Yes, because if they close my account I can still use google search. My goal is not so much about harming them by avoiding them, but rather to not be dependent on them.

Presumably it's more moving away from everything that stores data they care about. I don't care if I lose my search history, that'd be annoying because Google would get dumber, but ultimately whatever. Losing emails or photo backups or Drive though, is stuff I care about.

They certainly care about having gigabytes of mail that they can scan for patterns and use to target ads.