> because Google is getting better and better at compromising privacy, thanks to fancy designs/dark patterns
You're suggesting that the situation is getting worse, which I don't really see much clues from the linked report, though I don't want to spend my weekend on scrutinizing 44 pages report. I don't work for Maps, but AFAIK it used to track you silently and didn't give you control on user history. But now at least it tries to get a consent (even though it's admittedly just a nominal action) and give you some amount of control on your data, which is better than typical web practice on average. Can you explain why this should be considered as going toward "dark patterns"? All those works were strongly pushed by Privacy team. I don't expect you to praise their works, but you still don't have to use that level of derogatory words as well.
I don't necessarily deny that Google's previous (and probably current) business practice has been done in a quite privacy-invasive way. That needs to be corrected. But there's much more things to be considered as well, which slows down the pace for a good reason. So the best thing Google can do is improving the situation carefully rather than breaking everything by changing the fundamental at once.
Let me give you a super simplified example of ads; which privacy invasive practice has gone too far. But it's also true that this has powered the web ecosystem for a decade. Any kind of significant updates would lead to direct revenue impacts on not only Google but publishers and advertisers. This is real existential threats to them; surprisingly many publishers and creators solely depends on ads revenue. There are also indirect impacts on users via garbage ads and more pay-walled contents. Of course, I know what would typical HN user's answer be; "I would rather choose garbage ads than tracking and I will pay money!" But the history shows that most of attempts to prove this kind of people are significant has miserably failed (except very few examples, such as NYT) including Google's own.
BTW, one irrelevant stuff; is there anyone who have a concrete, feasible business proposal to materialize this no-ads-willing-to-pay demands into the reality? Then try a business and be the next Google/Facebook/Amazon. I'm serious. I always have been thinking about a way to do this so the web can run without ads, but because of Dunning-Kruger effect, I'm getting less and less confident about this idea :)