Why did we go from owning the software we run and being able to just modify things as we see fit to "You have to give Google a lot of money so you can have your own font in your own presentation"?
You can still pay Microsoft money to get a desktop copy of Powerpoint, which will use your system fonts. Using google docs is entirely self-inflicted
Granted, you now need to pay Microsoft a monthly fee for Powerpoint instead of a one-time-fee. But that is in large part because too many people preferred Google Docs, so Microsoft tried to become more like them
You can still pay Microsoft a one-time-fee instead of a yearly one. You can even go to a physical store and get a physical box with Office (granted, it doesn't contain anything inside it anymore )
I'm going to go the unpopular route and ask, how mission-critical are fonts, really? Protected fonts such as these can't be mission-critical, legally, right?
Never felt myself lacking for fonts in Docs, myself. Quite the opposite, Google Fonts has way more than I'd ever have preinstalled and is now my primary avenue for typeface discovery.
You'd be hesitant to trust a brand if it can't keep consistent styling. Branding helps users identify a brand and believe it or not the aesthetics of a brand make a great deal of impact on consumers.
As others have said, your point comes across as "let's remove design who cares" because design and human computer interaction roles stopped where your understanding ends. Everything looks the same to you after all (it doesn't, you just haven't noticed it affecting your decision making).
The analogies with physical businesses never make sense. Running an application on your own computer is nothing like eating at a restaurant. Just because the software is obtained from a server somewhere doesn't mean it's like going to a physical place to eat. Browsing to www.company.com is not akin to walking into a company's physical store. You're not "there." There is no "there."
Most people decided that convenience was better than freedom and self-determination.
If people want the freedom to use their own fonts in their own presentation, and don't want to pay handsomely for the privilege, LibreOffice is freely downloadable. But they don't want to use that for some reason.
Granted, you now need to pay Microsoft a monthly fee for Powerpoint instead of a one-time-fee. But that is in large part because too many people preferred Google Docs, so Microsoft tried to become more like them