Zou jij zonder Google kunnen?

Dat is een vraag die ik me ook wel eens stel: hoe moeilijk zou het zijn om Google helemaal links te laten liggen? Geen Blogger, Maps, Gmail, Reader, Analytics, Feedburner, Docs, iGoogle, Chrome, Picassa en Youtube meer? En krijg je dan ook al die data weer uit Google?
Joshua J. Romero beschrijft hoe ingewikkeld het is ondertussen is om Google helemaal te vermijden:

As I worked on recovering all this data, I realized just how much I had invested in a single Web account. If my Gmail account got hacked, I would stand to lose a lot more than just my e-mails. And I had never really thought to look into the specifics of data portability when I added those additional services.

Of all Google’s offerings, Gmail was always the one I most dreaded confronting. When I told my boss that I planned to get rid of my Gmail account entirely, he laughed and said, "That will wreak havoc." Another colleague asked, "Are you sure you want to do that?" After all, Gmail was my primary nonwork e-mail account, holding more than 2500 e-mail conversations.
Choosing an alternative proved challenging. As I considered the options, I was struck by the way our e-mail accounts have become the linchpins of our online identities. Using my e-mail address, I can reset almost any other user name, password, or Web account I set up online. That means that our e-mail accounts probably deserve the utmost attention to security. But even knowing this, I didn’t consider security the prime factor in selecting a replacement.

With my e-mails gone, my Google Dashboard was now as empty as possible (with a couple of exceptions—apparently it’s impossible to delete Google Webmaster accounts). I had managed to retrieve almost all my data.
The accomplishment felt good, even if it had taken over a week to achieve. My original intent was to delete the account altogether, and now that all my data was safely removed, there was nothing stopping me. But I couldn’t do it—I chickened out. I didn’t permanently delete the old Gmail account because it would mean that I would forever give up access to any e-mails sent to my old address. I realized that changing my primary e-mail address would be a serious hassle, not just for me but for all my contacts, which include less tech-savvy family members. I actually think it’s more of a pain than changing my physical address or even my cellphone number.

Maar het gaat Romero om meer dan alleen zijn eigen, "handmade" data. Hij wil ook een andere zoekmachine en, nog lastiger waarschijnlijk, hij wil ook dat Google hem niet meer kan tracken.

Even if I had avoided conspicuous activities like YouTube and search, Google has plenty of other ways to collect information about me. For one, Google is also the Web’s biggest provider of ads, and it uses these ads to collect information from the visitors who view them. By storing browser cookies, its ads can track users across multiple pages and adapt to serve them ads that are "more relevant."
[...]
To its credit, Google provides a way to opt out of this ad tracking. The problem is that opting out works exactly the same way the ads themselves do: by saving a cookie to your browser. To completely avoid tracking, I had to repeat the process on each of the five computers I routinely use. And I would need to do it again whenever I wanted to clear my cookies. Google’s solution to this annoyance is to offer a browser plug-in. It works by restoring the opt-out cookie whenever it gets deleted. The idea of installing a plug-in made by the same company that operates the service you’re trying to avoid seemed weird no matter how I looked at it, so I decided not to use it. But overall, opting out of ad tracking was easier than I had expected.

Zijn algehele conclusies luiden:

• Van Google afstappen is makkelijker dan je denkt, maar geeft toch een hoop gedoe. (En Youtube kon hij helemaal niet "loslaten.")
• Google heeft er baat bij dat wij lui zijn en dus houden van Single-Sign-On.
• Niet alle services van Google zijn the best of the web.

Wat mij betreft: ik ga nog even niet experimenteren...

Gerelateerd
Gelezen: S. Vaidhyanathan - The Googlization of Everything (and why we should worry)
Gelezen: Peter Oltshoorn - De macht van Google

Plaatje: Google China van Cory M. Grenier