[claudius]

I was a Microsoft hater when I was 15, too, but at least Microsoft makes their money by selling Windows, Office and the like rather than by selling my data. So even if their ‘cloud services’ such as Outlook.com are ad-supported in some way, at least they don’t completely rely on that, and I still have the choice whether to use Windows or not – all their services run just fine in Opera on Debian, too.

[alec]

Google does not sell your data. http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/

[sbuk]

No, but they monetize that data in other ways. Some say it's not the same thing, I disagree. Ultimately, it's at your discretion, but they could very easily change that policy.