The Never-Googlers are people who avoid using Google services and try to convince family and friends to give them up as well.
These intrepid Web users say they’d rather deal with daily inconveniences than give up more of their data. That means setting up permanent vacation responders on Gmail and telling friends to resend files or video links that don’t require Google software. More than that, it takes a lot of discipline.
Wouldn’t you know it, I wrote a list of Google alternatives.
Check It Out: Meet the Never-Googlers Who Shun the Mountain View Company
I said goodbye to Google about a year ago and blogged about the process. See this:
http://bit.ly/SG-GoodbyeGoogle
Well, I’m getting close to being a Never Googler. I’ve never trusted their apps. Do not have a gmail account. After your article on alternatives to Google I switched to DuckDuckGo for my search. My devices want to go to AppleMaps. I do occasionally use GoogleMaps, but as little as possible.
Count me on that list. I use Bing for searches.
Andrew:
While I don’t exactly qualify as a ‘Never-Googler’, in that I do use Google search (and occasionally have to use Google Scholar for work-related matters), I assiduously avoid using any other Google product, unless compelled professionally to do so (had to use Google Chrome as a one off to fill out a work-related online form as the only option outside of MS Explorer, which I thought was already dead).
That said, I note for many youth in my kids’ generation, including my son, Google are seen as relatively benign, if not good guys, with respect to their products and policies. Indeed, my son will not use his Mac email address, but does all of his email, to the extent that he even does it, on Gmail. His friends and associates appear to have made the calculus that privacy is relative, and that, not unlike a colleague of mine who switched to Windows from a Mac on the grounds of compatibility with his university, and said, that there was relative safety in everyone else’s computers being riddled with malware, that if everyone’s data are out being trawled by Google, then again, there’s relative safety. Indeed, you may become even more of a target if you’re trying to avoid being assimilated.
I maintain that resistance is not futile, even if pathetic to Quixotic.