Of all the companies implicated in the NSA – PRISM scandal, Google’s involvement has to be the most worrisome. Reason being, practically 99% of the world’s internet users (if we exclude China) must be using at least one Google service or product, and in most cases they’ll be using dozens. Be it search, email, news, instant messaging, social networking or even books, Google’s services are used by millions of people the world over.

I’ll give Google some credit here – the reason so many millions upon billions of people use their services is because they’re so damn good at what they do. No one’s denying the quality of its search, its email and its maps etc., but in light of the Snowden leaks more than a few people are worried about the price they have to pay for using them. In fact, the problem is that Google’s products are just so damn good and so damn ubiquitous that it’s almost impossible to stop using them – or at least, that’s what most people believe.

But the truth is, Google isn’t the be all and end all of everything on the interweb, and for every so-called ‘indispensable’ service it offers, there’s an (almost) equally as good alternative available. And I do mean EVERY product it offers.

Regular readers might have guessed by now that I’m not the most sympathetic person towards Google at the best of times, hence I’ve spent a lot of time researching alternative services on the web. Now, thanks to Ed Snowden suddenly making Google deeply unpopular, it’s time to share what I’ve found :)

So without further ado, here’s my exhaustive guide to Google alternatives for just about every service it offers:

Search:

Google Search: Bing, Yahoo Search, Yandex Search, DuckDuckGo, Ixquick.com, Startpage.com, Blekko, Hakia, Baidu

Google Alerts: Mention, Talkwalker Alerts, Infoxicate, Yahoo Alerts

Blog search: Bloglovin

Google Books: The Online Books Page, Project Gutenberg, Open Library

Google Finance: MSN Money, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg

Google Images: Bing Images, Yandex Images, Flickr

Google Translate: Yandex.Translate, Bing Translator , Frengly, Babylon

Google News: Bing News, NewsNow, Yahoo News, BBC News, Reddit, News 360, Topix

Google Scholar: Scirus, SciVerse, Eric, Current Contents, Genamics JournalSeek

Google Shopping: Amazon, eBay, Etsy, DHGate, Alibaba

Zagat: Tripadvisor, Restaurantlistings.com, Restaurants.com, Dine

Operating Systems

Android: Firefox OS, Windows Phone, iOS, Ubuntu Phone, Replicant (free, open-source Android distribution)

Chrome OS: Windows, OS X, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian, Fedora

Services:

Google AdSense: Infolinks, Bidvertiser, Chitika, B4PSAds

Feedburner: Pheedo, FeedBlitz, MadMimi, FeedCat

Google Apps: Zoho Docs, ThinkFree, Office Web Apps

Blogger: Tumblr, WordPress.com

Google Calendar: Live Calendar,  Yahoo Calendar, Toodledo, Zimbra, Deadline,

Google Hangouts/Google Voice: Skype, Yahoo Messenger, Jitsi, Viber, Goober

Gmail: Riseup, MyKolab, Hushmail, Yandex Mail, Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail

Google+: Facebook, Instagram, Pump.io, Tagged.com, Diaspora

Panoramio: Shutterfly, 360Cities, TrekEarth

YouTube: Vimeo, Viddler, Metacafe

Google Maps/Google Earth: OpenStreetMap, HERE.com, Bing Maps, MapQuest

Google Analytics: Woopra, Clicky

Google App Engine: CohesiveFT, Rackspace, Windows Azure

By no means is this a comprehensive guide, I’m sure that there’s more than a few Google services I’ve overlooked, and undoubtedly there are many more alternatives out there that deserve a mention. Feel free to email me at the address below and I’ll gladly update this list if you find something worthy :)