> I do think it's likely more passive than active. People at Google aren't deviously plotting to hide buttons from the user.

This is important, thank you for mentioning it: actions have consequences besides those that motivated the action. I don't like when people say "<actor> did <action>, and it leads to this nefarious outcome, therefore look how evil <actor> must be". Yes, there is always a chance that <actor> really is a scheming, cartoonish villain who intended that outcome all along. But how likely is it that <actor> is just naive, or careless, or overly optimistic?

Of course, the truth is almost certainly somewhere in the middle: familiarity with a hard-to-learn UI as a point of friction that promotes lock-in may not be a goal, but when it manifests, it doesn't hurt the business, so no one does anything about it. Does that mean the designers should be called out for it? If the effect is damaging enough to the collective interest, then maybe yes. But we needn't assume nefarious intentions to do so.

Then again, everyone thinks their own actions are justified within their own value system, and corporate values do tend toward the common denominator (usually involving profit-making). Maybe the world just has way more cartoonish villains than I give it credit for.