I never react immediately. Unless directly affected by an event, I accumulate information over time and it will influence my decision making. Reacting is too disruptive to my own life, and those of the people I support (e.g. family.) Would an article like this make my family change? No. Many don't care; most don't understand the impact on themselves.
My De-Googling has started with my browser. Moved all my open tabs and bookmarks to Firefox, took some time to settle in, now I avoid Chrome except to debug frontend code. Email? I have a Gmail account that I use for all my personal things, so I need to find something else and migrate my usage (and maybe archive my Gmail account so I can search it.) I haven't been creative enough to find a domain name for personal (and family) use. I've been paying for G Suite (for email only) on a business domain, so I need to find something else (and maybe archive the inboxes ...)
There's friction. I'm busy. I'm lazy. I know there's a chance I could suddenly lose access for no reason on the free account.
I'm not really _trying_ to degooglify, I'm just degooglifying when the chance comes up. I'm also not hardcore enough to switch over the email on all my accounts, the people who contact me, etc. And I like free things. So one step at a random time it is.
Electron is heavily dependent on code developed and maintained by Google, but then so is Node, and Go, and presumably anything written in Go, such as Docker. Calling all of those Google products seems wrong—but it's true that Node would be in big trouble if Google suddenly stopped maintaining Chrome or something.
Not sure if that is or isn't true but I would say it is understandably a different type of worry from using Go or nodejs.
tl;dr nonsensical reasons that don't really stack up but I'm electron free so may as well keep it up
Even though Electron is actually a Microsoft supported platform, I understand the connection with Google - Electron uses Chromium rendering engine. But, this is not the same as Chrome. Chrome uses Chromium [1] but I think all the privacy issues are part of Chrome, not Chromium.
This took about a week of focused effort.
It's a very easy first step. Then you can migrate things over one by one as they come in without worrying about missing things or switching between interfaces.
I made the move to FastMail about 4 years ago, would hate to change again, is such a pain. Luckily I did opt for my own domain name at least which should make those changes easier if I do it again.
I think the law is over-reaching and lacking in sufficient transparency, but I don't really think it would allow anything like the common understanding of "encryption backdoor"?
Honestly a browser which kept no history but could let me save bookmarks and manage logins (either via a third party app or natively) through a walled garden would be great. Not sure if managing passwords without accumulating tracking cookies is even possible.
But don't feel too safe with it re: tracking, because there's browser fingerprinting that works without cookies: https://panopticlick.eff.org/
On desktop I use multi account containers and wipe history on exit, and have a handful of bookmarks for convenience.
For both, I use the bitwarden add-on/app to manage passwords.
I've even heard of people writing a bot to do this across hundreds of sites; it's very interesting to see which C-level executives have been using their work accounts to access sites they shouldn't have.
The obvious advantage of having a GMail or Outlook address is that only Google or Outlook have to know who you really are; the address could be anything you want and doesn't have to be related to your real name. In addition, you can do as I do and have multiple addresses -- not the "throwaways" which people often speak of, but simply different addresses for different online activities -- so that if an account ever got compromised, there would be no way to link it to any other account.
Email security and privacy is a hard problem to solve.
1) Have a different online identity for things that can compromise you/you feel uneasy about. We are talking about a "full identity": number, email, maybe even things like Linkedin
2) Perform Threat modelling
3) Getting own domain is always good, as it gives you the control of your life
If you are just starting out, check out "The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy"
I don't particularly have anything to feel uneasy about. It's more the idea that I don't want one central domain that I use for everything which is tied to my real identity, either through the domain name itself or through the whois record (although I think you can pay to have an anonymous whois). It seems like a central point of failure. There are documented cases of people having their identity stolen and numerous online accounts hacked because they used the same email address to sign into various services. If you know someone's email address and one or two other things about them, social-engineering your way into other services they use seems to be relatively easy for a skilled attacker.
This is all somewhat paranoid thinking, but I don't want to go the hassle and expense of getting my own domain, only to that it is a less secure or private option.
That's the real threat to companies who get to Google's size: their customers dying more so than going to the trouble of switching.
edit to add: Which, I'd guess, is why Google has invested so much in Classrooms.
