I can't speak for anyone else, but I know when we've talked to real lawyers about T&Cs for online B2C services (based in England) their view was similar to the judge's comments in this case. In short, if your terms are fair and reasonable then it's a binding agreement and it is likely to be upheld by a court in the event of a dispute. However, if you have an unusual or potentially surprising term then it is more likely to stand up if it's prominently disclosed near the start of the terms, and less likely to stand up if it's buried deep inside. For example, in the terms for a service that was doing something new with a certain technology, we included a short but realistic note about certain known limitations of that technology prominently and early. As an aside, the same legal advice recommended writing in plain English rather than legalese as much as possible.

This is the norm in the EU. Surprising clauses or those that put the customer at a disadvantage are void, and there is lots of leeway for a judge to put clauses in either of these buckets.

Yeah they basically optimize for it. No matter how well-designed the rest of the site is, the TOS will be in some nearly unusable format in an ugly font and capital letters. It's like they all hired lawyers who told them, "well, that's technically informing them, right?"