For developers: Let's talk about privacy alternatives

General
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In a world where privacy is becoming a necessity, not a luxury, I’m asking you to consider using alternatives to Google services. Google Play Services have become a mandatory dependency on almost every Android phone, and it’s getting ridiculous.

Users of privacy-focused ROMs like GrapheneOS disable Google services by default for security and privacy. When your app refuses to work without GMS, you’re basically telling these users to go away. And trust me, there are more of us than you think.

Look, I’m not saying you need to make everything completely free or work for charity. We all need to pay bills. But please, give people CHOICE. If you’re worried about stock Android users, you can support multiple notification methods. Some apps already do this brilliantly, letting users pick between FCM (for stock Android), WebSockets and UnifiedPush.

Here are alternatives:

Push Notifications

Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) → UnifiedPush

UnifiedPush is decentralized, privacy-first, and works on de-Googled devices. You can use the public ntfy server or self-host your own.

Backend / Firebase Alternatives

Google Firebase → Supabase / Appwrite / Parse Server / Nhost / PocketBase

Both Supabase and Appwrite are open-source and self-hostable. Supabase uses PostgreSQL for relational data, while Appwrite offers document-based storage. Pick what fits your stack.

Analytics

Google Analytics → Matomo / Plausible

Matomo is open-source with 100% data ownership and can be self-hosted. Plausible doesn’t use cookies and doesn’t collect personal data. Both are GDPR-compliant out of the box.

Maps (API)

Google Maps API → OpenStreetMap API

Authentication

Google Sign-In → Keycloak / WebAuthn

Keycloak is open-source identity and access management. WebAuthn is an open standard.

Crashlytics / Monitoring

Google Crashlytics → Sentry / OpenTelemetry

Sentry is open-source and widely adopted. OpenTelemetry is a CNCF project for observability.

Payment Systems

This one’s tricky. There aren’t really “privacy-friendly” traditional payment processors. You can use alternatives to Google Play Billing (so payments work without Google services), or integrate cryptocurrency for more private transactions. But honestly, this area still needs better solutions.

All of these tools are open-source, many support self-hosting, and they work perfectly on de-Googled devices. By using them, you’re not just coding an app, you’re helping build a privacy-respecting ecosystem.

I believe developers should give users more choice and stop designing exclusively for stock ROM users. We’re all in this together if we want apps that respect privacy.

Thanks for reading.

2 Likes
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You have 4 situations I think:

  • developer is employed by a company and needs to meet KPIs/quotas/align with the decisions of the CTO (a pragmatic person doesn’t care about using Plausible, they want their metrics and GTM from Google Analytics because that’s what every growth marketing person knows how to use)
  • you’re an Indie and you do not know about those tools, don’t have a good-enough technical level to implement something off-path or just not big enough to justify needing Telemetry at all for example :smiley:
  • you’re a skilled Indie but you don’t care about any of that because it doesn’t make you more money at the end of the day, quite the opposite actually since it’s off-path and need to learn more about that specific alternative tool rather than spending your time cashing in
  • you are aware of all of this and propose a freemium (like what SigNoz or NetBird are doing), you hence meet your niche targets with those concerns/needs and are hopefully sustainable

Anyway, nowadays the casual Web developer will just spin their NextJS app with RSC, with an Electron wrapper, ship it to some bleeding-edge Edge hosting service that is mostly an S3 wrapper because they do love how that company’s “aura” on Twitter, use a startup email service because it’s faster to “zero to hero” and won’t forget to slim down their website’s total bundle size to a mere gzipped 5MB. Their entire product will mostly be a ChatGPT-alike wrapper to begin with.

There are healthy ways to create a website/app, but that’s a more lonely/slower and less hyped path to take. And there will be very few willing to do that effort for a mere reward that won’t pay the bills any better.

4 Likes
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I’m actually still hoping that many mobile apps (at least the privacy-focused ones) will start using alternatives to Google’s tools.

In general, I think the more people who need privacy-oriented apps, the more such apps we’ll see on the market and developers will have to adapt to that market. Demand creates supply :slight_smile:

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I guess it’s hard because most people just fully embrace Google when they do go the path of doing mobile development for Android with native languages. :sweat_smile:

Yes. But I am not sure most people care. :sweat_smile:
Most people are happy if they can get to do the thing they came for, they don’t expect more than that (unfortunately).
But the state of the Web is also very awful to begin with… :sweat_smile: