Right, but the average person doesn't know about DDG--sure word would catch on, but the initial break would cause major friction for the vast majority of people

Right, but the average person doesn't know about DDG--sure word would catch on, but the initial break would cause major friction for the vast majority of people. Also, what happens to all that data in stowed away in other services? What happens, with Gmail if it's separated from the ads division? Do they suddenly start charging everyone to use it? Can they still run ads in Gmail? Would they have access to the infra serving those ads? If they flame out completely do we lose all our data? Will they give us a chance to export it? In what format?.... I just can't help but feel these sorts of breaks would be extremely difficult to get right.