Here’s my take. Companies must comply with the laws of the countries they operate in, so there’s always a chance that your data will be made accessible to authorities. If that’s your concern, your best bet is to only use services which offer end-to-end encryption. If you’re more worried about being tracked or profiled by corporations, the good news is that most cloud storage and email providers besides Google don’t sell your data anyway.

As long as you’re using an encrypted service, the choice of provider comes down to price and preference. If you’ve got multiple Apple devices and/or a Windows computer, I’d go with iCloud+. If you use Android and/or Linux and don’t want to use the Google Suite, then I’d defer to the suggestions of others on this thread.

And to your point on Private Relay, this is true. It’s not a bona fide VPN, but it definitely gets the job done if you use it on Apple devices to mask system-wide DNS requests and hide traffic in Safari.