In a corporatist society, there is no difference between government power and corporate power. By the same token, corporate attempts to censor are equivalent to government attempts to censor. (But, only the latter are officially forbidden by the First Amendment.)
every cloud, has a dark lining...
Google. Isn’t it just a front organization for the NSA/CIA?
As a company their search is good, better than the competition when it is not being manipulated by Google. However, their other software is junk. Google sheets - horrible spreadsheet. Lotus 123 and Quattro Pro were better 20 years ago. Excel and OpenSource spreadsheets are vastly better. Google maps and waze - the maps are great, Waze user reporting is super, but the navigation software is junk. No waypoint management, no route storing, cannot solve the salesman route, cannot make a route with more than 10 stops in Maps and 1 in Waze. Goodness, Garmin had those solved well more than a decade ago, and Google does not even make an attempt to improve their software.
Info on searches could be use for industrial espionage. Patent and NIH literature searches for example.
If they're going to lie to us why wouldn't they just deny they're collecting data at all?