[josephg]

The threat model isn't google. And I believe that google's engineers are more than up to the task of protecting their servers from everyday hackers.

The threat I'm worried about is the surveillance arm of the US government. The small glimpses we've seen are frightening - for example, they spliced a cable between two google data centers and recorded (some? all?) of the traffic travelling between them. This particular hole has since been plugged (google encrypts between-data-center traffic now), but we simply don't know what the US government's capabilities are. This isn't paranoia stuff - they really do this kind of thing.

And even if google manages to 'go dark' to the NSA, the US government can just legally demand access to all of our data. And block google from telling us that the data intrusion happened.

Its funny you mention FUD. Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt is exactly how I feel about trusting google (and by extension the US government) with every email, search, voice, in-app text in android, phone call and so on that I've ever made.

As a non-US citizen, I have even fewer protections and I can't fight this politically. But I can give my money to Apple instead. So thats what I do.