What is digital independence?
Digital independence means no longer resting your online life on a single player: emails, photos, calendar and files are spread across services you can leave. If one closes your account or changes its rules, nothing essential is lost. It's insurance against the single point of failure.
Information verified on July 13, 2026
What happens if Google closes your account tomorrow morning? If the answer is “I lose my emails, my photos, my calendar and my documents all at once”, you are not independent: you have a single point of failure. Digital independence means spreading your online life so that no player can take everything with it.
Concretely, that means separate services and exit doors. A mailbox here, photos there, files you keep a copy of. It doesn’t matter whether the providers are perfect: what counts is being able to leave each one without drama.
The nuance with digital sovereignty? Independence removes the single point of failure: you no longer depend on one player. Sovereignty goes one step further: it adds legal and technical control, choosing under which laws your data lives and who can read it. You can be independent without being sovereign; the reverse is rarer.
Where it plays out: the free diagnostic measures your current dependence in 24 questions, and the personal digital sovereignty page sets the overall frame.
Want the complete guide?
“Vivre sans Google” (in French) covers the full journey, service by service, with step-by-step migration guides.
Forthcoming 22/10/2026 from Éditions Eyrolles
Where do you stand?
24 questions to measure how much you depend on Google services. Free, no sign-up.
Tech jargon, translated
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