Ars has an article that's basically just a summation of two other articles listing alternatives to various Google products and services.
I was hoping that the 207 comments meant that there would be people contributing more suggestions, but nope, today we got the Petty Snipey Nerd Ars Comments Section instead of the Helpful Knowledgeable Nerd Ars Comments Section.
I only ever used gmail as a forwarding destination for the E-Mail address that some of my disposable accounts are tied to, because at that time that address was stuck with a hosting provider that didn't support IMAP. Now that I've taken ownership of that domain myself, I use my own IMAP server and don't need gmail anymore.
I've been using owncloud for backups on my local network. Interface is fiddly but backend is solid and gives me something to do with my early-model Mac Mini.
Finding an alternative to Reader has been frustrating. I've gone with Tiny Tiny RSS. The official Android client (which costs money in the Play store but is free on F-Droid) is feature-complete enough that I don't miss NewsRob until it starts running balls-slow and then crashes, which only happens, you know, constantly.
And it seems that the only desktop Linux client for TTRSS is Liferea, which has at least tried to live up to its terrible name by being runny shit. Its level of sophistication has not quite reached the complexity of "display an apostrophe instead of ' in the subject line", "display post author", or "show categories associated with Tiny Tiny RSS feeds". (Though at least it still displays your feeds in the same order they appear in when they're categorized, so they ARE still sorted by category -- you just can't actually see any of the category names or divisions.)
I go back and forth on whether it's actually superior to just using TTRSS's Web interface or not. It's certainly faster, and it's got better hotkey support.