Weaning off Google products

Supposing one wanted to stop using Google, but had been relying on drive and Google docs long-term for file storage. Is there a good way to download all the documents, videos, and images saved to the google-run cloud before closing an account?

What are some good tips for deleting one's personal files and profile owned by Google?

If you go to the "Google Takeout" page (takeout dot google dot com), you can download a copy of all of the data that Google has for you, everything from your Google Drive, to your Gmail emails, to most of the information they track about your activity.

Once you have all of that, you can delete your account which will remove all of your other Google-related accounts (the account deletion page gives a good list of the accounts/services/data that you will delete alongside your account).

Logan Byrd wrote:If you go to the "Google Takeout" page (takeout dot google dot com), you can download a copy of all of the data that Google has for you, everything from your Google Drive

Awesome! I was just starting this process, dreading having to open each google drive doc and download it one at at time. This saves me oodles of time. Thanks, Logan!

Harmony, be sure to check out my post on this thread if you want to further "de-google" your life by getting (or building your own) privacy oriented smart phone!

https://permies.com/t/177539/phone-don#1394905

I am happy to help! I had a Google account that was one of those business accounts, so it gave me specific control over what services I wanted to use and how I wanted them to access my data, and so I kept it up until they announced that they were getting rid of the free tier for business accounts.

Since I didn't want to give Google money, and I was hardly using the account anyway, I moved my YouTube channel to a new account (only used for uploading) and deleted it along with all of my data... after I did the takeout process, of course.