> Curious, though—what’s been the biggest challenge for you since moving away from Google services? I have also been considering it for a while. but I don't think I can give up on Google Photos or YouTube just yet!

My main concern is that people worldwide have internalized and embraced Google as the de-facto go-to service provider, so they are not willing to try other apps or services because "Google just works."

Now, answering your question...

1. The email and calendar services just worked as well as any other service provider for their purpose. However, in fairness, I must mention that I have received more Spam messages because Google handles more than 50% of worldwide emails, and their filters are more trained than others. Still, it's not bad to click a button and flag a message as Spam or report it as Phishing so that the Proton team can work on it.

1. a) Something that bothers me is that several websites or mobile apps don't want you to use Proton's Hide My Email feature (powered by SimpleLogin.io), so they prevent you from creating an account or decide to suspend your account because the masked email address doesn't allow them to track you on the Internet. So, you may need to buy a TLD domain (hide the WhoIs data) and configure a "relay.<your-domain>" rule if you want to create hidden email addresses.

2. The main problem I found here is that Proton doesn't have a Contacts app that integrates with the iPhone, so I have three options: 1) keep using Apple Contacts (to stay away from Google); 2) use my own contacts service (that I can self-host) and connect using CardDAV protocol; 3) annoy myself because keeping my contacts in Proton means my phone doesn't have any name-number association.

3. Following my previous point, my Google Drive & Google Photos replacements are NextCloud (https://nextcloud.com/) + Memories (https://memories.gallery), which can be installed as one of the plugins for your NextCloud, so you keep all your data and pictures on your own device. Dive and Photos files took several GB of cloud space, but I have everything at home now (faster than downloading it from Google).

3. a) I opted for Umbrel Home (https://umbrel.com/umbrel-home) as my network storage device (among other tools I installed) because it's as easy as plug-and-play. And having 2 TB of space gives you a lot of options.

3. b) I still can use Cloudflare Tunnel to use a subdomain and keep access to my data if I am not at home.

4. YouTube tracking and advertising are things you can avoid by using the Brave browser. And, unless you are willing to watch age-restricted content, you don't need to log into a Google account to watch YouTube.

5. I stopped using Google Maps a long time ago. Now, I prefer CityMapper to plan my journey using public transport, Maps.me when I plan a trip into another country where I don't have mobile data, and (sometimes) Apple Maps if I need to run a quick search.

5. a) OpenStreetMap seems a nice alternative, although it may have outdated data and lacks an official mobile app.