Google is the number one company on the web, not only for its search page, but also for the many online services offered free of charge as sites or as apps, often exceptional. Just think of the most important Google Maps, Youtube, Gmail and Google Drive.
It is known, however, that Google products are free and work best if they are used by logging into your account, if you agree to be tracked and cataloged as "advertising products".
Many people prefer to give up becoming part of the Google system and looking for valid alternatives to the main products, a rather difficult undertaking.
It's not that there are no alternatives to Google products, but even the most convinced detractor will eventually have to admit that some of the Google products are incredibly efficient, almost impossible to replace.
Despite this, we still try, in this article, to discover the most valid alternatives to the most important Google services .
1) Alternatives for Google Search.
Giving up searching with Google, at least in Italian, really means limiting the possibility of finding the right sites on the internet.
It is not out of sympathy that I have to say that Google provides the best search index in existence today and that all other competitors such as Bing (from Microsoft) are not quite up to par.
However, if you want to search the internet, freely and without tracking, you can try the sites to search the internet by protecting your privacy with DuckDuckGo and StartPage.
DuckDuckGo is truly appreciated in the USA as an open source and nonprofit search engine, which does not store any research and personal information.
As with Bing, this search engine is good in English, but very limited in Italian.
In addition to these, we also mention Qwant, an Italian project that also includes results from social networks.
READ ALSO: 50 Sites to search anything on the internet
2) Alternatives to YouTube
Youtube is the number one video site in the world and except perhaps Facebook, I don't think there is any other site or app that can compete, at least in terms of content and music.
The problem with Youtube is that many videos are removed if they do not respect copyright, so searches cannot be complete in the end.
Fortunately, there are freer and more permissive alternatives, such as Dailymotion, a free alternative to watch videos where you can upload videos with less constraints.
Vimeo is also a good video site, although it has many limitations in uploading by registered users, since only the sharing of videos no larger than 500 MB per week is free.
This paid system leads Vimeo to be an online service that mainly attracts professional videomaker amateurs,
READ ALSO: Find videos online on the internet
3) Alternatives to Gmail
Compared to other services, Gmail is definitely the easiest one to replace.
Although I personally believe that Gmail is the best e-mail service today, other services such as Outlook.com and Yahoo Mail are absolutely up to par and, in some ways, even better.
I therefore refer to another article to find the best email sites where to create an email address.
In addition, you may want to use one of the Email services without space limitation in the attachment preservation, therefore exceeding the Gmail limit (15 GB).
4) Alternatives to Google Drive and Docs / Sheets / Presentations apps
The Google services for creating and saving Office documents online are quite good, but perhaps the equivalent Microsoft Office Online apps are even better, supported by OneDrive.
In addition to Microsoft there are also other sites for writing and saving documents on the internet such as Zoho and LibreOffice Cloud.
5) Alternative Google Maps
Google Maps is a great online service, which also provides the free GPS navigator on smartphones.
You can still find a replacement both on the internet and on smartphones using the ones I have listed in another article on the best sites of maps and alternatives to Google Maps and in particular Here Maps, previously from Nokia, now independent.
