Lots of people who have taken to the internet at large may not understand the root cause of why, but they do know Google's reputation for killing projects and enshittification. That discussion is happening everywhere. And you should also note that a lot of the early adopters of Google Now and Google Assistant (including the hardware) are tech enthusiasts who absolutely did have the realization at one point or another about how these companies were essentially rifling through their emails and other information they were collecting in order to provide such detailed information. There were multiple articles about it (from outlets and blogs that these kinds of people follow). Perhaps once Google assistant became more mainstream (where people were more likely to pick up assistant enabled devices and such in Target or the like), those people didn't realize. But they still see the enshittification.