I pay for cloud storage, not from Google. I'm happy to pay for this, and I use enough storage there I would be paying Google if I used their storage. Almost every time I go into the Photos all on my phone, there's a dark pattern which tries to get me to turn on backups. If I do this, all my personal photos will be uploaded to Google's servers. Then the UI will change so that I'm never presented with an explicit choice of turning this off, ever again, and will have to search for how to do it. I don't love the internet Google created.