I've made huge efforts the past couple years to simplify my life - minimizing has been so rewarding. The recent minimization and downgrade was cancelling my verizon service (yeah, a couple months before the contract was over) and changing to tracfone. I have no complaints, really, but my further minimization was to start removing google services from my life. Google's services are mostly good, very helpful, but that company has made me feel as though I am very reliant on technology. Simplifying, downgrading and minimizing isn't just a benefit to save money, it declutters the mind and reduces stress as well.
I only really use my smartphone for checking google maps to see the traffic situation because I live in a pseudo-urban area that doesn't have the infrastructure to handle all the people living here. I like the google music app and getting my email, but all that is kinda secondary. I'm trying to compromise and just set up a google account for my phone, and damn if they don't REQUIRE your phone number just to sign up for email online. A few weeks ago I was going to download an app for my child's school, can't remember which app it was, and it REQUIRED that I also sign up for google+. NOPE. The app had nothing to do with Google+ and that just annoyed me. I accidentally did that last year, and Google+ uploaded ALL of the photos from my phone onto my brand new Google+ account and notified all of my contacts who were also on Google+ that I was now on there and yay, look at all my photos, too!
I'm not sure I'm tired of it enough to change to one of the other smartphones, but I am very curious of anyone else who has kinda boycotted google? If you love google, good for you, but its starting to get old.