Having less options because one giant company ate up all the small companies is always bad for consumers. Competition is good for consumers. Monopolies are good for corporations.
This is competition. All the giants want to grow. That's the name of the game. Google is now said to be going against Amazon (and a ton of small e commerce startups) with their product search offering.
Yes, when it comes to booting rival apps off app stores and so forth, I agree, it's a problem. It should be looked at.
But developing copy cat products is unavoidable[0]. Let's say we ban big corps from doing this. Then you'll just see them funding it. This has been going on forever. Most of the time it's just knocking out an undercapitalized startup and actually bringing the product to a much bigger audience at a better price point. The consumer wins.
[0] where IP issues don't apply
There are many 3rd party app store intelligence products out there. And you can buy incredible datasets from some tracking companies. There are only as many popular things out there, have a hard time believing that they fundamentally wouldn't be able to do it without the more privileged access.
Wouldn't be surprised if they are actually using a ton of 3rd party data too, but only this kind of usage makes headlines as it seems "wrong".