The UK has left the EU on paper, but during the transition-period, laws will grossly stay the same as before. If there was no compelling reason, Google could just wait and see what kind of legislation the UK would adopt and take action on that. Given the current political climate in the UK, it won't take many years to define their new direction.

But by this premature decision, Google is silently acknowledging that the GDPR is hurting its ability to monetize its British userbase. They probably calculated that the costs associated with abiding by the GDPR is higher than the costs associated with the risk that the UK government will actively uphold the GDPR during the transition.

UK government will actively uphold the GDPR during the transition.

and of course if the UK govt does not persue google over this, given that it is newsworthy and everyone (who matters) will know about it ... then surely everyone else can ignore the rules too ... claiming that if google did it publically and here was no action then surely it's ok for everyone!

I just think this is the wrong move by Google: We should be given greater privacy, not less.

Added, If this turns out to be happening.

When I went to YouTube yesterday (and today) I got the following banner at the bottom of the (mobile) page:

From 31 March 2020, YouTube services in the UK will be provided by Google LLC

With a ‘learn more’ link to Terms of Service [youtube.com]

I’ve also heard from several people they’ve received a similar notice regarding that and other Google services via email.

So, while the UKs ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) is saying that the GDPR will stand through at least the end of the year, Google is pulling UK user data out of Ireland (EU) by end next month.

Once again, popcorn time!

Interesting that G's notification system on this is flawed. I run a small mail server for my clients which traps spam according to a variety of paramaters, including header authentication and blacklisting. I trapped one today with the subject of "Learn more about our updated Terms of Service". It had good DMARC and DKIM but they were outweighed by...

In-body URI: "Try it" URI, suspicious hostname
HTML included in message BODY
SPF Permanent Error
Received IP in backscatterer

Probably won't see many more: most of my clients shy away from G.

Google is sending these updates to the Terms of Service worldwide. I recently received a few for my Kazakhstan based assets. Interestingly though, Kazakhstan is still governed by Google Ireland Ltd while at the same time, the UK which is legally still adhering to EU rules is governed by Google LLC in the US. Go figure...

ut during the transition-period, laws will grossly stay the same as before. If there was no compelling reason, Google could just wait and see

... and let a business opportunity go by?

This falls into the "just do it---and ask permission later" category.