Escaping Google's Grasp: Tools for the Privacy-Minded | Chaos Lever

If your Gmail inbox is older than your adult children and you're just now wondering if it's been reading your diary all along—congrats, this episode is for you! In part two of our “Living Life Without Being Poisoned by FAANG” series, we deep-dive into the world's most insidious search bar: Google. From ads masquerading as results to docs that double as AI training material, we unpack how the advertising company formerly known as a search engine became the shady overlord of your digital life.

We also take a good, long look at alternatives. Not just “use Bing” (come on now), but actual viable swaps like Kagi, StartPage, and DuckDuckGo. Need to break free from Gmail? Hello, Proton Mail. Curious about workspace alternatives that don’t hand your docs to Big Brother? Meet CryptPad. And for the content creators out there, we give the rundown on Nebula, PeerTube, and other non-Google places you can still host your rants and videos without being part of the algorithm’s human farm.

Then we shift gears to cloud services. We walk through smaller, boutique hosting options—from Linode to Fly.io to EU-based Scaleway—that won't charge you an arm and a leg. If you’ve ever wanted to ditch Big Tech but didn’t know where to start, grab your tinfoil hat (or at least a solar panel) and let’s talk freedom, baby.

👇 LINKS

Google reads all your stuff: https://policies.google.com/privacy/a...
Kagi is pretty great: https://www.theverge.com/web/631636/k...
Cryptpad looks like Office: https://cryptpad.org/
Photopea, like Zootopia: https://www.photopea.com
Hetzner auctions server costs: https://www.hetzner.com/sb/
Alexander Samsig did a breakdown of EU CSPs: https://asamsig.com/blog/picking-a-eu...

⏱ TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – Cold open and autobiography pitches
00:39 – Welcome and serial port oversharing
02:10 – A recap of FANG and part one
03:30 – Google: the ad company in disguise
06:03 – Gmail: How it started vs. how it's going
08:22 – Your docs are training someone’s AI
10:42 – Alternative search options
12:09 – What is Kagi and why should you care?
15:03 – Google Mail alternatives
19:41 – Hosting your own domain email
20:50 – YouTube alternatives and why they matter
22:44 – Nebula and the end of YouTube comments
24:01 – PeerTube, Play-Yoh, and other video ideas
25:45 – Google Workspace replacements
27:08 – Photopia: Photoshop without the Adobe
28:28 – Cloud services: AWS alternatives
32:14 – Fly.io and Firecracker VMs
33:56 – EU-based hosting with Scaleway
35:15 – Final thoughts on getting off Google
38:29 – Raspberry Pi and DIY hosting
39:00 – Wrap-up, pasta tips, and closing chaos