I don't think anyone can give Google the benefit of doubt after Manifest v3, Privacy Sandbox/FLoC, Web Environment Integration, and Android developer verification etc, all of which faced strong opposition, some of which they abandoned. That's easily four just from the last few years. See the pattern? On the surface, they talk about security and privacy (and they do, to some extent), but at the core they will benefit Google's various businesses and their dominant positions while hurting the ecosystem and competition. Honestly I can't even think of another big tech that acts in such a bad faith.

Not to mention Google's history of pushing some non-standard behavior into Chrome single handedly to make it the de facto behavior, ignoring voices questioning the motivation, timeline and technical implementation. They are discussed here on HN and everywhere else and easy to find.

Coming back to this, my response is the same: the status quo works, why change it? Similar to how Mozilla responds to replacing user agent with "Hints API" nonsense. I don't want another way to get my location, because I already block all location requests. Google wants site owners to get location more easily out of unsuspecting users. I can't see how this is good for anyone but Google and its friends.

Unfortunately extending benefit of the doubt towards US tech companies is a luxury not everybody can or wants to afford. There is a clear pattern of enshittification of their products.

As you assume that GP has not read the post, how about you?

Because google clearly state that the "high denial rates" are a problem, but their framing of the issue is that the users have a "context gap" which needs to be fixed. Because they are convinced that even though users have decided against geolocation sharing with a specific website they want to get prompted about it over and over again as part of the organic interface of the website. And if they un-block it once over the new interface then the previous block will be forgotten and the permission will forever be granted.

A solution respecting their users would be to allow geolocation for duration of the browser tab, but that is clearly not in line with their data collection goals for their advertisers.

Critical thinking DOES suggest that Google have the means, motivation, and opportunity to nefarious things for profit.

Thinking that everything Google produces might not be positive is NOT jumping into conspiracy theories.