> these large companies are basically utility companies

I could see the Internet itself being treated as a public utility (and US law already does this in some ways, for example by requiring ISPs to serve rural areas where there aren't enough users to make it profitable). But app stores are not. App stores are the way they are not because of any fundamental limitation of app distribution over the Internet, but because users have chosen that model. If developers want to "fix" that, they need to use their own market power to not use Google Play at all, so that users have to switch to a different model because there are no apps on Google Play. The government doesn't need to get involved in this.

> and wield a whole lot of power over people's lives and livelihoods

Google only has power over your livelihood as a developer if you let them. Which, as I've already commented upthread, is not a choice any sane developer should make given Google's track record. Developers should simply stop distributing apps through Google Play if they don't like Google's behavior. That's how a free market is supposed to work.

> we're not even talking about regulating people, we talk about regulating companies worth billions and sometimes even trillions, so I am a little less concerned about being "intrusive" there.

Regulating companies worth billions and trillions just makes it harder for companies that aren't worth billions and trillions to compete. It doesn't faze the companies that are worth billions and trillions; they just buy the regulations that favor them. Look up "regulatory capture". Governments can't effectively regulate companies of this size. But they can certainly regulate potential competitors to those companies out of existence.

> We do not have any of that when it comes to companies.

But you have something a lot more powerful: the ability to boycott. All those government avenues you describe are extremely weak, and continue to get weaker over time. The US Congress has approval ratings in the single digits and incumbent reelection rates above 90 percent. That's a huge sign that you can't fix whatever problem you want to fix using the government. Whereas in the free market, you can exercise your market power immediately by changing what transactions you do and do not choose to make.

> not everything the government does is always bad

The fact that the government does some good things does not mean government regulation is a good thing all things considered. And even with the "good" things you describe, you don't see their downsides. You don't see what the world would have been like if people had chosen to use free market power to regulate those things instead of the government.

> boycotts or protests, which hardly ever work

Protests hardly ever work because they don't change the company's bottom line. Boycotts can and do work because they do change the company's bottom line.

> a bunch of companies that are defacto governments

Companies only get such power if governments give it to them. Your example of the East India Company illustrates that. Without the special privileges given to them by the British government, they would have been powerless to do the things they did.

> I would consider a lot of the small time app developers to be essentially gig workers

For Google (or Apple if they develop iOS apps), yes. Why? Why are developers continuing to feed these monsters?