Oh well. I stopped using Google entirely around 2006-2008-ish and I never looked back. I do not know the exact time I stopped, but it was way before the company

Oh well. I stopped using Google entirely around 2006-2008-ish and I never looked back. I do not know the exact time I stopped, but it was way before the company was called "Alphabet" and before smartphones really took off. Back then Google was a Search Engine with an advertising company, but I was getting annoyed by what I thought was mixed interest (ads/information) as reflected by the increase in their analytics tag being put on lots of web sites and I thought I'd do the experiment of blocking them out and see how that panned out (some thoughts about privacy mattered as well). So, I stopped using Google, and not only that: I blocked Google. Now I use all kinds of other Search Engines and I always find an answer to whatever problem I'm searching a solution for. (edit: elaborated slightly)