This is sort of a shit opinion, IMO. Why should a company have to change the rules to pay me when I am not working on their time?

Keeping people productive on companies time is not a “status quo” it’s working on working time. If these employees had just protested after their shifts Google could have probably still and would have more than likely fired them either way but the point is that it wouldn’t have been on their time giving them less grounds to do so.