Fair, although I know quite a few people that hold both of these opinions simultaneously because I've met them in person. It's only after I point out their hypocrisy do they even realize what a danger Cloudflare poses to the free and open internet.
I suspect it's because hating on Google is in vogue, and so is recommending Cloudflare.
I'm going to try to provide / justify my potentially hypocritical viewpoint:
I use Cloudflare (free tier) in front of the very few and almost entirely unused websites that I run. I believe that the service they provide is useful for protecting the IP addresses of the servers on which the content is hosted, whilst also providing some amount of protection from malicious traffic.
I also agree that centralisation of services is a big problem for the future of the internet.
My position is that, whilst there seem to be increasing voices / examples of Cloudflare's (potential in) acting against the nebulous notion of "spirit of the internet", for me they certainly haven't reached the "evil" stage. I'm also of the understanding that it's Cloudflare customers that choose to block access from Tor or VPS IP address ranges and / or add Captcha's or other bothersome verification. True Cloudflare enable it and make it possible, but the administrators of the website that you're trying to visit have made the choice to make it more difficult for you to access their content; not Cloudflare themselves.
I would prefer there to be similar-scale alternatives to Cloudflare as a kind of a middle-ground decentralisation of centralisation. I'm sure there are alternatives, but I'm not yet motivated enough to even consider starting the research process.
If Cloudflare start selling visitor analytics to data brokers, however, very fast goodbye.
I suspect it's because hating on Google is in vogue, and so is recommending Cloudflare.