But Google's core business is surveillance. Implementing it server-side could make it available as a GSuite feature. Bonus points for passing it through an opaque ML step for plausible deniability. "The 'culture fit' 'algorithm' determined that you hurt team cohesion".

Making it a prod ready feature would take weeks, a pile of money, and dozens of staff who may object and are in a position to do something about it.

Making a single use extension takes an hour or three by a contractor who won't object. Its trivial enough that the whole thing could be built using a bottom of the barrel freelancer site with a high success rate.

Yeah, and Eric Schmidt could have simply taken a digital camera into a public restroom, snapped some pictures over the stall walls, and been satiated. Yet here we are.