If democracy is not strong enough (and I know a few countries...), you (also) need to vote with your wallet. If they don't feel no pain, they won't react.
Regarding companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo; the answer is not using their services at all since you don't pay them yourself but you do by viewing ads.
A week ago I started to migrate my Google Docs data to a git repository. Right now I use plain text files and Latex. Damn, I totally forgot how cool it is to access your data when you don't have an Internet connection.
Regarding companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo; the answer is not using their services at all since you don't pay them yourself but you do by viewing ads.