Agree and disagree: the pressure on unity worked, and Sonos and, IIRC on Google's "federated cohorts" idea.
But often people try to project their opinions onto "the people" and predict they will rise up, and there's probably 100 predictions in comment sections that are completely spurious to every one that actually happens
So I'm not sure, but if I had to guess this one is a rare case where there may be real prospect of backlash.
If enough people internal at Google get pissed off and raise this up enough it can legitimately get rolled back.
They will just get sacked for sycophants either here or abroad. For every principled worker there is, there is another person willing to eschew those principles for that paycheck. This is a desperate world by design to enable these tradeoffs by the very people who build, maintain, deploy, and ultimately control the worlds systems.
A better world is possible. Rise up, workers! You have nothing to lose but your chains!
and your salary
If you're in a product-adjacent role at Google there's a 100 other companies that would hire you. Yes, even in this market.
You mean the people actively building this system? I have to assume it's decently far along for them to make this announcement.
This is political fantasy. There is no mechanism for "the people" to force anyone to roll this back. They can vote for the candidate owned by google, or the candidate owned by google. If they want to find another candidate, they'll have to use google to find one.