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 (???) OING OFF THE GRID - PART 2
       existed until I stumbled upon the ssh key I use to login. And so here we
       are.
       
       First thing first, I promised to write about my ditching google. So here
       we go:
       
       Getting rid of Google, for good.
       
       Something that has been bothering me for a while was that it is
       practically impossible to get rid of Google, even though you try hard. I
       am using a lot of open source programs instead of proprietary ones. I
       host my own Searx instance, use my own cryptpad, host my own email and
       all of that good stuff. I run linux on my laptop and PC, so I don't have
       any bad trackers on those. There is only one device that I can't get out
       of Big Brother's hands. The telescreen (or smartphone in 2020).
       
       I own an android phone. Not surprising, as I find phones by Apple priced
       ridiculously. The thing with android phones is, Google is kinda baked
       right into them. You almost can't setup a new phone without an Google
       account. You need one in order to download apps.
       
       Not that companies like Apple do this differently. You need an iCloud
       account in order to even boot the device. Even the Kindle from Amazon
       has an option for logging in.
       
       Now I wanted to get rid of Google, but without actually breaking the
       phone. Android has this one app that controls almost everything on my
       phone. Things like notifications, network based location, in app maps,
       background tasks like synchronization. It's all bundled inside this one
       app: Google Play Services.
       
       It's the only app with root access to my phone. It has to in order to
       download and update apps from the Play Store heedlessly. And I want it,
       along with all the other google stuff, gone.
       
       So I would need to find a replacement for this. A polyfill. And luckily,
       I wasn't the only person to think that.
       
       MicroG
       
       In order to replace the Google Play Services app I needed a replacement.
       Since my phone didn't originally came with Google apps installed, I had
       to install them manually. This allowed me to test with turning off all
       the permissions this app had (because it was just another app), but this
       lead to almost all of my apps breaking. Every single app I opened showed
       me an alert: "This app needs Google Play Services to work correctly".
       Everything was broken. So I knew that just deleting all of Google off my
       phone wasn't enough.
       
       Then I stumbled across this video from Wolfgang's channel:
       
       He mentions a package called MicroG, that replaces the Google Play
       Services with a open source app. Exactly what I needed. So that was what
       I installed. I used the Lineage for MicroG image to make my life even
       easier.
       
       That's where I'm now. It works amazing, I can still use most apps
       (except for the Mc Donalds app, but that is okay) and most apps get
       tricked into believing it's actually Google Play Services.
       COMMENTS:
       Add a comment by mailing to steph@tilde.club and putting [c805a] in the subject
 (???) 
 (???) ther blog posts by ~steph
 (DIR) Going off the grid - part 2
 (PHO) 020-03-08 - 20:03
 (DIR) Going off the grid
 (PHO) 020-02-14 - 11:11