It seems really dumb of Google not to just go with the flow here and let the AppOps feature exist. Whack a giant disclaimer on it that it will break stuff, disable Play Store comments and ratings, let the users use it, and collect the giant PR dividend for looking like you care about privacy. They can do all that and lose virtually nothing because such a tiny percentage of people will ever use this feature that it will make no difference to them at all.
On the other hand they can go the other way and take a giant PR hit for virtually no benefit. Out of some sense of stubbornness or beligerance Google often seems to desire to shoot itself in the foot like this.