I have used Google products for a long time. I started using their search engine back around 2000 or so, when they were still in their lengthy beta period, and most other people were still getting by with AltaVista, Yahoo, or whatever else passed for web search in those days. When Google search exploded in popularity, I had my share of early-adopter smugness, and soon took it for granted that with enough search wizardry I could find anything.
Likewise, I was an early and enthusiastic adopter of GMail in 2004, which I continue to use for my main account, and now my work account (although I didn't make that decision). Although we keep a paper calendar on the fridge, it doesn't get written on much anymore as our lives have migrated to Google Calendar. Google Documents has become a handy permanent-and-accessible-anywhere location for various lists and other handy documents. Picasa rapidly became an easy tool for managing, editing, and uploading family photos - to Google servers, of course. (Then there's the blogging platform you're reading now, of course). I even used Google Desktop Search on my old Windows XP machines, which was approximately 15253% better than trying to find a file using Windows's own search capability. If it's on that black Google toolbar, I probably use it. (OK, Google+, not so much.) In short, Google has insinuated itself into my life pretty heavily. If they cared to look, they could probably learn just about anything about me.
Which brings me back to search.
About a year ago I was listening to a Hanselminutes podcast about a search engine called DuckDuckGo. It's a general-purpose web search engine that does all the usual spidery-crawly indexing, while adding some interesting touches of their own. Their search results have more emphasis on noncommercial, curated sites such as Wikipedia and Delicious, and deliberately avoid content farms such as Answers.com. They have an interesting "Zero-click Info" feature: where possible, you'll see a box at the top of the search results with a brief synopsis or definition, again from curated sources. If you're keyboard-driven, they have scads of keyboard shortcuts, so for instance you can search for a book on Amazon by typing "steve jobs biography !amazon" (or just "steve jobs biography !a" if you're into brevity). Finally, they make it a point not to track you. This earned DuckDuckGo a Class A rating from Terms Of Service; Didn't Read, a new website that is trying to distill the terms of service of various websites into plain English (and presumably other languages).
Up to this point, I could count on one hand the number of non-Google web searches I had performed over the last 10 years or so. (Bing just seemed... slow, cluttered, and not that compelling.) But I admired the audacity (insanity?) of going up against a juggernaut like Google, so I gave DuckDuckGo a try, and I liked what I saw. Soon it was my default search engine on Chrome (my browser of choice, natch) and Firefox.
I still respect Google as a company, and feel that they try to adhere to the "Don't be evil" motto when possible (although perhaps not as much as a few years ago). They still provide my email, calendar, browser, and more. But, with privacy on the Internet being easy to lose and difficult to regain, I like having that big "search" egg in a different basket.
