I assume Google accesses the clipboard to see if there's an address in there and search for it. Whether that's a good use case or not is up for debate.

Personally I was surprised to learn that apps could read directly from the clipboard at all. I would've thought that was purely managed by the system and not given to the app until actually pasted.

Why not just have granular “clipboard” permission that could be granted or denied per-app?

Personally, I like the ease-of-use I get out of google maps grabbing addresses from my clipboard. Not everyone would like it though, and that is ok. They could decline the permission request.

But I don’t want other random apps being able to grab that info without permission.