[RandallBrown]

This isn't a surprise. Google is a huge company with probably hundreds of teams working on these things. The fact that the privacy settings can be figured out at all is a bit of a miracle.

I doubt the privacy settings are "designed" as much as it is a bunch of disparate teams working on it together with maybe somebody coordinating it.

[robin_reala]

Sorry, that might be an explanation but it’s not an excuse. Privacy controls in a global organisation are a legal requirement for your software, and you don’t get to just haphazardly throw it together.

[sukilot]

It's a very recent requirement in a long established industry.

[ForHackernews]

Google is a trillion dollar company that employs some of the best software developers on earth. I have zero sympathy.

Sort your shit out or prepare to have hostile regulators take a bat to your business model.

[badRNG]

Considering both the wealth and caliber of engineering talent at Google, for this feature that has been at the center of attention for both regulators and the public to be as user hostile as it is, it certainly can lead a reasonable person to think that Google is intentionally misleading and confusing its users.

It seems the primary question worth considering now is what regulators are to do in response.