Honestly I don't see what google has really done wrong. Yeah, they collect a lot of data, but I have yet to see them trying to sell that data in any form aside "if you are X we will show you from X categories of ads". The competitors will always exist, you can switch when google does something you can't stand. Until then why re-invent the wheel?
It's certainly not something everyone can or should worry about. I'm a computer hobbyist so I don't mind experimenting and running my own servers. What Google sounds like to me these days is some guy who knocks on your front door and says, "You want to keep your stuff at my house? I won't touch it, I promise, and that way you don't have to pay for storage. I'm a nice guy, you can trust me." He may even be a nice guy and he might actually be trustworthy, but I feel vulnerable if someone else has all my stuff. There are too many things that could happen to it and I don't have the same degree of control over it that I normally would.
Same. I'm sure Google actually is selling the data, but I really don't care. There are a lot of complaints about privacy violations and whatnot, but they haven't affected me, and there's not a lot I do online that's totally scandalous. I get the principle, but I'm just completely unenthused by the people who want to declare Google some evil superpower. I love Chrome, it's always been a lot better than Firefox to me. I love Gmail, and I've had my main account there since the service was in public beta, and since then I've always been heavily involved in their beta releases. Google Plus sucks, but I don't care that they're pushing it. It'd be nice if they'd let it be, but I don't blame them for pushing their own product: they're a business. I'd rather they push Google Wave back into existence, but apparently I was the only person who thought that product was great. And yes, Google search is the bar of excellence to me. I've not tried DuckDuckGo yet, but I have no reason to. Their only selling point is that they don't track what you search, but I don't care about that.
I, as well, enjoyed Google Wave. FWIW we've been using Asana at work, and I've taken quite the shine to it.
It's not so much that google has done anything wrong, it's that users had one view of Google, the Company ( the infamous "Don't Be Evil" clause), and Google, the Company, Had another. Google, the Company wanted to move in a more profitable direction for them with better user-directed searches and data-influenced ads. This makes great business sense for them, and generally their ads are still their trademark unobtrusive, mostly text style. However, all of the users who had the view of Our good friend Google have seen the shift away from mostly anonymous customer service to a service that generally works better, but is more data-intrusive. This shift on its own probably wouldn't have raised too many eyebrows, but with what they perceive the growing struggle for privacy on the internet, our good friend Google has become Google: Big Brother in the eyes of the wary.