How to "degoogle" my phone?

[Mike64]

I suppose your answer to anyone who wants to eliminate spying is to go back to the 18th century. Cut off your internet, telephone, cell phone service and live in a cave. How realistic.

There's a big difference between trying to "stay off the grid" à la Gene Hackman's character in Enemy of the State and simply not wanting to fork over your personal (daily) travel, purchasing, web browsing and social media habits by the bushel to businesses for their, but not your, profit (not to mention random hackers' profit after they break into the aforesaid businesses' databases.)

I oppose mass/random government surveillance as a matter of public policy, but as far as I'm personally concerned, the NSA can "surveil" me until they collectively pass out from boredom. Google et al, not so much. I don't go to extremes to (try to) avoid it entirely (which I completely agree is hopeless), but I at least take care of the relatively easy stuff to make their job more difficult and their "profiles" of me less complete than they might otherwise be...

ETA: I just noticed that I replied to a reply of the post I intended to address rather than the OP. Oh well...

 

[sweenish]

Enjoy never messaging anyone.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Enjoy never messaging anyone.

I only really text. Yeah the government can spy on that and probably keeps a log, but stuff that goes out on the wire so to speak is inivitably going to get captured. I'm mostly after stopping tracking from within the device. For example every app you install wants access to your contacts and stuff, I want to stop that.

 

[s44]

For example every app you install wants access to your contacts and stuff, I want to stop that.

This has nothing to do with Google and everything to do with granular permissions. I'd suggest any recent CM variant or the XPrivacy module on Xposed.