this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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Trying to escape Google's ecosystem, but past purchases keep pulling me back. #DeGoogled #GoogleLockIn #PrivacyStruggles #TechDilemma #FOSS #DigitalFreedom #AndroidAlternatives

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[–] LifeLemons@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

Its not only in google purchases. Almost all digital assets are licensed based, you buy a license. You don't own anything and it fucking sucks. I therefore try to buy CDs of games or movies if possible

[–] Lyubo@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Let go of the past, think for the future!

[–] Lyubo@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

P.S: You bought them, if the licence doesn't transfer you are in all right to pirate them. 🙄 There is a really good megathread on reddit. Hopefully someday they move to Fediverse. 🤞🏻

[–] Obelix@feddit.org 7 points 1 day ago

Already done: lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy

Let's call it a five-finger discount. 🖐️

[–] Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 days ago

There is absolutely NOTHING I purchased on the play store that I need. Forget about replacing, i'm genuinely better off without it

[–] ragas@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 days ago

I use a ROM with microg and it actually works for all the things I need.

[–] ReginaPhalange@lemmy.world 109 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Find the least used paid service and look for an alternative. Start with replacing google drive.

[–] crony@lemmy.cronyakatsuki.xyz 9 points 3 days ago

Only services I paid for were games.

[–] pewpew@feddit.it 72 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

You can install paid apps with aurora store if you already bought them on Google Play or you can download them modded from other sources :)

[–] Xttweaponttx@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

modded from other sources

True! But depending on the obscurity of the app it can be hard to find non-malware versions of such modded apps.

Scan your sus APKs, folks! Its fast and free -- Virustotal.com does a pretty good job 🙂 I've caught a coupla apk Trojans there in the past!

[–] kaerypheur@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago

Thanks for your info. 😄👍

[–] machine2918@lemm.ee 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (3 children)

Stop with the hashtags, this isn't Twitter

Edit: I was wrong, my bad.

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

this isn't Twitter

But this is Mastodon (for some of us).

Lemmy and Mastodon share content, now.

This new nerd Internet is weird, but it's weird in cool ways.

[–] machine2918@lemm.ee 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Damn, you're right, my bad!

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 1 points 19 hours ago

Don't feel bad, this place is weird. It's a good weird. But weird.

[–] TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

iirc hashtags work for people using mastodon which lemmy.world federates with https://lemmy.world/instances
(could be wrong though)

[–] machine2918@lemm.ee 2 points 20 hours ago

Damn, you're right, my bad!

[–] Kbobabob@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What's with all the hashtags? This isn't Twitter. Searching #FOSS for example shows a whole of not this with most seemingly only containing the '#' part or FOSS but no '#'.

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[–] helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 30 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

Everyone saying you can't have Graphene and google store apps as a daily driver must have given up day one or had some important app that they needed. I'm about 10 months in now.

Graphene sandboxes all the apps, including google services. Yes, it'd be ideal to ditch google all together but reality makes that not feasible for a lot of people. Which is why graphene went through the effort to makes google services work.

You do have to download Google Services Graphenes own mini "app store". gmail 2FA works, play store/and restoring purchases works, Android Auto works, push notifications work.

It is true, some apps do not work on graphene. Mostly banking apps with extra security. There is a compatibility mode you can set for the app that reduces Graphene's restrictions on the app. Sometimes that works.

So in short, yes the meme is true. We are still locked into google one way or another, but at least we don't have to let them and other apps steal all our data.

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[–] noxypaws@pawb.social 10 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Don't hesitate for a second to buy a Pixel for the purposes of GrapheneOS. By all means avoid all other ways of giving Google money, but this is a clearly reasonable exception.

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[–] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 36 points 3 days ago

Its called a walled garden for a reason. Good luck dude. What's your plan?

Not sure I understand. What do you buy from Google? If you want to degoogle, purchasing other stuff, or through channels other than the Play store is probably the simplest part.

[–] Brotha_Jaufrey@lemmy.world 20 points 3 days ago (3 children)

GrapheneOS is great for privacy. But the need for banking apps, working notifications, etc get in the way of me using it for a main device. Plus, there’s the dilemma that in order to fully avoid being tracked by Google, you need to setup a separate user profile on your device for anything that uses Google services (ie if you want to use the playstore even with fake google services). I just switched to using an iphone and use decentralized apps for the most part. But my secondary device has graphene

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 23 points 3 days ago (6 children)

Not sure what are you talking about. I'm using GraphaneOS as a daily driver and my banking apps work perfectly. The only 'banking' app that didn't work is Revolut but I easily found an alternative and switched. The apps for two actual banks I use work without issues. Notifications work fine, no issues at all. I don't have separate user profile, I have a work profile created with Shelter app. Everything just works. Work profile apps can't access contacts or files from main profile. Google services are only available in work profile.

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[–] HurlingDurling@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

~~Well, you don't need to worry too much now as Android has gone (or is going) close source which may affect rom devs, making a private phone even more difficult unless linux becomes mainstream as an alternative.~~

Update: Crap, missed a bit of the article

When new versions of Android are done, Google says it will continue to publish the source code in AOSP as always.

Please disregard my previous message and confusion.

[–] SloganLessons@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

This is wrong. Google will now share Android code after each new Android release, instead of releasing over time in real time. This is not uncommon in open source projects.

I’m not defending, or claiming that they won’t try to make Android closed source eventually in the future, but right now what you said isn’t correct

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 5 points 2 days ago

It's definitely step in the wrong direction and knowing Google, they will not stop here.

[–] HurlingDurling@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago

You are correct, I went back to the article and re-read the whole thing and found a sentence that I missed the first time. I have updated my original comment.

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[–] sommerset@thelemmy.club 3 points 2 days ago

Why do u have your purchases on Google?

[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 3 points 2 days ago

Losing the ability to use my FELiCA chip is a big one for me. We use it for all kinds of things here in Japan, the most annoying of which being all kinds of things for verifying our identity by reading our My Number (and other) cards. It would also add up to an hour to any of my commutes to account for having to wait to buy tickets, etc.

[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago (4 children)

The thing people often dont realize is that if you do end up caving in and installing Google app services back onto your de-googled phone and logging into your old Google account - well, you're almost back to square one. Google now ties all the identifiers of that phone/OS to your old Google account and will continue tracking it as much as possible whenever it sees those identifiers accessing anything. So I'd avoid that if your goal is de-Googling, but I understand why some need it as a stop-gap.

I thought the same initially re: sunk costs, but when I actually sat down and made a list of the apps I had on my old phone and what I used them for, I could quickly see that almost half of them were already FOSS. Then checked what alternatives are available for others and realized i could actually replace almost everything. The only premium apps I ended up "needing" were Poweramp*, and a couple others I actually forget now without finding my list. Almost everything can be replaced by using the website as a web link or web app, or using an open source alternative.

A big bonus of that process was seeing on the Aurora Store how many trackers were detected in each of the old apps while i was reviewing them and it was insane. I remember one Sudoku app I'd installed years back had like 16 trackers.. Wtf. Checked FOSS options on F-Droid and found several alternatives.

*Poweramp can be bought direct from the developer, no need for Google apps, so I repurchased it via that method so I could avoid using my old account. I don't mind buying things a second time if the devs have made the facilities available to avoid Google. I recently did the same for Symfonium.

The only ones that stung a bit to abandon was Sleep As Android which I'd paid for (I use their limited free version now and block it on the firewall to prevent ads/tracking); and Sygic (gps app) I'd paid lifetime maps for.. I just use Organic Maps now, and while it's not as fancy it navigates just fine and I use it regularly for car GPS.

Things like Shazam that there's not really a FOSS alternative for but are free (with questionable tracking) you can install as a 'work profile' app via Shelter, which means it has no access to your real contacts and personal data, and can be set to auto-freeze (deletes cache and pauses app, keeps personal data). So you can use it and expose minimal data, and it can't tie it back to a Google account to profile you as it doesn't see one.

So far I've never needed a Google account on this phone, which means it's been a clean break from Google entirely. 3 years now and very happy with the results.

Things like Shazam that there's not really a FOSS alternative for

Audire - https://github.com/alexmercerind/audire.

[–] Ajen@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

GrapheneOS runs Google play services in a sandbox (rather than as a system level app) and randomizes the advertiser ID, IIRC.

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[–] ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 15 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Genuine question: What do you spend money on, on a phone? I've never bought anything myself and I don't know what I could even spend money on.

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[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I totally wish I could install an actual Linux based (I don't consider android Linux) distro on my current phone and also be able to install something like Waydroid with some sort of sandbox for it. Though I'm pretty sure my budget Samsung would fry itself if I tried doing that considering I can't even unlock the bootloader without it freezing up indefinitely.

[–] DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

There's not really a whole lot of options unless you like Manjaro mobile, Fedora mobile, Arch mobile, or Ubuntu Touch that I'm aware of.

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[–] Comrade_Spood@slrpnk.net 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

My issue is no one has developed a custom OS for my phone. Suprising considering it seems like the kind of phone FOSS users would love. A modern smart phone with an aux cord and replaceable battery still. Samsung Galaxy XCover 6 Pro for anyone interested.

[–] butter@midwest.social 7 points 2 days ago (7 children)

It seems to go along popularity lines. I have never heard of this phone.

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[–] The_Caretaker@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago

I can't shell out the money for another phone but I deleted my google account and replaced all the Google apps on my phone with FOSS apps. I don't have root access on my phone so I can't actually get rid of all of the Google apps. Best I can do until I need to replace my phone. Fortunately I never purchased anything from Google.

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