Surely this is a singular experience you had and not the commonality you're implying it to be?
> 9. Market Lane Coffee: Queen Victoria Market
> The only milk baristas serve is full fat cow’s milk, the coffee only comes in one size, you have to put your own lid on your takeaway, a cappuccino or latte costs $4.80, and there is always, always a line. The seasonal blend offers a full-bodied, hazelnut-heavy cup with apple undertones.[1]
That is not the one I remember it happening at, but it serves to illustrate. The other thing that used to happen sometimes is "We only use full-fat milk". I hadn't remembered that until I tried finding a reference for the cup sizes.
[1]: https://www.timeout.com/melbourne/restaurants/the-best-coffe...
If they want to run their businesses like that, that's fine. No objection. I'm sure they'll find plenty of customers. It might even be me depending on how desperate I am. But it's accepting that it's not going to work for a segment of their potential market.
Another example is cash-only/card-only, the former of which I now find much more obnoxious. That's a decision they're allowed to take, but it removes a segment of customers (it's different to the "Google knowing better" in the original post). I will likely not go back to a place that's cash only, because I don't usually carry cash any more.
Depending on the country you can walk into an office supply store and walk out with a cheap terminal (Square, SumUp, etc) that will allow you to take payments so it's nowhere near the "6 weeks wait and a merchant bank account" that it was when card payments were in their early years. Which means it's just lazy. It's lazy and it's pushing that laziness onto your customers, who have to go to the ATM.
Disclaimer: This varies country to country. In germany it's much more common to have to pay cash, because they have some long term, anti-tracking hang-up that go back to the cold war (at least that's my understanding).
Is this really "knowing better"? I mean, if you want a bigger coffee, and are taking your own cup: just ask them for two, and put it in the same cup.
The card issue has another aspect you're not considering: credit card networks charge fees. There is no inherent fee to accept cash.
At which point I would walk out and go to another cafe. The same experience, "I want coffee in a certain way", "we know better than you and will only serve you coffee how we like to make coffee"