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Google of course would have known this UX was likely to be illegal but made the decision that any fine would be much less than the commercial benefit.

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It would be fascinating to see the design review document and resulting launch metrics for this. Somewhere deep in Google there is a written justification for the previous dark pattern.

If the people responsible for the decision listened to the lawyers, I doubt there will be any written notes on this...

Or they CC'd lawyers in all the discussions, ostensibly to receive legal review but actually so they could later try to hide those discussions from discovery under the pretext of it being privileged attorney-client communication.

"Google routinely hides emails from litigation by CCing attorneys, DOJ alleges" https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/google-routinely...

As soon as you add a third party as a carbon-copy recipient, you lose the privacy privilege of the attorney-client communication.

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