I know this is not the same thing, but my example is meant to highlight the logical fallacy.
As to your second question, I end up on AMP pages by following links shared with me.
To say nothing of websites’ Google Analytics suites phoning home your whereabouts.
No it isn't. I live in the Netherlands and I can choose from 13 different ISP's on fiber alone. Add to that cable (Ziggo) and another dozen or so ISP's on DSL.
Not sure where you live in NL but in most places there is a LOT of choice. Even my parents who live in the middle of nowhere have several options including cable and fiber.
I'm a big "ISP enthusiast", so it pains me to see that in my home country, Serbia, Telekom Srbija owns EVERY SINGLE phone line in the country, so any and all DSL goes through them.
You can buy DSL from someone else, but it stills goes through their infrastructure, the "virtual" ISP just buys DSL access from Telekom.
Not even actual line access, just routing. You still HAVE to pay for a LANDLINE to Telekom directly, which is 5€ per month.
All other ISPs are either mobile broadband, WISP, or one single CDMA ISP that offers 128/32 Kbps Internet.
Cable ISPs have hidden non-compete contracts so if you have SBB (owned by United Group), you don't have Radijus Vektor, Kopernikus, Masko, etc., because of the non-compete.
By the way, main 2 plays on fixed broadband access are Telekom Srbija (Supernova, which owns almost all cable providers that aren't owned by SBB, mts (for ADSL and fiber)) and United Group (SBB and Beogrid, and others via Cable).
Orion Telekom does fiber in a few % of apartment buildings in Belgrade and Novi Sad, Exe Net in Niš and Leskovac, and that is basically it.
DSL is mostly up to 10/1 Mbps, a number of lucky people have 20/4 Mbps (upload is usually cut back to 2 Mbps) with VDSL, and a really tiny percentage have 50/8 Mbps VDSL and an even smaller number of people have 100+ Mbps with FTTH.
Mobile broadband is limited to up to 200 GB with Vip mobile, and that is a fixed wireless package which is limited to one location. Their speeds are terrible in most urban areas, and it's mostly 800 MHz with 15 MHz channel in rural areas. 4G+ is rare.
WISP (Fixed wireless over 802.11n or ac standard) is apsolutely atrocious, as is everywhere else in the world, with speeds reaching up to 20 Mbps except on dedicated links, mostly 10/2 Mbps for most users.
CDMA deserves no mention, being literally unusuable, and only marginally better than dial-up.
Fiber is extremely rare. Speeds are good, the most affordable ISP is Orion Telekom, but if you want TV, their TV offer is very poor (slow and low quality rebranded wholesale Android STB with a really bad Wowza headend which is overloaded and has poor bitrate leading to abysmal picture quality).
Given that Fiber is not available to most people, DSL being slow and unreliable (up to 10 Mbps), CDMA useless, mobile broadband expensive and limited (often not available due to overloading of cell towers), the only actual posibility for (good) Internet for most people is Cable. And that is a shared medium that is oversold and bundled with CATV.
Although for both countries I now just use mobile data. Depends on your usage, but for me (dev, netflix, youtube) it is more than enough. I have an unlimited EU package stuck on a SIM which I put in a Glocalme. Works well.
Unless you mean western Germany I recommend you pay more attention to the news.
1. It is nearly impossible to "choose to just no use Google". Tell me how long you can go without getting through reCaptcha or AMP for example (with AMP, often you don't even realise you're using it).
2. From what I hear, it seems that in the US many ISPs operate mostly in a situation of monopoly but this is rare in many other countries (with the exception of remote/rural areas). I know it's just anecdotal but I used to move frequently for work and I lived in many different countries in Europe/Asia/South America/Oceania and it never happened that I couldn't choose from at least a couple different broadband providers, except in one single case (village in a rural area in a South East Asian country).