Other than facebook to post pictures for my family and a few forums I am withdrawing from accounts on everything as much as I can.

No.

10/10, fabulous punchline.

So what you are telling us, basically, is that you just want to use a service for free but God forbid should Google be able to monetise you. Yes, we Google services users are a commodity. Google makes money selling ads, the better they are able to target them the more customers they'll have. Their customers are ad sellers and companies that want to advertise themselves.

The thing is, that you should have already known it. If you are so concerned about your privacy what is you data doing on someone else's machines huh? Run something similar from a machine or two in your basement/closet/room and be done with it.

When will people learn that there is no such thing as free meals. Unless it's for charity. Last time I checked, Google was not a charity.

I agree with the OP. Stopped using Google months ago and am quite annoyed with youtube asking for my real name and to create a + account over and over again. Google did a lot of cool stuff in years past, but now they want information about you to sell or use to target you for advertising.

To which I say ignore the fucking ads, they are not doing anything wrong to you, Heck I am rarely annoyed by TV Commercials so I won't be annoyed by ads.

And even then, I'd rather have ads that are relevant to me instead of random crap which poses no interest.

Isn't that why they are getting your information, so they can advertizes things you like?

So, what do you who've sworn off Google use instead exactly? Any recommendations?

Also, is Dailymotion the only "mass market" alternative to YouTube? There's Vimeo but that's mostly for actual filmmakers. And I don't quite like Dailymotion's search algorithm compared to YouTube's.

If I go to a B&M store, I don't expect someone from that store to follow me up and down the street putting stuff I looked at in their store in my face over and over again. It's fine to run ads on the pages of sites, it's another thing to follow me around.

Who said anything about TV commercials? They advertise to everyone. They don't look over your shoulder in the kitchen and see that you use then put it on commercials every time you watch TV.

just go 10 years back and we didnt have all the social crap we have rite now, i think the most important thing we have or need is a cellphone for emergency purpose, rest of the social media or equipment you want to keep or not should be upto individual taste

That wasn't a very convincing article at all

Just use those NoScript and Do Not Track Me Plus kind of extensions. If you're really paranoid (or note: have actual reason to be) then use fake names in login forms and subscribe to a VPN or other anonomity services.

I don't mind them asking for my name and personal details, as long as they accept fake info. Why the hell would they need my real name, phone number etc.? It should be enough that they know what user P3erekjfkerPP45 likes and which web sites he (she?) visits.

Meaning, as long as I am able to start from a clear table if I feel so. Naturally that is not always possible, e.g. I presume GOG knows my name because I buy stuff with my credit card from them, the credit card company and/or my bank knows from where I've bought stuff online etc. But I still try to keep all that separate from these superfluous sites, if at all possible.