How To: Escape From Google's Clutches, Once and For All
So you're fed up with Google, and you've got a litany of reasons. Youdon't even have to explain—I'm just here to help you crawl out fromunder the shadow of the big G, step by step.
You don't have to be ready to commit to a full overhaul of your online lifestyle to understand why someone might want to yank their data from Google's servers, and hand it off to someone else: You've got Google's CEO deafly rehashing fallacious arguments about privacy—"If you have something that youdon't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the firstplace"—and hesitating on a drawback; you've got contextual advertisingthat seems just a little too closely tuned to that sexxxy love letteryour girlfriend sent you while you were on that business trip; you'vegot that violently insane ex husband who now knows where you are because of Google's clumsy Buzz rollout. Most of all, you've got reasons, and you're ready for change.
The decision to close your Google account has to be carefully considered—after all, this is the place that stores your email, yourdocuments, your contacts, your photos, your news, and even your healthrecords. But this level of investment to one service is as good areason to leave as it is to stay: If looking at your Google Dashboard,which lists all the services you use, and the amount and type ofinformation you store on them, doesn't make you feel a little uneasy,then hell, what would?
Anyway, I'm not here to make the case for you to drop Google altogether—it's not something I'm prepared to do, for a start—I'm justhere to tell you how to do it. Here's everything you need to know about life after Google.
Search
It's easy to forget that there are other search engines in the world, because Google has been so plainly dominant over the last fewyears. But they're there, and they're actually pretty good.
The best alternative to Google, by a long shot, is Microsoft's Bing.It's an evolution of the Live search engine, and it's offers adistinctly different experience than Google: it's far from minimalist,with a colorful interface, content-tailored results pages, and andemphasis on reducing clicks, rather than reducing clutter. Coming fromGoogle it can be visually jarring, and the fact that the results forcommon searches are different—if not better or worse—means that at first, you'll get the feeling that it isn't working right.
Give it some time and some patience, and you'll realize that it's pretty damn good. And even if search isn't perceived as the biggestthreat to your privacy, it's important to make the switch anyway—afterall, it was Google search that was the gateway to all the other Googleservices, which you're now trying untangle yourself from.
Honorable Mentions:
• Yahoo
• Wolfram Alpha
• Collecta
• Mahalo
Back when it launched in 2005, Gmail lured users with insane amounts of free storage space: One gigabyte. Impossible. This caught the dominant services of the day completely off guard, and made their free webmail seem utterly ancient.
Today, that one gigabyte has grown to nearly seven, and on the surface not much has changed about ol' Gmail. Meanwhile, the companiesthat were blindsided back in 2005 have had plenty of time to catch upto, and in some cases, exceed Google's offering. Here's how to make the full switch:
Backing up your Gmail: There are a number of ways to do this, but one stands out as the easiest: The email client method.
1.) Download Thunderbird, a free email client from the same people who make Firefox (Download for Windows, OS X)
2.) Enable IMAP access on your Gmail account, by clicking the Settinglink in the top right of your inbox, navigating to the Forwarding andPOP/IMAP tab, and selecting the "Enable IMAP" radio button
3.) File > New Mail Account
4.) Enter your name and Gmail address, after which Thunderbird shouldfind your mail settings automatically, and set itself up as an IMAPclient: 
(If this doesn't happen, consult Google's guide for a manual setup.
5.) Once the account is set up, open Thunderbird's Account Settingspanel, and navigate to the Synchronization and Storage tab. Make sure"Keep messages for this account on this computer" and "Synchronize allmessages regardless of age" are both selected.
6.) Wait for your messages to sync to your computer—this could take hours, especially if you're near your Gmail storage limit.
What you've done here is imported all of your Gmail messages into a local client—Thunderbird—which lets you browse them, search them, orback them up to an external hard drive for posterity. And if you switchto another IMAP-based service, you can import these old messages intoyour new account simply by dragging them from your Gmail inbox folderin Thunderbird to your new account's inbox folder.
Contacts are a trickier question, but at the very least you can use Gmail's contact exporting tool (under your Gmail inbox folder list) tocreate a CSV file or or VCard, for importing into a client likeThunderbird.
The best alternative service: As long as it's been since Gmail showed up on the scene, the webmail scene hasn't seen manyexciting new players—Google has a knack of preempting new competitionwhen it moves into a product category. So, for the best remainingalternative is a veritable oldie: Yahoo mail. Consider the facts:
• It's still free
• It offers unlimited storage
• POP access is available in the free version, and with a little fiddling, so is IMAP access
• Free text messages in certain countries
• The interface doesn't look like it was designed in 1999, like certain other webmail clients.
The matter of Buzz: Now, when you ditch Gmail, you'll also be losing Google Buzz, which is a sort of location-aware status update system that nobody hasreally had the time to get into yet. Don't worry: Buzz was a responseto other services, not a trailblazer, so you'll be served just finesticking with Twitter (which lets you update you status with geolocation), FourSquare(which lets you alert your friends as to which particularestablishments you visit, and see what other people think of saidestablishments), and Facebook (forposting media and accepting comments on it). Buzz didn't have time tobecome vital, so switching away from it should be easy.
Calendar
Exporting your Google calendars: This one's easy. Just:
1.) Navigate to your GCal settings page, and click on the Calendars tag.
2.) Export calendars to an ICS file, like so: 
3.) That's it!
The best alternative: Yahoo calendar is fine, but in the spirit of spreading your vital info around, let's go with Windows Live Calendar. One you've created a Live ID—you pretty much need one of thesenowadays—you're automatically given a Live Calendar account. To importyour Google Calendars, just do the following:
1.) Open Live Calendar
2.) Click "Subscribe"
3.) Import the ICS file you exported from Gmail, like this:
Photos
Not that many people use Picasa, so this one should be easy. Plus, there are some obviously superior alternatives.
• Flickrdoesn't stop at being a great photo sharing site, it's also an amazingresource for photographers, both expert and amateur. Storage is limitedwith a monthly upload cap.
• Photobucket is a simple gallery service, with an emphasis on sharing over archiving. Storage is limited to 1GB.
• Shutterfly is another super-simple service, with unlimited storage (Google doesn't even offer that for free)
• Facebookshouldn't be counted out—its photo compression may be aggressive, butit does allow you to upload and tag a virtually unlimited number ofphotos.
Documents
A lot of people find themselves using Google Docs because it's just so damn convenient—you receive a document in yourGmail account, and suddenly, hey, it's in the Google Docs service! That's how they get you.And interestingly enough, despite Google's acquisition of Writely andsubsequent improvements on in the Docs service, there's still anobjectively superior online document editing service out there.
ZoHo Docs is a full online office suit(among other things) which does virtually everything Google Docs cando, and often more. It offers deep document editing, offline editing(!), and collaborative editing. Document compatibility on ZoHo isabsolutely tops, and the formatting and editing options far exceedGoogle Docs. There's a text editor, a spreadsheet editor and apresentation editor, to name a few.
Pulling the Plug
So, you've migrated what you can, and settled into you new services nicely. Now, it's time to close your Google account out, once and forall? Are you ready? Are you sure? Ok.
For any grievances you may have about Google's privacy practices, you have to give them credit for making the process stupidly easy.
1.) From any Google page, click the Settings link in the top right, then Account Settings from the submenu.
2.) Next to "My Products", click the "Edit" link
3.) From here, choose to delete individual services, or close your Google Account altogether.
4.) Confirm that you want all of your data deleted.
5.) DO IT.
Feels strange, doesn't it? For anyone with enough spite and motivation to follow this guide, though, I suspect "strange" could bereplaced with any number of more gracious adjectives. So, ex-Googlers:Do you feel better now?
We couldn't cover ever last Google service and piece of software, so if you have more tips and alternatives to share, pleasedrop some links in the comments-your feedback is hugely important toour Saturday How To guides. And if you have any topics you'd like to see covered here, please let me know. Happy diversifying, folks!
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