A CyberSphere Haven

So I’ve decided to remove Google from my life. or rather… I’ve decided to see if it’s possible to remove Google and restore some semblance of digital dignity without losing the convenience and polish of the disgustingly tantalizing ecosystem.

I’ve been ‘happily’ sucked into this ecosystem for quite a long while now. Years. I’m a sucker for the Pixel phone lineup, I love having a smart home, I love how I can sign into so many different platforms with Google, I love shiny new tech toys and I love how well it all seems to “just work” and integrate together. I’m sure you’ve heard someone say the exact same things about Apple and their ecosystem.

I’m very much the desired result of capitalism, and for so much of my life, I have reveled in that identity.

So why then? If my life was blissfully ignorant towards Google’s data mining, and willing to compromise on my sense of digital self, then why bother going through the frustrating hassle of executing a ‘sudo pacman -Rns Google’ command on my life? If my 7 years of cyber security study and exposure hadn’t already convinced me Google was allegedly evil, then what changed?

Well…

Being based in Australia with the upcoming social media bans planned for December 2025, it seems like an appropriate time to take back what little privacy I can. Further helping my cause… I recently installed SteamOS on a spare PC I had (a post for another time), and I may or may not have fallen in love with the refreshing nature of not Microsoft, and the freedom and excitement of edgy actually being a nice experience. To place the cherry on top, the state of gaming is beyond dismal, so any chance at an interesting passing of time is welcome.

And because I found a frustrating lack of places online to be useful in helping me on my (hopefully) noble venture, I have become a 40 year-old woman and will blog as much of my journey as I can.

I hope my notes and ideas, ponderings and findings, and experiments and failures provide you with some direction or guidance to regaining your own digital dignity. I hope I can provide you with encouragement, or at the very least a guide on how, to be free from the world of tracking, data mining, and digital death row.

I hope you can find rest here. A Haven from the CyberSphere.