You'd think that would force them to make the third party app experience as good as the first party app experience. Instead, they did the opposite...
Seems like this is a signal that they in fact take the privacy concerns seriously?
If they took the privacy concerns seriously it wouldn't take anti-trust pressure for this to happen.
If you have a weather app, is asking you every week whether you want it to access your location improving privacy?
Providing you with a routine notice that applications are repeatedly tracking your location is improving your privacy. If the legal requirement is 1st party applications don’t get special treatment, then yes asking you for the weather app too as opposed to just not asking for any apps is improving your security.