I've just completed moving all my @greghowley email addresses away from GMail and into my new ProtonMail account. It's working in a largely unremarkable way, in that my mail comes in, I send mail out, and there's no issue. I was able to deal with the email woes I'd previously reported by setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, which ProtonMail was able to walk me through very clearly in a way that GMail never did. I'm still having an issue with the MX records not showing as being accepted, but the mail is coming in and going out, so it's not the end of the world.
I'd first written about splitting from Google back in 2012, citing as concerns Google's hosting of my email, my Google Plus account, Google Photos, Google Reader, Google Docs, and Android. Today, in 2026, I've moved my non-GMail email, and both Google Plus and Google Reader are long defunct. Google Photos and Google Docs can be exported and I could move to some other service, which I may at some point do. The main connective tissue I can't escape is Android.
I've written before about how I mourn the passing of Blackberry and Windows Phone, not because I ever owned one or found any real value in either platform, but simply because more competitors in a space is good for everyone. Today we're down to just two smartphone platforms, and I've got to roll my eyes when anyone goes on a rant about how one is great and the other is terrible. Personally, I prefer Android's flexibility and its open source roots, but I wouldn't ever want Apple phones to go away. We need more competition, not less. Anyway, this paragraph is a tangent.
Where was I? Oh yeah. Android. The only way I could get away from Google completely is by ditching my Android phone, which would mean either getting an iPhone and just tying myself to Apple rather than to Google, or else by ditching a smartphone entirely and going full Luddite with a flip phone. We all know that's not going to happen.
So while I may not be ditching Google entirely, and I'm sure I'll still use the gmail address for certain things, I've taken another step away, and I'll likely now start thinking about alternatives to Docs and Photos. While I'm at it, I need to start considering alternatives to Amazon's Alexa. I love turning on and off my lights with voice, but a platform that isn't owned by a megacorporation might be nice.