What Now for Google Users?

[TRS-80]

This is going to be a completely different take, which you may or may not appreciate.

I realized some years ago that by depending on any particular piece of software to keep links, bookmarks (or anything, really), you will ultimately be tied into that software / ecosystem.  Now, IMO Mozilla/Firefox are much more trustworthy than Google/Chrome in this regard (much less Microsoft/Edge), but ultimately you are still tied to the whims / fortunes of Mozilla (or whoever else).

So at some point I started keeping all my important information in text files, as I realized these are a sort of universal "lowest common denominator" format, so to speak.

First I put my "bookmarks" into a few interlinked plain HTML files, the entry point of which I set as the home page in my browser.  I synced the files across devices, as this worked equally well on all platforms (as it's just plain HTML).

Later I evolved to using TiddlyWiki, then I could include some notes and light formatting along with my "boookmarks" to give them context.

Nowadays I am using Orgmode in Emacs but learning the latter is honestly a bit of a commitment (assuming you even edit enough text to justify it in the first place).

There are a lot of other tools out there, too.  You may find one or more that suit you better than the ones I have mentioned.  The main point here is more about a change in mindset from relying on particular software or "platforms" or "ecosystems."

In fact, more recently I have heard the term "protocols, not platforms" and I like that a lot and have started repeating it and trying to explain it to people.  Platforms are all about lock-in, where protocols are all about interoperability.

I recommend installing 'uBlock Origin' (block ads from being downloaded and run) and 'NoScript' (block random JS from running - you can whitelist per site). This will really help with RAM and CPU limitations.

I also use and recommend these, along with something like Cookie Auto Delete (and some others like HTTPS Everywhere, etc.) but I consider that just part of browsing, which is tangential to the discussion of Personal Information Management (PIM).

Incidentally, I was also a long time NoScript user, but eventually figured out I can do all the same things (and more) in uBO (and/or uMatrix), and I eventually even came around to preferring the UI of those.