Back in May of 2025 I switched from Google Docs to CryptPad. It’s been working fine for my (specific) needs. CryptPad is not the fastest, and there are some quirks if you are used to Google Docs, and I can see someone who is a heavy user of Google Docs who really likes Google Docs not liking CryptPad at all, but I’m different.
So in my continued quest to De-Googlify my life I dumped my Google Workspace (formerly G Suite, formerly Google Apps) account and got my email and calendars out of the Google ecosystem. I still have one “free” Gmail account that I mainly use for mailing lists, but never through the web interface, only through an email client. I’ve also killed off the calendar in that account.
I’ve gone back to Fastmail. Yeah, I was a Fastmail user in 2004… I should have stuck with it! According to my blog post I could have paid for a one-time membership for $15 USD!
It’s not free, but I don’t mind paying $5 per month to not be the product. It’s less than what I was paying for my Google Workspace, which raised the price earlier this year because… AI. Yeah, they added “Google Gemini” AI and I wanted no part of that. A free Gmail account wasn’t an option because my emails are using my own domains. (Supposedly the Google Workspace price went up again since I first wrote this post!)
I actually put off moving to Fastmail for a bit because I was worried about the migration, but it went really smooth with both of my email accounts… no complaints! I was not using calendars with my Google Workspace account because I was just using my free Gmail account calendar, but I’ve replaced that as well.
So I no longer use Google Workspaces for email and I no longer use Google Calendar. (Well, I do at my day job, but not for my own business or personal use. You can’t win ’em all!)
The web interface for Fastmail is pretty good, but again, I tend to just use email clients and calendar applications.
I’m quite pleased to have less Google in my life. In 2025 they’ve become a much worse company for freedom-loving people, and I do not support many of their policies so bye-bye Google!