> they have been decent custodians of their users data.
I very strongly disagree. I will explain below, but first want to comment on:
> but they behave much better than the Australian government
Yes, sure, I agree. But this is a function of impact, to me. A government has much greater ability to negatively impact me than a corporation does, in that a government can outright decide to murder or imprison me, while it would take much greater effort for a corporation to do so.
So, yes, of course I trust Google more than I do any government.
But, with that said, as far as companies having my data go, Google is exactly the company I don't want to have my data. Here's why:
Why do we care if any company has our data? I think (at least for me, personally), two reasons immediately spring to mind: the data could leak to criminals who will use it to try and defraud or blackmail me, and the company might sell my data.
But why do I care if companies sell my data? If its just those two reasons, then it really just boils down to increasing the risk of hacks/leaks, but that doesn't sound like the complete picture to me. No, I also care about a company itself directly misusing my data, not just selling it to someone else (why would they want it?). So we need to define what we mean by "misusing".
For me, it means using the data against me, which, in the case of companies, typically means using it to psychologically trick me into giving them money. This is exactly the business Google is in. Their bread and butter is in figuring out ways of making me click on adverts in order to spend money on something I wouldn't otherwise have (or would have bought elsewhere). Google's entire business is built around the very reason I don't want companies to have or sell my data!
Of course Google tries to put a positive spin on it, like they are only trying to show me the most relevant things based on my interests, in order to tell me about things I didn't know about but want to know about. I don't buy it for a minute. As long as Google show me adverts for (or even have them on their platform) outright scams[1], malware or exploitative garbage like Raid Shadow Legends, I cannot believe their motives are anything but to do whatever makes consumers pay their clients money (so that they in turn keep spending money on Google). If that happens to match up with something that benefits the consumer, great, but if it also happens to be detrimental to consumers, Google doesn't care. The very fact that they willfully keep serving adverts (and don't have a way to report them, certainly don't act on reports) for actual blatant SCAMS and fraud, malware and exploitative content is proof of this.
So, no, Google have not been decent custodians of their users data, they are the very company we want to protect our data from in the first place. The fact that there are worse actors does not change that.
[1] Recent HN post about this very subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24175924