> Can't you just install this type of app to your phone or pc?

The people who make that app, and host the servers that run it, they often like to get paid.

Not necessarily by you. Maybe they'll get paid by Google in exchange to allowing Google to show you ads in their app.

Maybe they sell the app, then, yeah, they're paid by you. Maybe some other thing. Like doing some statistics with everyone's data and selling the results.

Either way, they're working for you, but you're also working for them, in your own way.

Me, I work for myself. That's just how I roll. That's just how many of us roll. We enjoy the idea of being unaffected when the companies that own our services decides to hike its prices up, or punish users with an ad blocker. We like the idea that we'd be unaffected by a nuclear strike on the Silicon Valley, God forbid. We'll be sad and all, but our apps will still run.

Paperless has improved my life by at least 12%. There's a "before paperless" era in my life when there was a 20-40% chance I would be able to find a sheet of printed paper that the bureaucracy of my country thought was more important than Life itself.

Now, it's a solid 100%.

Nextcloud has improved my life by 3% I'd say. It basically does the same as Google. But I fell 3% better overall to not be so incredibly dependent on Google. If google imploded today, I'd still feel it because of Google Play Services on Android. But that's pretty much the only thing.