> Google feels like a spouse who cheated on you. You don’t trust them but you haven’t found a better option yet.

This is a great analogy! It's crazy how much my opinion of Google has changed in the past decade or so. Judging by comments on HackerNews and elsewhere, many others feel the same.

I also feel similarly about Amazon. I enjoy using it less and less, but it's been hard to completely drop.

Why do you feel similarly about Amazon?

I search on Bing.

I still have a Google account (in fact several) but I hardly ever log in. I use it when I have to for work, but if I have any choice I use Microsoft Office instead of Google docs. Mainly I use JIRA, Slack, and tools from other vendors.

I use Fastmail and EM Client for my personal mail. You get what you (do or don't) pay for.

I have a Fitbit Alta HR, mainly because it is smaller than a conventional watch. I am not going to get rid of it, but I am certainly not going to replace it with a Google product. I probably won't be able to anyway since Google will probably kill it in a fit of mindlessness soon.

Take a look at Garmin watches. I replaced my fitbit with a Garmin as soon as I found out about the buyout and I couldn't be happier. It's much more capable than the Fitbit was and Garmin has an actual privacy policy instead of a ways in which we sell your data policy.

Fitbit also has a privacy policy, as does Google. It’s not actually the practice to sell your data. It’s much more valuable for them to hold onto it and sell products that use your data.

The concern is that Fitbit was a product company. (Garmin is a product company. Apple is a product company. Etc.) Google has never seen themselves as a product company. They make a few products, certainly, but they're an ad company first and foremost to their shareholders, and a service company if anything else past that. Products are very low on the Google totem pole in terms of revenue or more critically ideals in how the company sees itself, and sells itself to its own investors.

(To add to the pile of anecdotes, I haven't yet stopped using my Fitbit because of the modern American dystopian need to appease the "Wellness company" that influences my Health Insurance pool and costs. But it's been heavily on my mind since the Google purchase and I will probably switch to something else whenever I free up enough gadget budget.)

> It’s much more valuable for them to hold onto it and sell products that use your data.

I think that when most people say tech firms "sell your data", they include this in the definition.