I recently had a billing dispute with Google Fi. I’ve been a customer since 2016. I paid a bill, and then the next day, they issued another surprise bill and shut off my phone service. I had bank statements and Google’s own invoices showing that I had indeed paid this bill. During the course of the discussion, I realized just how little power I had. Most of the responses seemed AI-generated. Escalating to a manager meant that I received a single terse email from someone who obviously didn’t even review the bank statements and the statements from Google Fi itself that I had provided to them.

During my conversation with tech support, I began to wonder how many people they had treated the same way they were attempting to treat me.

I have had the pleasure of working with Google on software projects, specifically their Google Earth Engine. I can’t help but be impressed with the quality of engineers that Google hires and the beautiful things they build. I don’t have a quibble with the engineers — I despise how Google does business.

As a software developer, I use Google products across multiple companies with multiple people. I use Google Cloud, Google AI services, Google Book Search. I use Google Chrome as my primary browser. I have several Google accounts that handle various aspects of my life. I am a YouTube Premium subscriber.

Google is a fundamental part of my life and, at this point, has been for most of my life.

This is why it’s so heartbreaking to realize that my relationship with this company has become toxic.

Because of network effects, extracting myself from the Google ecosystem seems almost impossible. But this post is a first step on a journey of at least trying.

I no longer like how Google does business. How do I organize my life—especially my professional life as a software developer—so that I don’t have to do business with Google? This is a new goal of mine.