If I use a Pixel phone and use Google's services (GMail, Photos, etc.) and use Firefox with ad blocking and set up a hosts file to drop connections to ad networks am I in any way _winning_ or am I just deluding myself?
> There is no advertising in the G Suite Core Services, and we have no plans to change this in the future. Google does not collect, scan or use data in G Suite Core Services for advertising purposes. Customer administrators can restrict access to Non-Core Services from the G Suite Admin console. Google indexes customer data to provide beneficial services, such as spam filtering, virus detection, spellcheck and the ability to search for emails and files within an individual account.
Core services includes Mail and Docs/Drive, though not Photos.
That said, you can be both not winning and also not deluding yourself, and that seems like a fair assessment. Think of it as a revealed preference: if you really didn’t want to make the targeted-ads-for-free-services trade, you’d use alternatives for components where great alternatives exist (say, FastMail). There’s nothing wrong with using Google’s products, it just means your preference - revealed rather than stated/intended - is to accept that trade.