Yes, our masters once again embarrass us unworthy peons with their endless grace, generosity and forebearance. How lucky we are to entrust our data and our lives to them!
It's easy to sneer at huge corps getting mildly scammed by people stretching or breaking the rules. Certainly I don't shed any tears for these corporations.
On the other hand, I have learned that people who are willing to find exploits with trust-based systems operated by huge corps are very often willing to apply that same cheating and exploitation mentality without regard for who the other party is. These are very often the same people who try to coerce teenage cashiers at locally owned shops to accept expired coupons or combine them in invalid ways, or take produce from a roadside farm stand instead of paying into the honor jar. The mentality of cheating the system seems great when it's against huge inhumane corporations, but from what I've personally seen it rarely stops there, and on the whole it contributes to a low trust society.
What upsets me is less the fraudsters, though they are bad as you outline, but just the setup.
Google is in unilateral control of a whole pile of things. Some of them are more critical than others - in particular, if you use a GMail address or Google account to identify yourself to third parties, Google has you by the balls. It has billions of people by the balls. At any time, they could completely ruin your digital life. They don't even need a reason. If they lock you out, you have no way to get their actual attention, or to reverse their decision.
That's coercive power. The need of Google "customers" to keep in Google's good books because it can ruin their day at the flick of a switch is a massive boon for Google.
The power of scammers to defraud local shops pales into insignificance by comparison. And yet, we spend disproportionate amounts of time going after petty crooks, rather than directly addressing large corporations who wield enormous power to enrich themselves with little-to-no blowback. They can pay for the best lawyers on the planet to stretch out and thwart lawsuits and regulatory meetings. They are more powerful than us, and we need to reverse that - unless basically we give up and let them rule us with unchecked power?
A society where everyone feels helpless against a tyrannical ruler is bad, so os one where they can't trust their neighbours. I don't know if they're comparable but I'd prefer neither. I'd like thieves and scammers prosecuted, I'd also like large corporations regulated to within an inch of their lives.
> our masters once again embarrass us unworthy peons with their endless grace
Masters who serve you in exchange for money?
be as sarcastic as you want but you demand a thing they did not agree to provide, for the same money = they have a right not to serve you. If you disagree with that and think they owe you something then you are the one playing master here.
Its not evil of Google to say "Here is an allotment of steeply discounted tokens, but you can only use them with our services."