[JepZ]

Well, we all know that the google services are pretty convenient, but the problem is much less their functionality as the things 'you have to do' in order to use them, like:

- load all your images on their servers

- load all your documents on their servers

- load all your mails on their servers

- load all your contacts on their servers

- load all your appointments on their servers

- load all your...

That way it is completely non-transparent what they are doing with your data. I mean for every app on our smartphone we have a detailed list of permissions, but for google its just 'take it all'?!?

[KirinDave]

There are detailed user agreements for photos, drive and calendar that are comparable to other services, and agencies salivating at the thought of winning a class action privacy lawsuit. Google has to be pretty careful, because all it takes is one whistleblower and even Donald Trump won't be able to evict them from the global news cycle.

And it's not like Apple's any different here, or like it's realistic to try and do these sorts of things from local resources.

I've been working on moving a lot of my data and services off the cloud and it's very hard even if you know what you're doing. You need to be able to build a home lab, have some solution for connectivity to your home (most people have never heard of ngrok, dyndns simply doesn't work well for many use cases), and spend lots of money on storage. This isn't like renting more expensive cloud computing services, the cost is below $25USD a month.