De-Google My Life, Part 4

UPDATED Feb 2026

This is a multiple-part series – go here for the full list.

Welcome to Part 4 of my De-Google series. If you haven’t done so already, I’d start with the first article (strategy), even if you want to read the other articles out of order. You’ll find nice jump links at the bottom of the page. Today I’m going to cover two very popular Google cloud services: Google Drive and Google Docs.

De-Google, Step 9: Google Drive

The “cloud drive” was popularized by Dropbox, but now everyone has their own version of this. Google has Google Drive, Apple has iCloud, Microsoft has OneDrive, and there are many more. While most of these services do encrypt your files, the service providers hold the keys. This isn’t necessarily nefarious – it enables useful features like text searching. But these services can and often do automatically search your files for copyright violations, for example. And if served with a warrant, they can turn over your files. Which also means that a rogue employee could poke around in your files, too.

Thankfully, there are several privacy-focused cloud storage services that allow you to hold the encryption keys, meaning that the service provider has no way to see the contents of your files. After much research, I chose Sync.com (more info here). All encryption happens at the client side, meaning Sync can’t peek into your files. This service has lots of great features, too, including the ability to share files securely with other people (even if they don’t use Sync.com). I’ve used it for years now and have no complaints.

There are three other interesting options I want to throw out, though. First, if you are really married to your existing cloud storage provider, you can use a cool tool called Cryptomator to encrypt some of the files stored there. For example, create a folder in Dropbox called “My Vault” and use Cryptomator to encrypt the contents of that folder. Second, if you own multiple computers, you can use a free and open source peer-to-peer file syncing tool called SyncThing. This syncs files between your computers only – they’re not held by any cloud service. However, this means that you are your own backup. If your desktop and laptop both die, your files are gone. See the “bonus” below for the third option.

De-Google, Step 10: Google Docs

Google Docs is an amazing suite of tools akin to Microsoft’s Office. You can edit documents (“Word”), spreadsheets (“Excel”), presentations (“PowerPoint”), and more. And it works incredibly well for a web app. And because it’s cloud-based, you have cloud backup and file sync built right in (i.e., Google Drive). Microsoft and Apple have competing services, too… Microsoft 365 with web versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and iCloud Drive which supports cloud sync for Pages, Numbers and Keynote. But Microsoft’s cloud suite is not private. (Apple’s can be if you use Advanced Data Protection.)

You could use the native Mac/PC office applications and just store the files in a secure cloud drive like Sync.com. Or use Cryptomator. But I’m going to give you two other options here.

One solution is ONLYOFFICE, which I’ve suggested in the past. But their focus seems to be teams and businesses now, not individuals. They do have self-hosted options and even individual cloud-based options, but it’s really hard to figure this out from their website.

But the good news is that Proton has finally created a Google Docs competitor called Proton Docs! As you would expect from Proton, it’s end-to-end encrypted for full privacy – and it looks pretty darn good. Note that you can import all your Google Drive files into Proton Drive, though I’m not sure how cleanly the export works from Google Docs/Sheets formats to docx/xlsx formats (which are not just Microsoft formats anymore). In most cases the export works well, but complex documents may suffer formatting changes or missing formulas.

Bonus: NextCloud

NextCloud is a very interesting option, but not for the faint of heart. This one service can replace Google Drive, Google Docs, Gmail, Gcal, and much much more (via plugins, including one for ONLYOFFICE). It’s free and open source, too. It does just about everything. So what’s the catch?

Well, to maximize privacy, many people choose to host this service themselves. That’s not practical for most people. I’m a tech savvy “computer guy” and it took me time, effort and money to set up. If you can handle this, it’s a great way to go.

You can also choose a cloud provider to host it for you, though now you have to trust someone else again. Unfortunately, NextCloud doesn’t handle client-side encryption well yet. You can read an in-depth review here. But… at least it’s not Google holding your files.

This whole space has been chaotic, starting with ownCloud, which spawned NextCloud and others. While it’s very interesting from a privacy standpoint, it’s risky from a long-term solution standpoint because it’s a little too volatile, from my perspective.

Next Up: Google Sheets & Google Forms Update!

Since I wrote this article, some very good, private alternatives for Google Sheets and Forms have appeared. Check it out!