Murena’s Pixel Tablet is helping to wean me off Google

A lot of people are overly reliant on Google. They put all of their important messages, appointments, musings, contacts, and spreadsheets into Google products. Many are aware that Google, like many tech firms, is likely to prioritize its own interests over user privacy. But signing data away for technological conveniences is a common occurrence.

Murena's Pixel Tablet takes a stance against that norm. It's Google’s Pixel Tablet hardware running an Android fork but without any Google tracking or Google apps. While I still found myself heading back to Google services while using the tablet, Murena’s gadget reminded me of how feasible it is to limit Big Tech’s reach into my life.

De-Googled Android

Instead of running standard Android like Google’s 2023 Pixel Tablet, Murena’s Pixel Tablet runs /e/OS, an open source mobile operating system (OS) built by e Foundation. Mandrake Linux distribution creator Gaël Duval founded /e/OS, which is a fork of LineageOS, an open source version of Google's Android source code.

Rather than using Google apps, Murena preloads the tablet with open source alternatives, including a fork of K9-mail in lieu of Gmail and, instead of Chrome, a Chromium-based web browser with specific /e/OS settings and an ad blocker on by default. The /e/OS App Lounge replaces Google’s Play Store and makes it easy to find open source and progressive web apps. You still get access to apps from the Play Store, and I had no trouble running Google apps, like Google Docs or Google Sheets. But while the Play Store forces you to have a Google account for downloads, you don’t need an account for downloading apps from the App Lounge, and Murena doesn’t know which apps you use.

Another App Lounge standout is its privacy ratings for apps. They’re calculated by adding a tracker score, based on the number of trackers found by auditing platform Exodus Privacy, to the number of permissions the app requests. The Google Maps app, for example, has a privacy rating of zero out of 10 on the App Lounge.