Anyone else having a hard time weaning off of Google completely?

Google offers a lot of "conveniences" with its free services because it is all about data collection. To be honest, I would move away from as much Google related products as possible. Went from a great company at start up to some weird politically driven organization and being as you seem to use a lot of their products I would definitely find alternatives where you can.

Youtube alternatives
Unfortunately there are none that match the content.

Search Engine
Brave Search
DDG is ok, but I had issues finding a lot of content. Try Brave search engine, I have been using it about 6 months now and much better IMO.

Google drive
Much like gmail, they scan all the content of your google drive as well. Proton Drive is a good alternative especially if you are going to use their email.

Google Maps
There are open source alternatives, but it will not offer the level of convenience.

GMail
If your main reason for keeping gmail is because of their spam protection. Then understand the reason their spam protection is so much better then Proton or Tutanota, is because they scan the content of all your emails. Where the two above mentioned are end to end encrypted and do not have the ability to do so. However, you can just mark emails as spam and it will remember the sender as spam in future receipts.

As for Google Home and Alexa, I used to enjoy them, but then I realized how creepy it was to have an active mic on in my house at all times from people I do not know lol. Anyhow, as I said to start I would get as much google alternatives as you can. Hope all this helps.

No, I use Edge + Bing and it works well.
There's still a liberal slant but not completely far left like Chrome + Google.
Also, Google is all about advertising and selling your data which is not Microsoft's business model.

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Why is this your goal? Most people don't like the principle of their invasive data techniques, but the actual harm is what, being served more targeted ads?

Also, they can still profile you for ads based on your family and friends and all of the information they share about you just by having you in their contacts. So even you cutting off Google doesn't keep Google from being able to monetize you.

I get why people don't like it, and we as the providers of the product they sell are getting absurdly underpaid, but if you're going to jump through a bunch of hoops to avoid it, is there an actual payoff when they can profile you anyway? It just seems like tilting at windmills with the current state of things.

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Kinda where I fall. It is a little troubling thinking about the access I grant them but at least I know I am, if that makes sense.

Any ostensibly "free" service will either fail, go to an ad-based service that probably wants to gather data to target ads, eventually charge, or they will or already are stealthily gathering data from you to sell to advertisers (or worse) and trying to hide it.

Or maybe I've just grown cynical

I'm not weaning off them. Why? Because it doesn't matter. If you think that an alternate source is safer then you're just pulling the covers over your eyes. Everything you do is collected period. Doesn't matter which service you use. Doesn't matter which device you are using it on. Everything is compromised. Big Tech is the govt and the govt is Big Tech.

So if I'm going to be harvested anyway... I may as well be comfortable while I'm in the milking stall.

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Kinda where I fall. It is a little trouble thinking about the access I grant them but at least I know I am, if that makes sense.

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I got ads on Hulu this week that were competitors to things I just bought a few days before. The credit card companies sell us out all the time and nobody thinks about that. At least I'm getting 1.5% back on the credit card which is more than Google pays me. You pretty much have to go off grid and pay for things in cash to get avoid being profiled.

I'm not telling the OP to not jump through hoops if that makes himself more comfortable, I'm just asking him to ask himself if the end result is actually worth it because it looks like the only one being limited by his actions are himself.

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I'm not telling the OP to not jump through hoops if that makes himself more comfortable, I'm just asking him to ask himself if the end result is actually worth it because it looks like the only one being limited by his actions are himself.

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I think that sums it up. Do what makes you comfortable but understand what it gets you and what you lose.

A lot of time it gets you almost nothing and you lose a lot of convenience.

It’s become clear to me that there’s potential dangers lurking around the corner as everything becomes politically weaponized and virtue is used to justify flagging and sharing of personal data for “potential” crimes.

Will simply criticizing certain politicians and movements be seen as dangerous enough to justify turning you in? Not yet but maybe one day?

I am not under the delusion that it can be avoided but I’d like to mitigate against such a day if it’s not super inconvenient.

Stuff that seems mild today might get you in trouble later. I was a teenager in the 90s and my entire school would be canceled if all the dumb shite we did and said was online.

What opened my eyes was the guy that got kicked out of his phone for sending a pic of his son to their doctor. His entire search history, entire Google drive, and everything on his phone was sent to the police. The guy lost all of that data and still can’t get it today. Not to mention the police have everything on him if they want to look for other potential (thanks Korky) crimes, and there’s probably embarrassing stuff that is on some poorly secured server at a PD.

The bar for what justifies this will only get lower and lower.

On top of that I’ve got young kids to protect. Data collected today could be used against them in 30 years.

Yeah, that story was messed up and scary. Whenever I have something I don't want tied to me, and it's usually looking up medical conditions for other people rather than anything political or scandalous, I'll turn on the VPN and use the private mode of a browser like Firefox and use a search engine like DuckDuckGo.

All we can really do is try to put firewalls between the different aspects of our lives, using different browsers, VPNs, etc. Even then, someone would be able to put the pieces together if they were really motivated, or in a few decades had easy access to the info because all of the big fish will have bought out all of the little fish.

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potentiometer crimes

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These are not crimes! Join the variable resistance!

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Using Brave + DDG

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DDG should be avoided. They became just another google.

Brave search might be more private but the results are highly filtered.