If any of you have been keeping up with the whole craziness of Google and their changes in their privacy policy, you might see a reason to look for something else.

Really, Google's policy changes do make sense, as their whole purpose is to use your data for marketing research to provide you with better ads for you to buy stuff. But a lot of people are freaked out because here you have Google merging all the data from all their services to build a profile which will probably be more accurate than any government agency. Scary shit if you ask me.

But while I don't see myself dropping off of Google any time soon, I began to notice just how intertwined I am with this company. I will admit that I am a huge fan of Google. Hell, I might as well say it, I am a fanboy. The services and abilities that Google offer are just amazing. But what if I want to change? What if something happened to my account or we found out that Google employees eat puppies and kittens for lunch? Then what?

This has been a common tactic for companies, to bundle up their services and make it harder for people to migrate to a competitor. Example being Banks and the inclusion of their Billpay, or Cable networks and their 'telephone, cable, internet' packages.

Truth is, I am completely lost on what to migrate too if that ever came about. I mean when it comes to email. Sure I could move to AOL, Microsoft, or Yahoo, but it's all just the same, and I doubt they would offer as much robust features as Google apps. But if anything, I probably would move back to yahoo since I only left them because I found out gmail had free pop3. As for others;

Google Reader - Plenty of other software I could use, including Windows Live Mail.

Google+ - Delete, I couldn't care less

Google Docs - I would be just fine using it on my desktop, and maybe sync with Live Mesh

Google Calendar - Again, probably switch to Yahoo or Live Mail (or sunbird? :)

Google voice - Go back to using my cell #, but i sure would miss all the features.

Web search - Plenty to choose from...

Google Maps - Mapquest/Yahoo maps

Google Talk - Skype

Feedburner - None, just use standard RSS

So really it does require moving a lot to a competing service that probably already does the same. But truth is, I would have no problem moving to offline for a lot of features as I rarely use them on the go (eg calendar) and with the plan to dumb down my phone, it would be useless anyway.

Who knows what the future will hold, but it's always interesting to think about...