I suspect the reason has to do with nobody being willing to actually sue over this. For example, are you going to contact a lawyer and bring a lawsuit? Another

I suspect the reason has to do with nobody being willing to actually sue over this. For example, are you going to contact a lawyer and bring a lawsuit? Another reason is that laws are difficult to interpret. There are lots of laws, prior rulings, unintuitive concepts, etc. Presumably some lawyers at Washington Post and/or Google have at least signed off on rules that allow this kind of thing. That means there's probably some not obviously insane way to construe this as legal. Regardless of legality, it's certainly terrible performance from Google.