Ok, cognitive biases can be very subtle. So I hope you see that it's not paranoia to believe Google has power per the results reportedd in the OP. The data measured should be easy to replicate.

Anyway, the way I see it there's several angles explaining where anti Google sentiments come from. Here's my thoughts for your consideration.

One very fundamental is anti-capitalism via distrust of pseudo monopolies. With AMZ for example a lot of discussion around book publishing is topical.

Another has to do with hacker / cyberpunk counter culture - it somewhat ties into the above (cyberpunk is punk) but augmented by the relevance of information, the power of data and such jazz. These are areas where Google and AMZ have relevant technologies, and the context of potential invasion of privacy, big brother, etc... is relevant to these corps specifically. You see how this angle this ties into GOG culture yes? :) Microsoft is another corp that's a frequent target.

Finaly on the ideological front, Google's motto specifically is something like "Do no evil", which brings into contrast for anyone considering the meta level, what exactly they mean with that? Their definition of evil might be biased towards some side in the broader cultural wars context. Twitter is another tech company where this third angle is very topical.

I think those tree cover most of the levers bringing strong emotional reactions. And note that just because any of these is emotional, does not mean it is irrational. It can be both or not.

Finally, a more personal level might be at play, which I noticed a lot regarding HP and the lady running for president. That is that some people were fired from these companies, and just have a personal animus informing their views on them. Usually these personal angles connect to some of the above, for example with anti-outsourcing sentiments being very related to anti-capitalism via anti-globalization. Or the concerns about conditions of labor in Amazon warehouses also another example.

All my examples were in the tech field. But one can look farther depending on angle being explored.

Oh I have no doubt they could, I just wonder why people feel they would. Although in this case I can at least see that there would be benefits to Google to do so, which isn't always true when people bring up things like this.

Thank you :)

About what I'd thought then. I'm a bit back and forth on these things, I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft (and particularly all the recent additions in Windows 10) for most of the reasons you list above, but for some reason I don't find Google to be a problem (though I can see why others might). Maybe I've just bought into them, but I find that they (generally, there have been some failures too) have improved a lot of things they have gotten involved with (Searching, email, smart phones, maps, browsers and all their other various apps; though I know many would disagree) and that I do trust them to be a force for 'good' as it were.
That being said I would hope I'm smart enough to realise that if the search results I'm getting don't add up or give a full picture I would check my facts elsewhere and would avoid any of the potential issues mentioned in the article as I don't have any kind of blind faith in Google.