I understand your point a lot better now, thank you. And I like the 'public cars / roads' example and have possibly used it myself in discussions about cryptography and government backdoors etc.

Respectfully, however, I still disagree in this case, although I'm struggling how to articulate why - beyond admitting it could just be my bias against advertising.

My best attempt at articulation is:

Google have built a private road over the top of the public road, that is then spilling sewage and toxic materials onto the public road. Google's private road purely serves to profit Google. There's no public good it is serving, not like a public road or electricity infrastructure.

In writing that, yes, it's a government policy / legislation / regulation failure. But also, Google should be doing better. However, as WorldMaker said above, their brand seems somewhat confusingly, unaffected, so Google has incentive to do better than bottom-of-the-barrel.

As such I can't lay no blame, or anything less than majority blame, at Google's feet. Yes, government's around the world should be doing better at containing the spilling of toxic waste into public spaces that Google both facilitates and turns a blind eye to. Google are too profitable to fail since they can buy the continued regulation vacuum.

I'm not sure how far that went off the rails, I may have just continued ranting a bit there.

Thank you for your replies, though, I do see it from a slightly different angle.