Last time I checked (It's been some time though), Skydrive's EULA was much more privacy destroying than Google Docs EULA (of course, IANAL). Hotmail had much worse service and similar targeted advertising, etc etc. It was funny that at the same time, I was watching on youtube (of all places) the Microsoft ads against the gmailman and google docs (see here and here)

Personally, I'm migrating my cloud storage to Wuala, that is, AFAIK, the only cloud storage provides that both works on Linux and provides client side encryption for your data. There isn't a decent alternative to gmail right now, not at reasonable prices (seriously, many for pay email provides give a much worse product than gmail). I could rent a server, install Debian on it, and then set it as my email gateway. It would cost me much more, give me worse service, and require some of my time to maintain (as unless I kept it maintained and verified that it had the latest security patches, it may end up being less private than gmail, and instead part of a botnet, sending spam in my name)

Sincerely, I personally feel that Google has managed to be close to the "do not evil" motto than any of their competitors. They are light grey in a dark grey world. I understand that supporting someone who is slightly evil is still supporting evil, but I still find that supporting the lesser evil is better than supporting the greater evil. For those who can not control their own infrastructure (AKA the vast majority of users of the internet), Google offers services that are WAY ahead of the competition, both in technical capability and in respectfulness for the users rights (Microsoft and Facebook, for example, as much more evil than Google - There's a quote that comes to mind: "Farewell friend. I was a thousand times more evil than thou." -- Michael Moorcock)

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