well, i guess this email constitutes "affirmative, express consent" unless user clicks on opt-out. at least this is conclusion of google legal department.
Express means they have to specifically consent and can't be implied to consent or consent passively somehow.[2]
This is neither affirmative nor express consent. Also notice that literally nothing that Google (or any company) can do gives affirmative, express consent from the user. The user themselves has to do something for Google to obtain that consent - that's literally the whole point of the wording of "affirmative, express".
I'd be very surprised if google's legal thinks this is actually consent or ok. I think most likely they said it probably wouldn't stand up to challenge and the McKinsey types who run google decided they probably wouldn't be challenged and it was worth the risk.
[1] https://iapp.org/resources/article/consent-2/
[2] https://www.wilsonlaw.com/blog/difference-between-express-an...
many of (ex)googler posts mention that legal needs to sign off on everything and looped into everything and they find it frustrating and slowing things down
change of such proportions can't be executed without involvement of multiple legal departments that both approved this decision and scrutinized every letter of this letter.
edit: from cpni itself " Use of opt-out and opt-in approval processes. A telecommunications carrier may, subject to opt-out approval or opt-in approval, use its customer's individually identifiable CPNI for the purpose of marketing communications-related services to that customer. A telecommunications carrier may, subject to opt-out approval or opt-in approval, disclose its customer's individually identifiable CPNI, for the purpose of marketing communications-related services to that customer, to its agents and its affiliates that provide communications-related services. A telecommunications carrier may also permit such persons or entities to obtain access to such CPNI for such purposes."
or in general 64.2007 and 64.2008 describe that it's ok
No. That would be (by definition) negative, implicit consent.
Federal law specifically demands "affirmative, express" consent.
I can't see any way this is "opt-in".
i guess google legal decided that this is about "reasonable" effort and given that this email sent from google it's above reasonable that it's past spam filter and sufficiently reasonable effort in general.