I didn't read Google's terms of service to read that they only hand off data for specific processing. They hand it off to affiliates for any reason. Or to 3rd parties for processing (e.g. payments).
I think the topic is correct. Google publicly says, "If you want to keep something secret, do not share it with us." Apple says, "we don't share with 3rd parties."
Apple does not share your documents, spreadsheets, emails, and so on, that are stored in iCloud. What they might share is your credit card information with visa so they can bill you for the music files you just bought.
EDIT: Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, declared: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines—including Google—do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."
In its 2007 Consultation Report, Privacy International ranked Google as "Hostile to Privacy", its lowest rating on their report, making Google the only company in the list to receive that ranking.
At the Techonomy conference in 2010, Eric Schmidt predicted that "true transparency and no anonymity" is the way forward for the internet: "In a world of asynchronous threats it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it." He also said that "If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use artificial intelligence, we can predict where you are going to go. Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don't have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You've got Facebook photos!"