You team up with some friends, people you know and trust, and you share the administrative and financial effort I have been burned by people I trusted much mor

You team up with some friends, people you know and trust, and you share the administrative and financial effort I have been burned by people I trusted much more often than by google. You use a local, small Internet service company rather than one of the big entities. How is that better? You're still bequeathing your data to a commercial third party. I get the OP's point, and hope I never have to eat my own words, but the reasons to go through all the hassle of moving out of google et al aren't all that compelling imo.