IMO they attack on all fronts, the one both me and you mentioned included.

Gmail is pretty much a standard right now (even if there's no public technical standard involved; only Google's apps can communicate with Gmail). That's monopoly dressed as "new technology".

In the meantime the pressure in the EU is mounting between the both camps of the encrypted messaging ecosystem.

So yeah, both things are happening in parallel.

> PiHole could be trivially sidestepped by hardcoding the DNS server and then encrypting DNS in the name of security (Didn't some Androids have Google hardcoded?). Android/iOS could allow some apps to ignore VPNs (this already happened with some Apple software).

Yeah, you're sadly correct. I dread the day when this will start becoming the norm. But it's also true that many common citizens can stop using service X or Y and it would cost them nearly nothing (with some prominent exceptions like Gmail or Whatsapp).

I think big tech will attack that way once they start to feel threatened enough by competing innovation, or they can't hang on to their advantage through softer means

Right now big tech just acquire all threats. If anti-trust starts to get more teeth, and shifts towards regulating scale and power more directly with less focus on ham-handedly trying to regulate specific outcomes based on political fashion or poor analysis of feasibility or second-order effects then we will likely see the lawyers come out in force. Which is okay if we can find the right political leader, because the facts on the ground for small business is hanging right there for a savvy leader to craft a killer narrative. The problem is democrats have completely lost the thread on what benefits real people, and the republicans are still hungover from an era where facts were meaningless so they really have no platform or principles at all anymore. I do have hope that a grassroots leader can emerge though.