Yet GDPR is also what ruins the web browsing experience with all those idiotic cookies notices. Legislating technical details like that is never a good idea.
The popups are there because companies would rather not comply with the GDPR and it gives them a thin veneer of justification which means they're not the lowest hanging fruit for the under resourced DPAs when it comes to enforcement. They've started slapping Google for the methods of gaining consent being BS and hopefully they start working their way down to list until enough others get the message.