What is Android without Google?

Android is an Open-Source OS ( the Linux kernel with an apache-licensed GUI and libraries on top of it). But when you buy an Android phone, you almost always get a bunch of closed-source google apps with it. The problem with this is that google has complete control over its apps. Google could for instance say that you may not install the market on a custom rom anymore. Google can also exclude some hardware vendors from using its apps (like it seems to do with the Arnova tablets).

So I would like to see if there are OSS replacements for those apps. Lets start with the most problematic app: the market. As you all probably know, one of the main strengths of a lot of Linux distributions is there package management. Ubuntu would be less practical to use if you couldn't just apt-get install a package. The same is true for smartphone OS. their quality is expressed in the number of apps that are availiable in the market. The problem is that the Android market is a proprietary Google app and thus no part of Android.

 There is a good list for all appstores (for all OS) on WIP connector. Lets give an overview of a few Android appstores.

• Amazon app store: not open source, you have to pay $99 per year to get your app in the store and if you want to post a paid app, then you get 70% of the price. For customers, the Amazon app store does offer a malware check before apps are included. Amazon also has a large number of apps and other stuff.
• Aptoide client is an OSS application market. You can add your own repositories (and even create your own ones), but the included repo has currently over 1400 apps. Aptoide also has support for user ratings, although currently most apps are unrated. Aptoide does not support paid apps.
• Fdroid is an OSS alternative but only gives access to OSS apps. This has as positive side that OSS apps are promoted. If you want more apps, the same repositories availiable for Aptoide can be used in Fdroid. But it does not support user ratings yet (maybe in the future). If you want your application in Fdroid, you can simply fill in their submit form.
• SlideMe: closed source, no subscription fee and you get about 90% of the price of your app.

As you see, there are replacements (even OSS ones), but not with as much applications as the original Android market.

Now that the most important app is discussed, lets talk about the other ones. All apps can be found on google.

• The search box and Goggles: Google and search match quite well, especially if it is on an OS that they developed. But as alternatives, you could use DuckDuckGo for websearch and Quickdroid for internal search (apps, contacts ...)
• Gmail: The mail app in the Google apps is only limited to Gmail addresses. But there is a better app for this: K9 mail, it's open source and accepts imap, pop3 and exchange mail. The only disadvantage is that it doesn't work with the priority inbox Google created.
• Google maps with latitude and navigation: I work a lot on OpenStreetMap, so for this one, I know there are a lot of alternatives. At least for the maps with navigation. Geeks don't seem social enough to use Latitude :P. The most complete alternative is Navit. It's an Open-Source offline navigation application. There are also other open source apps or free proprietary apps that do online routing using OSM data. The list can be found on the OSM wiki.
• Youtube: If you have a device with flash, you could off coarse use the browser to view youtube movies. But since youtube is a google service, you probably won't find any better app. But there are alternative apps for other video sites like dailymotion, but not a lot of OSS apps.
• Buzz: Buzz doesn't seem really popular, so I don't expect other apps for it.
• Google voice: As far as I know (I'm not in the USA, so I can't test google voice), it is just a VOIP app with some integration with your google account. There are other VOIP apps, and I know Jitsi is working on an OSS VOIP app. There are also OSS SIP clients availiable.
• Google talk: Google talk uses the jabber protocol, so there are other apps offering this and if the Jitsi app comes out, it will certainly offer calling over the jabber protocol. For now, there is Beem you could use.
• Google calendar: The Google calendar app is open source, but the underlying sign in isn't. So there is no possibility to use the calendar app  without the google apps. There is however the app AnCal. This one is open source but doesn't offer syncin. The app aCal is another calendar but this one supports syncing to a CalDav server.
• Google contacts: the contacts app is open source and usable without signing in to Google (but then it doesn't offer syncing). A fork of it is also present in the Cyanogen mods.
• Google Finance: I suppose there are alternatives, but I don't use any.
• Google shopper: I don't think there are alternatives for this.
• Blogger: A lot of alternatives for this, not only limited to the Google service of Blogger but also for other services. There are however no OSS alternatives for Blogger, but you can still use the browser interface.
• Translate: I don't use it, but I guess there are proprietary alternatives.

So as a summary, I could say that most apps have an OSS concurrent (exept for the pure google services) and for the Market you even have a choice to have one with only OSS apps in it or one with all kinds of apps.

So if anyone is considering to use Android without Google, or if the gapps don't work on your phone, you see that there are alternatives.