Some thoughts
Getting rid of Google is actually fairly easy at the expense of some usefulness. Getting rid of all cloud services is a bit trickier but can be done. Getting rid of all apps that access to net - you have just a phone. I went that far.
I find I am not comfortable at either extreme. Like everyone, I need to find a balance between privacy and convenience. As an experiment I'm going to load gapps but neuter Google's data collection as best as I can by setting sync off for all except one or two services, turning off location services, Google Now, etc.
I'll visit my dashboard in a few days and see how it looks. Major thanks to the OP for this very enlightening thread.
Getting rid of Google is actually fairly easy at the expense of some usefulness. Getting rid of all cloud services is a bit trickier but can be done. Getting rid of all apps that access to net - you have just a phone. I went that far.
I find I am not comfortable at either extreme. Like everyone, I need to find a balance between privacy and convenience. As an experiment I'm going to load gapps but neuter Google's data collection as best as I can by setting sync off for all except one or two services, turning off location services, Google Now, etc.
I'll visit my dashboard in a few days and see how it looks. Major thanks to the OP for this very enlightening thread.