Yeah, that's the rub, isn't it? We (humans) are always so quick to make trade-offs that might not be in our best long-term interest, in order to gain some near-term convenience.
I'm certainly guilty of this myself: I use most of Google's services, for both personal use and I use a paid Google Apps account for my startup's email / etc. And I use an Android phone. Maybe it's time to start re-evaluating some of this stuff... Hmm...
There are a lot of ways that it could be bad/dangerous, but the most obvious is: What if Google's (in)famous automated algorithms some-day flag your account as spam or malicious in some regard, and they lock you out of everything? This has happened to people before, and some of them only got the situation corrected because they thought to post here on HN, where their story caught the eye of a helpful GOOG employee who happens to post here. But what about the non-HN crowd? After all, Google are notorious for having essentially zero customer service if you aren't a paying user of one of their various paid offerings. And even then I'm not sure how good their service is (I pay for Google Apps, but have never had to engage with their support in any way).
I'm certainly guilty of this myself: I use most of Google's services, for both personal use and I use a paid Google Apps account for my startup's email / etc. And I use an Android phone. Maybe it's time to start re-evaluating some of this stuff... Hmm...