The pain being made is: If you use a search engine as your eyes to see what exists “on the internet”, then, absolutely, whatever Google hides from its results or fails to index is “erased” from “your” experience of the internet.
(I dont agree to this but ...) using your argument of " If you use a X as your eyes to see what exists “on the internet” .. " - we should all be mad at Apple. I use iPhone as the primary device to access apps, and they not just hides but actively ban and cut whole swathes of developers.
If I ask Siri to give me a link to illegal streaming site and if it refuses, is that cause for concern? I'd say no. Infact, I dont expect it to give me that and I get it. Same for Google Search in my humble opinion.
Why would it be stronger? Google has a near-monopoly on search.
> If I ask Siri to give me a link to illegal streaming site and if it refuses, is that cause for concern?
Yes, because you cannot replace Siri on a device you own.
What does that mean? I use kagi, ddg etc. Nobody is forcing anyone to use Google.
Woudl you say HackerNews has a monopoly on tech chatter? Sure seems dominant, but nobody is forcing anyone to use HN. You can use lobsters, or reddit or whatever.
It means exactly that: it has near-monopoly on search. On mobile the situation is close to to complete monopoly.
> Woudl you say HackerNews has a monopoly on tech chatter? Sure seems dominant, but nobody is forcing anyone to use HN.
Google literally pays Apple $20 billion a year to force people to use Google only. But that is quite beside the point. The definition of monopoly does not include "forces you to use it".
Would you say HackerNews is a monopoly? Any activity that the user has a choice to use something else cannot be a monopoly.
> Google literally pays Apple $20 billion a year to force people to use Google only
Apple pays TSMC $XXX billion dollars to get preferential treatment, but that doesnt make TSMC a monopoly or even Apple a monopoly.
By all accounts Google Search is 85-90% of global search engine market share.
Chrome is "only" 70%.
Edit For anti-competitive purposes and anti-trust regulations the main word is market dominance.