Currently I avoid Google as much as possible because I don't want them to have my information in exchange for a service; I'd rather pay some money for a service that won't siphon my data and use it for various, advertisement based purposes (it's not surprising but it's kinda terrible that they put ads on a device you paid a bit of money for). The reason I stick with Facebook is that there isn't as much of a solution otherwise, but I do try to use alternative messaging apps (Line, Wechat, Kakao, iMessage) when possible.
Why is it a problem if Google knows more about you? Doesn't it just mean that you will be served content more relevant to you?
Right now, I can't imagine that being served content "more relevant to me" is so valuable as to warrant a corporation systematically recording my doings. My current reaction is: I'm perfectly capable of finding relevant stuff on my own, thank you very much.
But I'd be happy to be proved wrong.
I do not want somebody else to choose what is relevant for me.
That said, in my experience, people willingly give their data to Google and Facebook. I assumed people were not cognisant but this is not the case. Most people are very conscious of their decision and argue that their data is safer with Google and it's a good trade off. This seems like a PR issue and hard to fix even if selfhosted solutions reach maturity.
Do others share my thoughts? Would love to hear from privacy enthusiasts as to how we can promote better architectures for the web.