When you have 1 billion users, I think it's easy to say that "most of them are better off" with whatever, because there's no possible way that you'll ever have a majority of your 1bn users arguing for or against anything. This is why watchdog organizations exist, and why they're so important.

Doing the "right thing" for 99% of your users isn't actually the right thing if it does harm to your most vulnerable users.

But aren't the most vulnerable users the one who actually aren't tech savvy? And, arguably this change may actually make things simpler for them.

I imagine the internal mailing lists are going to be a fun read the next few days. I was on similar mailing lists in Nokia when the iphone launched. I'll spare you the details but Nokia suffered from a similarly bad case of confirmation bias and it was decision making based on that in the years before and after that ultimately led to them getting out of the phone business entirely a mere 7 years after being the dominant market leader (and not by any small margin). Confirmation bias kills companies.

Anyone from Google/alphabet still capable of making a difference reading this, here's some free advice: sort out your management ASAP. This is one of those issues that stems from a lack of leadership. Heads need to roll, especially the ones doing too much nodding. I'd start at the top. I've had my doubts about the current CEO for a while. Too invisible and stuff like this keeps happening on his watch. Also the product portfolio seems a mess lately. There's something wrong there and current leadership is part of the problem.