Typing ten extra characters is an investment that pays off vs the overhead of doing any piece of work in the future. There's no real downside here, it doesn't make the code more complex, it gives less surprising results.
I think you are conflating YAGNI and premature optimisation and neither apply in this case.
It's not that it must be registered (incorporated) in Germany. It's that for tax purposes if the company is run from Germany it will be considered "permanently established" and treated as resident there. Permanent establishment laws are often quite surprising to people doing business across different territories.
> If I've got a long, random, unique, securely-stored password, I don't actually care about having a second factor
I'm not comfortable with my entire online identity being protected by a single line of defence which is a company that I'm paying a few dollars a month to. Not having to type 6 digits off a phone is a pretty minor convenience for me.
I'm more than happy to pay for DRM free epubs. I won't pay for a crippled rental of a book that only works on amazon or adobe blessed devices and can be confiscated on the whim of a corporation who won't be answerable for it.
We are talking about an extremely powerful corporation in an antitrust case not a person. It does not need to be defended in this way, which is a level of protection rarely afforded to individuals.
There is a definite public interest in understanding how Google conducts itself given the reach and impact it has.
There is no way for the public to have confidence in the trial process if it is conducted in secret, and given the outcome every reason to question the process.
I'm surprised anybody objective would defend this.
There's very little reason that Google should have been protected from the evidence of its wrongdoing being made public. That's not extrajudicial punishment, that is public record. Justice should be seen to be done as well as done.
Who can know how appropriate or not the remedy was when the evidence is hidden?
For full disclosure: I'm neither a google employee nor a US citizen.