While I agree on many points about the evil of Google, I still dont trust MS. What they say and what might be really going on is almost impossible for us mere mortals to ever know.
So I choose not to worry about it. If my broswing history is monitored, so what I have nothing to hide. And if I did I'd use TOR.
I think the Surface and the Windows OS in general are fantastic products. However Google is simply a better search engine. I work in an office where we build new PC images on daily basis. Clean installs always default to the Bing search engine. The cry of "F*$!ing BING!" can be heard regularly.
Every so often I give it a try to see if its improved. However I ALWAYS find the results on Google are what I actually want. Bing is improving but it is definitely inferior. At least when searching for technical fixes, reg tweaks or drivers.
As for Chrome vs IE. Chrome WORKS. IE fails and regularly. Program crashes and page reloads are frequent. Only this week a client had had their PC upgraded from XP to Win7 Pro. All updates installed with latest drivers. IE 11 crashed as soon as you signed in to outlook.com. Same machine with Chrome for business installed. Outlook.com worked perfectly. An hour of tweaking, removing reinstalling and following technet solutions and we eventually got it working. This is not a rare case.
Dont get me started on compatibility.......
This is based on Chrome as a Browser not an OS. I dont use any Chrome Apps (apart from gmail and thats only because I signed up my personal domain as a google business account when you got 10 email addresses and your own domain for free, would have preferred Office365 like I have at work but wont pay a monthly charge). You'll never see me buy a Chrome book.
Android on a phone though.... Love my Galaxy Note 3. Tried Windows phone 7 and I wasnt impressed. Windows Phone 8.1 looks like its getting better but as far as I know there is nothing like the Note 3 available on that platform (digitiser pen, expandable storage and a large but not massive form factor). Maybe Windows phone 9 will sway me....
Sorry for the rant.