Cons of switching to the Android family?

[SurferMan]

That's BS and you know it. Using the search engine is pretty harmless by itself. As soon as you're logged in using a google account and perform the same search, however, the fun begins. You can turn off search history, location history etc., but by doing so, you also cripple your Android experience (forget about using an Android Wear watch without Google Now enabled). Google makes money from collecting, combining and selling personal data. This isn't something I'm comfortable with. I'm sure many people don't care - which is perfectly fine, but it's not for me, that's for sure.

Google isn't the only company making a living from exploiting their users' personal data (Facebook springs to mind), but they're the worst offender, by far.

Sounds like you need to do more research on Google, one of the biggest common myths, everything is used for retargeting targeted ads. Guess what Apple collects your data as well, why do you think they bought Topsy last year (an analytics company) since they don't operate engines etc the way Google does to collect data.

And for what its worth, I have a few friends (3 actually) that own or are partners in very large data centers.... you could never use an Apple or Google device, and guarantee your information and everything about you or likes etc is already out there . Only way it wouldn't be were if you were to never use the internet, phone, never have a job or business, basically just sit in a room with a tinfoil hat on doing nothing rest of your life

I also run advertising on FB and for clients, it doesn't work the way you think, it too is only used for targeting down and retargeting, we don't get magical access to you inner darkest secrets and everything about you or private information.