Facing the problem of hard forks by simply ignoring it is... brave, I guess?
I would not agree to this point. I can see it as a democratic option and people can decide where to put their money depending on their fork preferences.
There's a difference between hard forks as a democratic option (see blocksize debate) and chain splits as a regular occurance. A blockchain that hard forks regularly without internal consistency becomes unreliable as users end up on different forks and transactions get "lost" due to users following different chains.
Centralized it is, then.
It may defined as Centralized, but it will guarantee that blockchain is running smooth and with the same features as any other in the ecosystem.
GBBs are unfortunately never explained, neither in their whitepaper, nor on their website.
I'm going out on a limb here, but I assume it's something you'd have to purchase from GeeqCorp? If so, that means: First you buy a genesis block, then you buy consensus access? Is that what it would look like if EA created a cryptocurrency?
I want to see more on GBBs as well. I don't think that you have to purchase something but maybe you have to gain access to that somehow and It could be limited to a specific number of users.
Why use a blockchain then? If the network is centralized and permissioned one might as well just the classical banking system and the likes of VISA and PayPal. Same difference.