Just because you can collect the data, doesn't mean you are allowed to. In countries with other definitions of privacy it can be considered a reasonable expectation the your AP's SSID is only visible to people within a small radius. The owners clearly didn't have the intention to have it collected by a major corporation, collated with other data about their location and then published world wide for entirely different purposes then for which the AP was set up.
In many countries, the law protects people against those kind of unintended consequences, and several European authorities have made it clear that they consider this kind of use an invasion of privacy. And that is considered more important than multinational giant's ability to offer an "effective" service.
You can argue the merits of this, but Google's stance of "just fucking opt-out then" is blatantly disrespectful.