The permissions don’t differentiate, which is why an honest privacy policy is important. If they have access to the contacts but the policy states that they do

The permissions don’t differentiate, which is why an honest privacy policy is important. If they have access to the contacts but the policy states that they do not transmit, store, or process the contacts on their servers I can feel safer. It appears to me that Google is asking companies to lie about their policies or otherwise make it their policy to retain contact data on their servers. The only reason I can see for this is to make Google seem less bad when it comes to privacy compared to other companies because they can point to all these other companies you’re giving permission to store data with.