They create things for the 99.9999% that don't care about privacy and will never touch those settings. When you leave that massive group, that's when bugs will be way more common.
We could argue that they intentionally only care about UX when you give them your data but then again that's capitalism, right?
They might have to give you choice to turn those things off, but nobody can force them to give you the same experience. Imagine any executive saying he will focus on giving a great experience for the users that they can't make money out of. He'll be out of a job very quickly.
It's stupid to make such a wild proclamation, that, for example, only 70 odd people in the whole of the UK care.
For Google it's millions or 10s of millions of their consumers.
Isn't that basically what GDPR says? You have to be able to opt out of anything, without breaking things except when absolutely necessary.
To me it feels like they're deliberately making it painful when you minimise what you share with them.