove the opt out and you have the new normal. Edit: for email you might want to check out FastMail. You pay for the service so you're not the customer, and you can use your own domain or one of theirs.
Here's a really comprehensive list of privacy-respecting, free software alternatives: https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/list/
The apps here are a good start: https://fossdroid.com/ You'll find alternatives or replacements for most things.
I mostly de-Googled after the Snowden leaks. I'm lucky enough that my surname was available as a domain name, so I bought it and let the domain host also host my email (for a small monthly fee). Set it up on my phone and in Thunderbird on my computers, and it works great for my use. The two Google products I've yet to break with are Google Translate and YouTube. If you know any good non-US-based translation services, please let me know. For YouTube I blame the content creators. I realise the necessity of uploading to YouTube (since that's where 99% of the audience is), but would it be that much of a hassle to also upload the videos to a few alternative video sites as well?I wish there was a good gmail replacement. I might just have to finally spin up my own server.
You can follow YouTube channels via RSS using your own feed reader, and watch the videos via a 3rd party app. That cuts down on essentially all of the YouTube junk, like comments and recommended videos, and significantly limits their tracking.