You're right. Google probably wouldn't build an outright illegal feature. However Google would and has built features that are at the very least in legal grey areas/haven't been explicitly regulated. Thing like the WiFi tracking feature, bypassing safari's cookie restrictions, tracking android users' location even when they opted out of that or had their GPS feature turned off, and so on.
They did and will do that again because they know whenever they get caught they have to pay several million dollars at most after years of such violations and then they can be on their way to rinse and repeat with something else like that.
Google was fined billions for outright illegal practices and is mostly concerned about power, not illegality.
Furthermore, in hierarchical structures people only care what those above them think. "Illegality" of the feature is something for lawyers, not them. At best they rely on morals, but even that is screwed by perks, incentives, the environment they work in, peer pressure, management, corporate propaganda, etc. Generally in such structures you can make people do anything, even kill other people and be ready to get killed.
I dont think Google was fined billions over privacy violations, just antitrust ones and only in the EU. In the US Eric Schmidt's constant lobbying to Obama got them off the hook for the antitrust investigation even though the FTC staff investigating their violations recommended antitrust action against Google.
They did and will do that again because they know whenever they get caught they have to pay several million dollars at most after years of such violations and then they can be on their way to rinse and repeat with something else like that.