One could argue that they are telling the truth about whether or not they ever look at your data and keep it encrypted and this and that and the other, but the simple fact is that unless it is open source or audited multiple times by independent third parties, there is no way to confirm that all of your data actually is private.

However, most people are beginning to realize that because of the overreach that all of these different tech mega corporations have, it is almost impossible to stay private, even if you do sacrifice your products for more private, generally less feature rich ones. A good example is proton mail: it is a great email service, it is truly private, but you also don't get a lot of the really nice features that Google has, like an actually good suite of integration with meetings, calendar appointments, shipping tracking, reminders, file sharing, the works.

There is a trade-off, and a lot of the tech focused people believe that the lack of features warrants the more privacy, so it is really a difference of ideology more than anything.

On the other hand, I trust google's ability to store my data more than some homebrewed app.

As usual, the best solution will vary, but will always include secure offsite backups.

If the answers are okay today, will they stay good next year?