Time to cut the Playstore cord

I have been trying to ween myself off of "easy" things that I initially thought were there to make our lives easier, but as time goes by it seems more and more as though Google is attempting to be what they are, a monopoly.

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I was discussing my desire to get Google out of my life entirely because I didn't even realize it was happening but my electronic existence had to a certain degree become completely dependent on them. I had all my important files that "I can not lose" stored on Google Drive, Google.com was my default search engine, I was using Chrome, I had multiple Gmail accounts. I even tried at a certain time to use that awful social media platform of theirs called Google+ which no longer exists as far as I know.

I eliminated all of these things from my life by changing to duckduckgo as a search engine. I am using some other form of cloud service (which is also free, there are a lot of them), I dumped Chrome for Brave, I am using Protonmail, and the last thing to go was my reliance on the Playstore, which I thought was going to be difficult and well, compared to using the Playstore, it is.

I think I speak for a lot of us when I say that the advancements in technology that have made things "easier" for us have also made us a lot dumber. When I was in college and people were still dealing with dial-up internet for the most part, being on the cutting edge of technology was fun because I was able to do things that many other people could not. My bedroom was filled with computer components and I was doing crazy things like overclocking CPU's using a pencil to make lead connections that otherwise wouldn't be there. This of course resulted in the destruction of many CPU's as I figured it out but when it did work, I was able to make a $200 computer SCREAM like a $1000 computer - at least for a few weeks.

I also go skilled at RedHat, which to most people (including me at the time) was just so counterintuitive compared to Windows. I took great pride in my RedHat desktop and Netscape browser when everyone else was using Windows and explorer. It took a LOT of time on my part and a lot of reading in order to get to that point. These days, if you want to do anything that isn't what "the rest of the world is doing" you unfortunately are going to have to learn a thing or two.

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With the recent news of Parler being removed from the Playstore with Apple to almost certainly follow, you are not going to be able to easily install anything that these giants determine they don't want you to have. Now I don't even use Parler very much so much as I just toyed with it to see what it is all about and I never used Twitter either, but I don't like the IDEA of a company being able to control what it is that you choose to have in your life. Google's decision came because of the "violence" at the capitol in Washington DC but this is all a bunch of nonsense. There have been tweets even glorifying violence at protests and riots all over the USA in the past year and those accounts didn't get banned but a number of Twitter accounts, including that of Trump's was permanently banned by Twitter in the past couple of days.

The aftermath was a ton of people dumping Twitter and moving over to Parler, which as far as I can tell is essentially the same thing. I can't say for sure because I do not use either nor do I intend to.

The point here is that there actually are a plethora of ways to install apps on your phone without using the Google Playstore and if you are like me you probably would prefer to not have the choice made for you about what you are allowed to see being controlled by a bunch of people in a board room.

Google is a private company and they can do whatever they want and unless you want to be subjected to the corporate whims of some private company, you are going to have to get off your ass and learn something. The files that are apps are called .APK or .XAPK files and you just need to download some sort of manager to handle these files for you. By the way this is only for Android, you Apple users are on your own - I have never been one of you because your gear is overpriced in my opinion.

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APK Installer Is one of the easiest ones to use in my opinion but in all honesty they all kind of function in the same way. APKPure is a good one as well.

The only issue that new users are going to face is that it isn't as simple as just pushing on a button in the Playstore and waiting for it to do its job for you. They make it as easy as possible but you are still going to have to be somewhat involved in the process. I am not going to lay it out for you step-by-step but honestly, the fact that you are here on this site shows me that you are likely a bit tech-savvy anyway, and I am sure you can figure it out.

A good "repository" of sorts for apps that are either banned on the Playstore or for whatever other reason are not available there is uptodown which ironically, has their own APK installer app that can be downloaded from the Google Playstore. Since they have a very intuitive interface and also a great stock of apps that can be automatically installed (including Parler) that might seem most user friendly to people that have zero experience dealing with .apk files, this might be the best choice.

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If there is enough interest I might post a tutorial about how to install the entire thing but honestly, I think you should fiddle with it an figure it out on your own. Your phone will likely tell you that the sources are "untrusted" but this likely has more to do with Google attempting to corner the market than anything else.

Far too many of us have become very lazy in regards to technology and this is not a good thing at all. I say this not just for Parler because honestly, that sort of self indulgent time wasting is not for me. We all just need to be a bit more intelligent and I feel as though a lot of these apps are making the opposite the case.