When Ford announced that starting in 2023 its cars and trucks would come with Google Maps, Assistant and Play Store preinstalled, CEO Jim Farley called the partnership between his iconic U.S. automaker and the search giant a chance to "reinvent" the automobile — making it an office-on-wheels, with more connectivity than any phone or laptop.

"We were spending hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions every year, keeping up with basically a generic experience that was not competitive to your cellphone," Farley crowed on CNBC, announcing the six-year deal with the tech giant.

The deal gave Ford some much-needed cachet and Google a chance to showcase its products for millions of drivers and their passengers. But many tech-industry watchdogs looked at the Ford-Google car of the future with different eyes. They fear that tech companies will soon be doing to cars what they did to phones: Tying their exclusive operating systems to specific products to force out competitors and dominate a huge swath of the global economy.