I like supporting software companies where the product is their main focus (I think the ad driven business model is a corrupting influence on design).
It can also be tedious to go through all the settings and make sure things remain the way a user would want them. I like working with a company that has incentives aligned with the user.
On DDG, I would have said the same thing not that long ago. Everyone will have their own threshold for what’s good enough for them.
I use G Suite at work, and I wondered about this. From Google's modus operandi, I assumed they are mining data, for example, of all work emails to and from the accounts - and probably connected to my personal email addresses somehow, as part of a profile to target ads.
Is there a confirmation that this is not (or is) being done? I suppose, from a security/privacy perspective, it's safer to assume that it is, because it's technically possible.
I have two chromium profiles, one for work using a G Suite account and one using my personal gmail account. I've noticed the browsing history and search from my work profile impacting my personal search results.
I don't believe they use G Suite email/docs to mine data, but the rest is likely fair game.
The thing is as you mentioned, with something as personal as email, docs or drive, I would trust a big company to keep it safe. Specially one that has historically has had a very good track record of it. Google hires some of the best offensive security guys, some of them you can see in Project Zero.
My experience with DDG hasn't been good at all with anything other than simple term search or website search.