This is just going out of the frying pan and into the fryer. (I assume you mean stock/Google powered Android here.) Replacing one user-hostile walled garden with another user-hostile walled garden is hardly an improvement.
I'd suggest Google Android -> Open-source Android ROM, though I know it can cause issues with some banking apps, annoyingly.
I'll have to disagree, iOS and Android are far apart.
In end, as I said above, it's about reducing the footprint. Eliminating Google is a very difficult undertaking which I'm not really sure is even possible..
I've been happy to switch back to a BlackBerry Q20.
1) I find the use of the BlackBerry hub to really help with decreasing the intermittent reward that having to switch between applications to see your messages gives.
2) It is refreshing to use a device that is more purely focused on its intended purpose. (Communication)
3) I can still sideload most Android APKs if necessary.
Some out of the box thinking is in order here. Duringe the initial lockdown, I signed up to pay for Coursera's courses. I found out that what I craved wasn't shirking from work, but rather distraction. It didn't matter that I had to do some homework for the courses. Since I was _watching_ something, my brain thought of it as the same thing.
But I should note that you haven't addressed the biggest bugbear of mine either, Google maps. It's light-years ahead of everything else, and just does not get replaced easily.
Regarding Youtube it's a little bit more nuanced unfortunately. I tried blocking Youtube via pi-hole and suddenly a lot of educational course work for kids started throwing a fit since a lot of videos are hosted on Youtube.
So I had to grudgingly unblock it.
Yes, I had missed Google maps. I agree it's indeed light-years ahead of others.
In end it's about reducing Google footprint, elimination is extremely hard.
Indeed. Making peace with this fact has helped me a lot. I don't actually pay Google with anything other than my attention. All of my entertainment is via a uMatrix/uBlockOrigin protected Firefox, so things could be worse.
For me it was very easy to stop watching youtube when they started to show more and more commercials - I just couldn’t stand it, it was too frustrating. Occasionally I find something useful, download it using youtube-dl and (re)watch offline.
I have a dumb tv from 2006 that we still use and we are happy with but it works because we also use a roku. An old roku.
At some point however not sure how but my roku updated and im pretty sure its monitoring all my stuff (mostly yt)
Ive read about router hacks etc to dumb down the roku and prevent it from calling home but it seems super hard. I was barely able to use my own domain with proton.
Neutering roku seems like mission impossible for a non sysadmin. Is there a simple solution to this with or without roku?
Pi-hole can suck up all of Roku's badness. It's pretty cheap and pretty easy. But it can interfere with some apps, for example Roku's PBS app doesn't work when my Pi-hole is on.
Google Search -> DDG -- Done
Android -> iOS -- Done
Gmail -> Personal domain email (pending, work started)
TV OS from Android -> Dumb TV (very hard)
YouTube -> ? (limited use, very hard)
Google Classroom (for kids) -> ? (very hard)
Google Maps (noted by helmholtz below ) -> ? (very hard)
...