It actually took a second for me to understand you were talking about the article here, because Medium itself insists on serving me a mandatory popup explaining that I can create an account.

The "policy notifier" popup appears to have already existed as an internal tool. Google seemed unhappy with this specific message flowing through it.

Yes that tool was preexisting. But no, all other messages served by that tool are throttled, meaning if you visit an offending site several times, you get the pop up once. She overrode the throttle for her particular message. That turned her message from a gentle reminder to a nanny nag. It's a clear abuse.

That's helpful, and not mentioned in the various articles I've read.

That was literally her job. https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1207003914718998528

I don't think that really makes sense. If someone edited build tooling to print a labor notice after every compilation, "no it's my job to manage that build tool" would be a really dumb defense.

kccqzy was complaining about the mandatory popup.

If that is the case then that speaks to a whole different level of incompetence that there is not any kind of Change Control or approval at google

I wish they fired people for doing pop ups, that would be Nice.

And of course every time someone makes a suboptimal UI they should be fired.