Seems to me like one of the key differences is in how much data is actually collected. DDG claims in their blog post that they send no PII to apple, they're just using apple to provide a map view and search data.
I'm not even sure this level of anonymized usage is possible with google's APIs.
Edit: I just had the experience of trying to use biking directions in google maps the other day. In order to enable actual turn-by-turn directions I had to turn on something called "Web and App activity" which, as best as I can tell, is an unbelievably invasive set of technologies designed to track you across websites, real locations, and non-google owned apps using google APIs.
There's a real and meaningful difference in the amount and depth of the data collected by google vs. its competitors. I think a huge motivating factor for why google collects that data is their ad-driven revenue model.
To tie it back to your original question: Sure we could all just not use cloud services but in the mean time there are clear differences in how vulnerable you are to privacy violations by nation-states through legal means based on how much data various cloud services are actively trying to collect on you.
Yeah I agree this is very shady. Until recently you couldn't use Google Assistant at all without enabling that, which means that every time you launch an app it's logged on their servers. They've fixed this recently but they still require you to turn it on for a lot of features in Android.
I'm not even sure this level of anonymized usage is possible with google's APIs.
Edit: I just had the experience of trying to use biking directions in google maps the other day. In order to enable actual turn-by-turn directions I had to turn on something called "Web and App activity" which, as best as I can tell, is an unbelievably invasive set of technologies designed to track you across websites, real locations, and non-google owned apps using google APIs.
There's a real and meaningful difference in the amount and depth of the data collected by google vs. its competitors. I think a huge motivating factor for why google collects that data is their ad-driven revenue model.
To tie it back to your original question: Sure we could all just not use cloud services but in the mean time there are clear differences in how vulnerable you are to privacy violations by nation-states through legal means based on how much data various cloud services are actively trying to collect on you.