But the bigger point is why are they even sniffing UA strings? Google, who advocates for everybody else that you should use standards and proper feature detect

But the bigger point is why are they even sniffing UA strings? Google, who advocates for everybody else that you should use standards and proper feature detection, still relies on UA whitelists for their own products. Then look at google.com homepage itself... not responsive, not in any way modern... many of their own sites perform terribly by their own guidance to other devs. Google's hypocrisy is sickening and I'm tired of their "we own the web, do what we say" attitude.