[turtle4]

There are no perfect alternatives, just imperfect ones.

Apple has their own issues, but they've claimed that their business is selling you a device and software and media to run on it, and making their money from that as opposed to reselling your data. Everything they've been doing lately supports that stance, and they've already recognized it as a differentiation, hence the way they have been up-playing the privacy features of their devices lately. Since they aren't selling you as much after the fact, they are going to charge you more up-front, and since they make their money selling software, they're obsessed with controlling the marketplace.

Google gives away software and media, and sells your personal data and advertising. They're showing increasingly that they don't care about your privacy if it affects their bottom line.

You have to decide which of those business models you support, and then support it. There's no third model where a business gives everything away and cares about your privacy. That's inconsistent with a bottom line of making money, and at the end of the day that is what the business is trying to do.

For a while Google gave the impression that they cared, until they established a large enough market, and now you're seeing them make the natural transition. They've grew their cash cow by giving away stuff, now they are milking it.

Any rational company with their business model is going to do the same thing though, so if you jump ship to another ecosystem now selling you a business model that is too good to be true, don't be surprised down the line when that proves to be the case.

[binomialxenon]

Google does make a ton of money from ads and tracking, but how do they not "sell software and media" too? They sell apps and media in the same manner that Apple does.

[reitanqild]

Abusing users isn't OK just because they've found additional ways to extract money from users.

Disclaimer: I was a Google fanboy until a few years ago and I disliked but trusted Google until a couple of weeks ago. Now I don't know what to do but at least I've finally got around to switching my search habits.

[eridius]

Google has relatively few ways to actually give them money directly for software and media. There's Google Apps (assuming you aren't a grandfathered free customer from back when it was free), and I guess YouTube Red, and, um.... is there any other way to actually pay money to Google for services rendered? I honestly can't think of another option.

(I'm ignoring their hardware here because of course that's not free, and I don't think it's even intended to be a significant source of revenue anyway)