That entire article is a mess. Reads like written by a first day intern or so. Doesn’t even mention why the headline says “but note that is not how Google works”, other than some very vague arm wavy stuff.

But you are right, both Google and Apple are currently trying to use privacy looking (kind of cargo culture) features to push competition out of the market. Google in the online advertisement market with their FloC stuff and Apple with their app permission transparency (which effects everyone but themselves). It’s a bit like what all large companies like to do: regulatory capture, just that they didn’t actually get the governments to write laws for them yet (GDPR aside, which is a mixed bag).