Do you believe that paid services don't collect data? It's impossible to not collect data for web services. These days even local applications you need to pay money for, like Photoshop, collect tons of information, and we don't have a clear picture of why exactly they need it. With Google we know that they don't sell our data and that the only thing they care about is being able to use the data to show better ads. They also give us the freedom to use an ad blocker if we choose, so what's not to love?
We know for a fact that USA intelligence agencies have warrantless access to Google data though. When it comes to these organizations, it'd be preferrable if no data was ever collected in the first place. The information should not actually exist in any database of any company. This is the oonly way I can imagine being somewhat safe from their global espionage.
