I disagree with your statement "they don't put advertising". If I had a dollar for every pop up, email, and notification I got from Evernote encouraging me to upgrade to their Premium tier, I'd go out for a hella expensive dinner tonight. Sure they don't advertise for other services, but they pushed their own services so frequently that I don't know how you can't consider that advertising, in some sense. How unwelcoming it is to open an app that encourages me to pay everytime. It's a business model that clearly works, it's just not a very user friendly one.
Totally agree that OneNote lacks many, many features Evernote has. However, as I said in my post, the vast majority of people are not going to use 95% of those features, much less know they even exist. While there are many Premium users that surely enjoy the platform, I would be willing to bet the vast majority of Evernote's user base uses the app as nothing more than a Notes app with a few extra features over Apple's Notes, for example.
Also, while it is updated frequently, genuinely innovative features come across to the platform infrequently, and your point about "provides cloud storage and syncing" is something any modern technology company must offer to stay competitive. There are tons of 100% free cloud storage syncing platforms, such as Google Drive and Amazon Cloud. To position that as a feature that justifies the cost is also not a valid point considering the average file size of an Evernote's users typical note. Also, your point that they're not particularly sad to lose me is a valid one, but if they had that mentality for every lost non-premium user, they'd be in a poor position as a company. I can assure you that maintaining existing free users is a priority given every user is a potential marketing opportunity, especially considering how frequently they push their own premium services as mentioned above.
I don't doubt that Evernote is useful and worth the value to you! As well as many others. You've incorporated it into your workflow and it's probably invaluable to you at this point. However, I didn't use the majority of features that the service offered, and am much happier not giving MS a dime to use their very competent, comparable OneNote. I am big on customer service and doing the right things for customers, as so many of my favorite apps, services, and companies do (1Password, Apple, Lexus for example). But in this case, Evernote's overall approach, crappy move to force move users such as myself to Premium, combined with their questionable reliability mentioned in this article, make me every bit more satisfied with my decision to move away from the service for good.
