I use google whenever its an option, the search engine is great, google code has been a major boon to open source development, and they've turned youtube from almost shut down due to copyright violations to 1 billion a year in revenue.
for me, the turning point was back in 2005 when google refused to produce search results the doj subpoenaed. it is not so much that they fought for my right to privacy online, its the fact that yahoo, msn and aol all bent over for the doj.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/20/te.../20google.html