> I switched from google search to duckduckgo. I still hit an occasional search on google but that's a percentile of the searches they got from me before that decision.

You can use !s in duckduckgo to use startpage instead of duckduckgo, so you end up with google's results but avoid the privacy leak (so long as you trust ddg and sp).

> I don't host files on Dropbox or the Google drive. I have my own owncloud server on the same box as the mail server.

I prefer syncthing, and it's easier to stay on the local network. ownCloud has lots of features, but it's overkill if you only need a dropbox clone.

> I do have an Android phone but I essentially stopped carrying it with me everywhere. I hate being a slave of the phone, no longer have a mobile data plan and I take the phone with me only when I really need to be reached.

No longer have a mobile data plan either, that just means I read my emails and hn a bit less. Cyanogenmod seems to be a big improvement over plain Android privacy-wise.

> I already noticed a large quality drop in the accuracy of google searches/youtube recommendations for my account.

What do you need a google account for?

Also I don't know if companies are legally entitled to gather personal information based on ip addresses, but I use Tor Browser as my default browser so I don't feel threatened by that. On the whole the situation could easily improve if gmail actually had a proper competitor.