PewDiePie's steps to degoogling yourself

Viltzu - July 24, 2025 - Information Security
Tags Google, Digital Privacy, Open-Source, Self-Hosting,

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Banner image: pewdiepie painting by arthurforzus on DeviantArt

 

A major YouTuber and influencer PewDiePie just released a YouTube video where he degoogles himself. Degoogling or de-googling means giving up using Google products (Gmail, Google search engine, Android etc.), usually to improve your digital privacy. This is no easy task because Google being tech giant it involves many popular products which we love to use every day. Google has also bought many of its competitors and making them part of their already vast empire. Google products are also free or at least offer a free tier which makes them popular. But have you ever wondered why Google is so big, rich and powerful company if their products are free? How are making all that money. Answer is simple: Collecting and selling your data to advertisers. Google is big ad-company, not tech company. Google has gone so far with collecting every possible thing about you and getting rich with it that more and more people are shying away from Google products.

 

PewDiePie was most popular YouTuber back in 2013. Today he is less active in YouTube and social media he still has a big audience, millions of followers and a loyal fanbase. When PewDiePie shows why and how he degoogled himself, many people are listening. This is important because digital privacy is not very "hot" or popular topic for mainstream audience, but PewDiePie manages to reach a wider audience.

In his YouTube video "I'm DONE with Google" (published 26.6.2025) PewDiePie lists two main reasons why he wanted to leave Google products were:

1. Privacy
2. Control

After that he lists the steps which he did to achieve his degoogling process. Those were:

• - Changing your default search engine to DuckDuckGo
• - Change your browser from Chrome to Firefox (or Brave any some other more privacy friendly browser)
• - Ditch Gmail
• - Switching to non-Android phone (because Android is owned by Google) or switching to custom OS, such as GrapheneOS
• - Get a password manager
• - Self-host you password manager and share your files through self-hosting
• - Self-host a note taking app
• - Ditch Google Drive and choose open-source version you can self-host, such as File Browser
• - Switch to local AI model instead of commercial models
• - NextCloud to for easier access to your new self-hosted products and to increase security
• - Ditch Google Maps for more privacy friendly product
• - Ditch Google TV for more privacy friendly product

 

Now that is a quite a list of things. I will not go through all of them today but instead give my general thoughts about degoogling yourself and these steps which PewDiePie has taken. Firstly, I am happy so see how deep into the degoogling himself he went and how exited se seemed to be about it! I believe that these are indeed good measures to take and PewDiePie showed solid open-source and privacy friendly products to replace Google products. He really seemed to enjoy Google alternatives which is a huge deal, because there are many great alternative solutions which are better for your privacy.

In my opinion, some steps are maybe bit too far for majority of everyday-google-user to take similar leap. Self-hosting for example might be bit too much technical tinkering for some to get in to. But if you are still interested of reducing usage of Google products and feel what it is like to use alternative products, these are the steps I would take to increase my digital privacy without going full degoogle:

• - Switch default search engine and browser

This is a very simple and effective way to get started. If you use another browser, you are already protecting a lot of your data. Using DuckDuckGo as a default search engine might feel weird at first but try it first and if you feel like you are getting bad results, you can always type Google to navbar and go to see if it offers better answers for certain question.

• - Ditch Gmail

This might be easier for other and harder for some because you might feel that switching to a new email provider is too tedious., especially if you have been using Gmail as your main email account for years and you are using it a lot. Still, I feel like it is worth of moving a more privacy friendly email provider because would you like to share a content publicly about the content of your emails? I wouldn't. So why are we letting Google read that content and sell that information to advertisers?

• - Get a password manager

I do not see this as a degoogling step but a necessary thing for everyone to get. We are required to sign up in some many sites, apps and accounts that no one can memorize them all. And why would you want to? Password manager is life saver for my because I do not have to remember what email account I have used or what username I use for different sites.

I would start with these steps and then keep replacing Google products one by one with privacy friendly options. I feel like you should not try to make huge jump from one ecosystem to another overnight. I recommend taking smaller steps to avoid becoming overwhelmed with new products. I still hope that everyone would have a greater interest about their digital privacy and data. Taking control of that might not feel easy at first but hopefully PewDiePie has inspired some people to take steps towards privacy and control of their data. I too offer help and guidance for better digitals privacy, security and control of data but we'll go more in depth about each topic later.

 

Did you watch PewDiePie's video? Have you degoogled yourself or do you even want to?

 

Let me know in the comment bellow!

 

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