[zo1]

Whether Google owns it legally is irrelevant to the concerns people have regarding the control Google will have. ICANN won't revoke the license agreement if Google is "naughty" and decides to deregister some GoogleSucks.app or ControversialOpinion.app domains. This is Google, and not worth the effort for ICANN to even bother unless the above domains cause enough noise to rock the boat, which they won't. It'll probably be some conservative ("right wing propaganda") or misinformation or plausibly illegal type of domain that everyone will choose to ignore and dismiss for various reasons. End result of this is definitely more censorship.