As much as most users hate centralisation, it's the hardware not the pools that is the cause. CPU -> GPU -> FPGA -> ASIC as we moved down the line the more centralisation occurred.
And that's not true either. The most centralised it ever was (after becoming more than just a fringe between a handful of people) was when the deepbit pool had about 50% of the network hashrate which was in the GPU (and a lesser extent still CPU) days. Assuming all pools are actually discrete entities at the moment and not just one bigger entity masquerading as multiple entities, it is actually more distributed now than it was in the GPU days. It is not the hardware, nor is it the mining algorithm, it's the fact that pooled mining can (and will) occur. There is talk of ways around it, but I've yet to see a concrete way to make it truly impossible to pool proof of work.
Not sure if I'm not 'getting it' or we are on about different things, but when I say centralisation I mean the number of individual users (as a percentage of hashrate). It's decentralised by the fact that there are many more machines sure, it's also decentralised as there are more individual users than before, but the current top 10 pools which are the bulk of the hashrate are mainly private.As the technology has moved on so has the ability for groups to control greater percentages, even with and I suppose despite of an increase in users.
