I think an interesting side of this conversation is how the Google employees are jumping in with DARVO attacks, trying to accuse people of spreading misinformation when they're literally quoting the ToS.

This is something I've seen happen a lot with Google- their employees (especially the director+ folks) are absolutely rabid on social media when it comes to defending their products, and they don't let little things like "facts" get in the way.

Google needs to get a better social media policy because they look like clowns when they do this.

Googlers expect the consumers of their products to be Googlers who can just read up on the internal info or ping someone etc

they don't understand the concept of external users being a thing

that's the impression I've gotten

There have been cases in which friends or family of Google employees have gotten the Google Death Penalty. In those cases they were internally stonewalled about this for weeks. Google's risk department works like secret police[0] and I would not be surprised if there is internal disinformation about what the policies actually are in there too.

Also keep in mind nobody reads the TOS. The TOS is pure Wilhoitism: it exists to protect Google and bind you. There is plenty of shit that gets put in there that Google never intends to do to 90%+ of their customers, but they have to reserve the right to do this anyway. You can infer the general shape of business policy from the the TOS but not the exact details.

The only people who actually know anything about Google's business policies are the people in the risk department doing enforcement. The CxO level might have be consulted about specific policies, but a lot of stuff isn't going to rise to their level until it blows up and becomes a PR disaster.

[0] I call this the "Maoists in the Risk Department": in general, there is a tendency of all businesses to independently reinvent Maoism when enforcing rules with their customers. You actively discourage "edge-touching" behavior from your customers by making the rules murky and incomprehensible.