Schol-R-Lea: The gulf between what companies say and what they'll actually do is something I had to learn about too.
It helped that I knew people, that there were "unlock your phone here" posters all over town some years ago, and of course the big provider-independent phone supplier, Carphone Warehouse. It's now been years since I bought a phone from my phone service provider. I bought a Samsung Galaxy S3 new, on the same day as but separate to signing up with giffgaff, and the rest have been second-hand.
I've made some attempts at getting away from Google, with mixed results. Duck Duck Go
search engine seems okay, but I know pros who don't think it's very good. I use it, but on rare occasions I'll check Bing or Google too. It's the bubbling I don't like with these other services. For instance, my friend needed to look up some tech parts with part numbers beginning "HD", but ever since he had to buy a wing mirror for his Harley Davidson, all Google would show him were Harley Davidson parts. Plus, of course, it means you can't really link search results other than DDG's. For a short time, it looked like DDG's plain html service would be a good thing for us OS devs, but they couldn't be bothered to maintain it.
Duck Duck Go
maps are provided by other organizations; mostly megacorps. The default is Apple, if I'm not mistaken. I quite like OpenStreetMap; they have at times been easier to read that Google Maps, although they vary. I liked Mapcarta until they managed to defeat Firefox with uBlock Origin to open an advertising pop-up! I also liked here.com for a while, but in the end there was just no point using it. The trouble with all these services is finding local businesses; more people contribute to Google Maps than any other. OpenStreetMap is second best that I know of; I haven't tried Apple. Of course, all that contribution has a down side: lots of the real-life equivalent of dead links; Google really don't like removing obsolete information from their maps. At least they have street view.
On learning of the existance of OpenStreetMap, a 15 year old friend immediately added a nuclear reactor in his parents' back yard.
He was impressed with how quickly it was removed.
I don't know what's better; obsolete information which you can usually check against photos (Google Maps), or information which is sparser in the first place but more likely to be up to date (OpenStreetMap).
I've actually ended up using Android for
games more than anything. Here, Google Play is the best store by far. The Kindle store is a desert! I found a handful of good games, but it was a bit of a struggle. (Google's bubbling works better here, I think.) I tried two third-party stores, they had more content but everything looked like it was recycled from Google Play. I worried the apps might not be legitimate, especially that they might be modified. What would be the use of getting away from the big corporations only to have the little guys spying on you instead?
F-droid is starting to become a good source, I think. It's an app store for open-source apps only. It lacks reviews, so you have to try things. I installed a bunch of games from it a couple of days ago, 80% of the ones I've tried are quite good, which is much better than I expected from previous attempts. I picked carefully, of course, but even some of my less careful choices worked out. There are still good games on Google Play I feel I couldn't live without. Maybe I should become a game programmer.
I do use multiple phones now. My old Samsung S5 is my games machine because the cpu in the Moto G4 is just so slow! (And it's start-up chime is annoying.) I keep thinking of installing PostMarketOS which supports the S5 very well, but I'd miss Mini Trucker; a game where the G4's CPU falls short quite badly.
Thomas wrote:I have nothing against Google, but its pervasive hold over the internet is worrying.
My feelings exactly; that's why I started looking into F-droid and all the rest.
Thomas wrote:We live in modern times, sky is the limit for a determined individual. May be small adhoc networks can accomplish some of the goals without relying on big boys. Getting widespread acceptance however may be hard.
PirateBox 
... Oh. They were active for many years, but now they're closing down.
Reasons including, apparently, that there's better projects for it! One of the reasons is browsers forcing https; I thought that would have negative consequences. Hmm... ssh would make more sense; you can make your own key easily. Anyway,
other projects & related concepts. But again, why trust the little guys? For example, dead drops have a reputation for malware & disgusting things.
Speaking of OS development and the future, I know some users don't like mobile devices because they can't use regular files with many apps, or exchange files between apps, so I think any mobile OS which offers a desktop-like filesystem will gain traction.
