>Hate to be the one to defend Google here, but the reasons weren't that unreasonable.

Sounds like some kind of Stockholm syndrome. Years ago, it was standard practice for software to be designed so that users could grant permissions to access invasive methods or functions.

Google relies on users' personal data (ads), which is why they introduced a unique ID to their Chrome browser (to track).

When was that standard practice? Cause years ago (like 2000) I remember even trivial and simple software (WeatherBug) being able to read/write all over the computer (Windows). And some crap I just installed on Win11 can see all over the box, just slightly less.