> stop using long, verbose titles
This is good advice, but if Google wants to penalize bad titles it should dock their rank, not misreport them.
It is, but what would you do if all titles across pages just said "ACME Corp."? That happens often if the developer just displays SITE_NAME in the title.
In those cases it makes sense to present the person searching the web with additional information from a H1 tag which probably has more information like "Contact us"
Ideally, Google tells me what the page actually contains. I.e. if you title the page “Top TVs of 2022” and you’re reviewing cars, then it titles it appropriately. Google can’t do that right now, but every step closer is a good thing for me.
As I see it, Google's in a prime position to algorithmically reward actual users for better HTML discipline by ranking them above users who can't be bothered.
[a]: “easily” because they already have logic to determine something needs rewriting
As for what search engines should do with page titles, it's really up to the individual search engine, I'd say. Whatever serves their users best.