My solution was to use both - they behave a bit differently and I figure it can't hurt to get two sets of backups (I do also get iCloud for free though).

Google photos is definitely easier to export and backup to my windows PC although Apple does provide a half decent iCloud client now for windows. It's a bit janky and took awhile for me to get a proper pipeline (you can accidently delete your cloud copy by doing the wrong thing).

One thing I really miss about Android was the ability to just plug in via USB-C to any computer and backup all the photos (and then remove them from the local phone). Google Photos would retain its full quality copy this way and I would free up phone space and have a full quality copy on my local machine (plus local external drive). Try this on an iPhone and it's slow as hell (even though it has USB-C), often fails partway through a large copy, and when you delete the photos locally I believe iCloud deletes their copy as well (even if you have plenty of cloud storage). I understand it's a "sync" tool technically but there's really no reason for it to be restricted in this way.