Technology

For a Google drive alternative I've heard of nextcloud but haven't looked into it. For staying in touch with news articles, etc you could look into RSS readers and subscribe to RSS feeds from publications online. For a Google alternative, duckduckgo can handle your search needs. I opted to sail the high seas rather than subscribe to multiple streaming services, but I haven't found a YouTube replacement

I know you mentioned you weren't super tech savvy, but check out some of the stuff on the https://awesome-selfhosted.net/ list. Not everything there actually needs to be self hosted or set up in any complex way.

I totally agree with you and this is the opportunity to call on the tech savy who are here. There's a lot of people like OP, like me, drenched in frustration, because we realize we are the product, but we don't have the strength and the knowledge to emancipate ourself from this position of semilliterate. Yes, you could say: just study, but when one works the time, having some organized free time is the Neverland. I think it'd be something memorable, that will endure times if people of good fill could put together some sort of wikipedia that explains simply how to come back to be a user, or even better an explorer and not just a product.
I know there's something like but I do not have the skills to install it. I do have a proton account, I use DDG, mozilla firefox and I tend to use f-droid for every app, before going to Google play to download what I need.
I began to pay for the Internet services or make donations (small ones) to organizations who are respectful toward the person and bring/offer interesting contents to the net (Intercept.
But what misses is the will to communicate and literate people like us that suffer the Internet without having to tools to take back our right to be just a curious person who want to wander through the world rather than into a mega mall center.

The bad news is you'd have to learn more technology and pay more money. The good news is there are decent alternatives.

There are lots of great suggestions here

My recommendation is to go slow and go methodically. As excited as you might be, it'll take longer if you rush into things and most likely you won't be able to replace everything right away because of commitments and connections to your community (job, family, friends).

For example, you could start by unfollowing accounts on the social media platforms and replacing that time with other hobbies. On the other side, I'd recommend keeping your Gmail & drive until you're comfortable with the new options. So much of modern society relies on your email and files, and it would be a pain to recover if something goes wrong

My advice would be to look into things one at a time while also avoiding taking the sledgehammer approach. Based on what you mentioned, some things you might want to look into:

Look into some encrypted cloud storage/backup options. Filein comes to mind but there's plenty. I'd recommend against self hosting your own cloud in most cases (like nextcloud) in most cases it is both less secure and less private especially on a VPS - and if its on a home server it makes your backups less redundant.

Try doing more stuff in web browsers, web wrappers, or front ends. Unlike an app, there's a lot less sneaky stuff a web browser can do, even if it's the same platform. The Brave browser does cookie isolation and progressive web apps well, it might make a good second browser dedicated to progressive web apps. Apps like newpipe are great for YouTube and piped/invidious for yt or nitter for twitter are two good examples of front ends.

Installing apks is easier than you might think, and if you install FDroid it's three clicks (download, allow installation, install) and worth checking out. Once it's installed you can treat it like any other app store, and in combo with Aurora (on FDroid) you can get about any app without going through a Google account.

As for email, you can forward emails from a gmail account to a proton account. And as for content, consider trying to follow via RSS (you can follow just about anything with RSS one way or another).

For social media look into activity pub and nostr. Just about any alternative social media is going to have the crazies from one or both sides of politics kicked off of mainstream platforms, but federated and decentralized platforms allow you to pick and choose a lot more.

Last, as the phone goes, whenever possible try disabling background data and setting aside pre-installed apps you don't want to use and going from there. A step up from that would be to uninstall/disable them (either in settings or adb bridge for those you can't disable). Custom Roms would be the biggest leap, and the most technological. If you're going to buy a phone with the intent of installing one, Graphene beats everything else hands down while still being one of the easiest to install.

Good luck

You can pay for dreamhost, namecheap or any other shared hosting plan that provides WebDAV. Some provide unlimited storage. I am not sure how realy unlimited it is.

Buy domain and host empty website. Turn on ssl using hosting tools. Dreamhost provides you with free certificate for that. Namecheap charges after 1st year.

Create directory on the website using hosting tools and turn on webdav on that directory. It can be password protected. Turn on password protection and disable public access using hosting tools.

That will give you a disk that can be mounted on Windows, Linux or mac without additional software. On iOS you will need an app like OwlFiles. You will have access to it From home or coffee shop. Anywhere. It will act as your remote storage and you can access it using Explorer or Finder. Most tools will read content of remote disk without any restrictions.

Create another directory and leave public access to have public sharing directory only you can change (keep passwords).

Create another directory or use one of your private subdirectory with application Joplin and you get free and open source notes and todo system. That system can encrypt all your notes with master password. I recommend it: https://joplinapp.org

The might be other apps…

Might want to check out f droid

I got away from overpriced Samsung devices a few years ago and have a fairly bloat-free Motorola. Now I want to dump the Google ecosystem. I intend to download all of my pics and files from Drive and the Google cloud. I am not so tech savvy that I can install APKs

You don't need to install any APKs. You can buy phones with /e/OS (a fully de-Googled Android) preloaded, such as the ones sold by Murena. Another option is to buy a cheap/used Pixel phone and flash GrapheneOS, which is another de-Googled Android, but is much more secure than /e/OS. They have a web based installer that's pretty easy to use, you just have to follow the step-by-step instructions on that page - there's no need to even type any commands or anything!

or switch to Linux

Depending on your software requirements and workflow, this could actually be a pretty easy switch. You said you're not very tech savvy, and contrary to popular opinion, Linux is actually very suitable for non-techy people: because such folks have very simple requirements from a PC in general - like surfing the web, checking emails, do some light document or image editing, transferring files, ocassionally print or scan stuff. You know, all the basics. All of which Linux excels at.

Now on the other hand, if you're a geek or a IT pro, or a professional photographer, or someone like that with very specific software requirements / workflow, it'd may a lot more difficult to switch, but for most general, non-techy home users, Linux works very very well. Case in point - both my mum and dad (60+) and many elderly relatives of mine are all happily running Linux since many years now. None of them are tech savvy (except my mum I guess, she actually learnt computers properly, going back to the DOS days), but most of them are total noobs at PCs - in fact my dad didn't even know how to operate a PC until I taught him (which was after his retirement, for reasons...). Most of these folks have been running Linux for over a decade now and had no major issues, afterall, all they need is a web browser and some light document viewing/editing, plus the ocassional prints and scans. They have no need for proprietary apps or nVidia graphics, so Linux has been working for them very well.

If you're in this camp as well, then Linux could be a good option for you. If you also think this is the case, let me know and I can point you in the right direction as to how to get started with this Linux stuff in the easiest way possible.

If you need Logic as your DAW you're locked into the Mac ecosystem in that regard.

I second the suggestion of RSS feeds (I use TheOldReader) and DuckDuckGo as search engine replacement.

Also, Mozilla's Pocket is a useful tool for collecting articles (and having related ones recommended to you).

If you aren't too tech savvy I would recommend against self hosted services. There are amazing solutions out there but they will cost a few bucks.

For cloud storage I use Hetzner's https://www.your-storageshare.de. It's a hosted Nextcloud with pretty much all the freedom you can get. Currently it costs about 5 Euros per month for 1TB of storage. You can even share it with your family and friends because you can create more users on your instance. While I self hosted Nextcloud and Syncthing in the past this is just way less work.

Your-storageshare replaced Dropbox/Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Contacts and Google Photos for me. That's a pretty huge chunk of the services I use passively all the time. With Nextcloud's encryption enabled and GDPR regulations in place it is IMHO as save as you can get without self hosting.

For mails I am quite happy with https://mailbox.org - it starts at 1 Euro per month but I recommend the 3 Euros tier. It's no Proton Mail but somehow to me it seems more trustworthy. They don't overpromise on features but provide a solid secure service. Most of the time I send unencrypted mails (due to various reasons) but you could use SMIME with it. Since it provides IMAP you could even integrate it with your-storageshare using the Nextcloud Mail app.

Both services support your own domains so if you fancy it you could set up www.IHadTwoCows.com for cloud and mail. Hetzner has you covered for domains too. Not the cheapest but reliable.

For search I use https://startpage.com. It uses Google results but anonymized. I am very happy with it.

And that, kids, is the story of how I banned Google from my digital life. (okay, Maps is still there but all the alternatives where just not good enough with traffic jams in my city)

depending on where you are in phone replacement/upgrade cycle I would recommend Fairphone or looking into e/OS.

Like others mentioned don't expect to do a wholesale jump. Slowly replace services with alternatives: Proton mail, NextCloud, Box, Dropbox, Lemmy, Mastodon to name a few services. There are numerous apps that can interact with those services so you'll be spending some time going over those sorting what works for you.

To get the apps FDroid coupled with Aurora you can get most apps (that do not have explicit dependency on Googleware). Amazon App store is a possibility too for some commercial apps. For Youtube there are several alternatives like LibrePipe and NewPipe (but there are more). For existing social media site apps there are thin wrapper browsers that would "sandbox" each site allowing you to still use them while you slowly detach yourself: SlimSocial, RedReader, etc.

I've been Google-free for a bit now but I went with LineageOS+microG setup which may be challenging for you at this stage.

Treat it less as a crusade and more like multilevel challenge when upon completion of one challenge you get to complete another. It could be fun and liberating.

Lots of good advice in here; thanks!

I'm not going sledgehammer; I've been gradually stepping away for a long time. There's a few things I can't give up yet but I keep them to a minimum while trying to persuade others in the social mediasphere to join me in circumventing the Big Tech DataWhores. I'm still paying for YT premium (sad); I have FB only to use Messenger with a couple of people. I already use DDG, Mastodon, Lemmy, MeWe, DropBox, Protonmail. I am not going so far as to self-host...I dont have the time or money for that.

Hopefully some more ideas show up here and are helpful to others who feel the same as I do. Thanks!