I tried to get away from it, but (unfortunately) I must admit that they are far better than anyone (Microsoft, Apple, etc) in terms of provided services, reliability, usability, etc. I mean, I am aware about their privacy unfriendly behavior, but at the end I decided to carry on using their services, just with some precautions.
Good analogy - or maybe it's even indifference towards the product, who comes to the slaughter voluntarily on the basis of some free sweets.
Google is so large and employs so many you can't hate it all as a whole in black and white. They do have some smart people working for them (to put it lightly). There's a lot of money and great stuff they've funded that could fill a book. (same could be said of a lot of conglomerates, like Microsoft) What I don't like about them is their monopoly status of easily bubbling people into using all their services, especially with Android devices. And their services are considered privacy risks, where most people privacy conscience wouldn't even want to use their search engine- the very thing they're most known for. Yet had they not even gone with Android being Linux based, then we wouldn't have any non proprietary tablets and smart phones, so. Certainly Apple and Microsoft aren't exactly pulling for open source the way Google has. I'm being vague and simplifying examples, but, I just don't feel like getting really into it. I'd rather just at least make the point. So yeah, Google does some good in its way, but there's a ton of other software and services more privacy based popping up now, and those deserve a larger user base, more eyes on them and more funding/ad revenue.