Is there a good guide that tells non-technical people how to use Firefox with ublock, provides alternatives to Gmaps/gmail (that don't require complex setups), how to protect their smartphone from Google surveillance, etc.?
alternatives to Gmaps
I run https://lineageos.org and have no problems whatsoever.
It's an asinine question.. It's like someone asking, "how do I keep smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day and completely eliminate my risk of COPD and lung cancer". Yeh um, you either keep enjoying those cigarettes and accept your shitty ended of life consequences or quit.
If you don't want google or Facebook siphoning your data, don't log in with them. You can still use many of the services google offers without logging in, it just Won't be very convenient..
There are tons of alternatives. None of them are easy, some of them aren't free. Because you pay somewhere, nothing is free. Proton mail is a great alternative to gmail, but it costs. Hosting your own social media is harder, mastadon or hubzilla is great for friends n family, but it costs time. Ejabberd for messaging.
There's an alternative but getting it done is not for the average user https://microg.org/ Google did a great job locking down users with android. I'm pretty much googleless and it's like dieting
I use an LG V20 and have never once used play services. It's completely disabled.
Almost all my apps I get from 3rd party app stores, mainly fdroid and a few others. As well, I've had an old google account linked to a prepaid card and a phone that is rooted, and I used to download apps from play store with it, use an apk extractor, and send the apps to my new phone.
The days of this happening are not long for this world though, as more and more app devs are implementing safety net and forced play services checks. This really started happening around the pokemonGo time period. Some don't implement it correctly and you can still bypass it, but it's a real hassle..
A recent update broke a scanner app that I use to get alerted if a police scanner gets really busy.. I emailed the dev to ask why, they implied google is really pushing these safety checks now. Wonderful security, keeping us safe..
Even still, you only have to use play and play services if you plan on using the play store apps... I realize I'm an outlier, but then again, I've never been bothered by the few minutes longer it took me to login via mobile browser instead of just getting the app. Everyone makes choices about where and what they spend their time on.. I've always valued my privacy I suppose..