They're going down the Facebook route, they want to lock you into their AOL-style walled garden. I was surprised the other day when I went to share a video from Google+ to Facebook, turns out I couldn't, it wasn't a youtube video as I had expected.
And before the Google army comes in, let me say one thing. I used to love Google. Used all of their services. Built stuff with their services. Each computer I touched got Chrome installed. I was a fan boy. But then they started changing. Ever since G+, they just seem hell bent on becoming a social network. That shit really pissed me off. How do you simply go from awesome company to this? I'll tell you how. Because its now being run by people who put profits first, and not the users/programmers. They seem to have forgotten that it was us who gives them the profits they get. Such is the reason I'm building Nuuton. Because fuck you Google.
Maybe that's fine with them (seems like they have a corporate mission to eliminate the whole idea of free or nearly-free web APIs anyway), but regardless of their motivations they've proven to be a non-reliable provider of stable free-to-use web APIs over the past couple of years.
You can't built bridges on top of shaky ground.
Google is clearly not an open source company.
With the death of Reader, my last shred of goodwill is basically gone. I've used an @gmail.com address for the past six years despite having my own domain, and now that's going to stop as I gradually transition off most of their services.
That's why I will 'never' embrace cloud that tightly.
We have heard it before, with Microsoft, we are hearing it again with Google, and we will hear it again with someone else in the future.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
Just because they didn't satisfy your demands you decide to take such a drastic turn? Perhaps they were trying to satisfy other casual Internet users as well.
Not to say you're wrong or whatever, but a huge company like Google tries to satisfy as many people as possible to increase their market-share. I don't necessarily see something wrong as long as all the negative side affects aren't solely absorbed by the consumer.
There's nothing wrong with compromises here and there - any healthy relationship consistently needs to deal with them.
If that is the tipping point for you, then by all means show support for alternatives. I know I do a terrible job at ensuring Google isn't the only player in the game.
I imagine a pinboard.in like service but for mail (cheap, fast, simple, run by a developer that I trust to worst case mail me a DVD of my mail history). I'd jump to that very quickly.