> Here's the thing, Google doesn't have the authority to dictate what software you run on your computer.
No, but it can dictate what plugins are available in _their_ store for _their_ browser. Just use Firefox or manually install the plugins. They aren't stopping you completely, but when you're in their ecosystem you play by their rules.
> App Store, Chrome, Adwords, all need to be separated into unrelated companies to eliminate the blatant conflict of interest
Absolutely, and there are other competitors in this space. Google is too big at this point to spin those off.
> As an aside, this is evidence that advertising is dead.
It's not dead because there's no real valid alternative for the everyday website. A lot of users don't want to pay to browse your website past paying their ISP, and mining cryptocurrency isn't an option either. There was a project a little while back called F-U, Pay Me! by Datajoy (https://datajoy.us/fupm.html) that I wrote about that was a worthy replacement, but needs more traction to really take off.
> Thanks to AdNauseum and any similar forks, no corporation in the world, no matter how large or wealthy, can guarantee that their advertising model is honest or functional.
This is where advertising falls apart and it all becomes valueless, which I think is more destructive overall. Google offers a pretty good way of monetizing a website while they help themselves to analytics and a portion of the revenue. Google's AdSense getting shut down would mean (likely, speculation here) a lot of smaller hobby websites being killed off, and larger ones forced to gate access with a paywall. Ultimately, we need a DNS-based tip jar system, but that requires adoption. It's not impossible to run a website if you have a job, but if that website _is_ your job, you're out of luck.