Congrats OP! That’s really something!

For those of you still on the journey, know that you can quit individual google services. For example you can quit Gmail, but keep Youtube etc. This would also allow you to keep play store.

Not sure how honest & reliable this is. It’s bad enough that they decided for this.

In the privacy policy they state how and why they collect data. They also say how to potentially stop giving them this data

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#to-adapt-firefox-to-your-needs

Thanks, I’ll check it out

I forgot to mention, it’s easy to use, as it’s similar to every other messenger app, so even not so techy members can use it.

I’d recommend Threema. It’s privacy focused, based in Switzerland. You don’t even need a phone number to create an account, they collect no data on you (claimed, but haven’t checked) and the code is open source, under A-GPL 3 license.

There’s a build for Apple and Android, for which you pay once.

I use this to talk with important family members.