Google is omnipresent. That’s the trouble. And the biggest problem is that Google aims to be omnipresent. It is their goal.Until now it is impossible to avoid Google because Google Analytics and other products are in nearly all apps. Apps and websites are wrongly designed. It is data mania, data are overestimated. Everyone seems to want our data. So developers are building in many trackers in apps to get that data.
it is not too difficult to find alternatives for Google’s products however. I do that for about 6 years. Search with Qwant and Duckduckgo ( and if you really need G’s results, go for Startpage, that is Google without the tracking) , I use HereWeGo instead of Google Maps, Stack as cloud storage, a paid for privacy friendly mail, etc. In the nineties I choose a Mac and still have a MacBook, expensive but durable and it never crashed. First phone was 10 years ago: iphone 3GS. A ‘miracle’. Had it for 6 years. Then I switched to Jolla for all the reasons that most people here talk about. Apple became too posh and mighty, not ethical anymore. Now I use a Sailfish phone + an ipad. I know what it means using ‘free’ Android apps on a third OS phone: it often means ads and or, disabled functioning. Very frustrating for a spoiled Apple user.
I do not know if it is wise to stick entirely to open source as opposed to closed proprietary like Apple, Microsoft and Google (yes, G’s Android is becoming more and more closed). For governments I would definitely demand open source, democratically controlled. But if open source means unpaid, gratis, it often cannot reach te same quality and attractiveness as iTunes has. Also do I think that it is fair to pay for work that someone did. Then a new problem arises for European companies/organisations: there is no central European creditcard system. Until now we depend upon the US creditcards and with each payment Google peeps through the window. Phew! But no despair: not using Google Search, Google Docs and Google Maps helps a lot!
https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2018/08/21/google-data-collection-research/
https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DCN-Google-Data-Collection-Paper.pdf
The above video is definitely scary! It should be made ‘compulsory viewing’ for all those who are fans of Google and iOS 