Thought experiment: Google controls 90% of the search market, the 10% (or 1%, whatever) they don't serve being made up of people who are oppressed in some way by the 90%, deliberately or otherwise.
Google censors information relating to that 10% for everyone else. They don't care enough to switch.
Centralization is an issue _a priori_. It's giving power to a single entity that we have no reason to trust will act in everyone's best interests.
Google Search is a consumer focused product, if they don't serve up the stuff that the users want - they loose viewers. No viewers - no revenue. Their bottom line depends on giving each person the best search results possible.
Pretending that they'll just decide to cut off even 1% of users is insane.
No. You're assuming that a particular sort of imaginary market dynamic overrides any and every other motivation anyone might have. That is nonsense.
If they can make 2% more by selling out half their users and giving them inferior results to serve the interests of somebody or something willing to pay Google money to screw over the users, they will do that without an instant of hesitation, in the absence of oversight. They are in an absence of oversight.
You are wildly in error to believe that people magically can tell they're not being harmed. People absolutely have no idea whether they are being 'given the best' anything possible, much less something like search results (or information in general).
It is highly profitable to screw over mass audiences for one's own benefit and there's largely no mechanism to prevent this… again, in the absence of oversight.
The citizens get to decide what their best collective interests are. They do that by, among other things, electing representatives that appoint officials to anti-trust committees.
Google censors information relating to that 10% for everyone else. They don't care enough to switch.
Centralization is an issue _a priori_. It's giving power to a single entity that we have no reason to trust will act in everyone's best interests.