Your suggestion will result in a toxic workspace where anyone who does not like a product decision will simply say "Why do you want to hurt our users?", or even worse, "Why do you want to violate the law?"
Companies ask employees to refrain from discussing such stuff because most employees are not in a position to evaluate "Does this decision run afoul of antitrust laws?" (And maybe because they actually want to hide something, but in that case, we had better see actual evidences of the supposedly wrong behavior, instead of "Company X asked employees to avoid words that may cause expensive lawsuits.")
It's toxic for employees to say, "This is a bad thing we should explicitly avoid doing", and it's A-OK for employees to say, "Don't let anyone hear you say we are doing these bad things. If you must talk about these things, use different words, or you will draw critical attention to our behavior."?
Google: Don't use words that make it sound like we're doing illegal things, when taken out of context. If you have a genuine concern, talk to our legal department.
Your interpretation: "Don't let anyone hear you say we are doing these bad things."
I'd say I don't buy that. (Edit: sorry I worded by initial comment with too much snark. Speaking of toxic environment...)
For one thing, I could see the possibility that some part of Google may have engaged in unethical behavior. It might even have been at the C-level. It might have crossed the antitrust law, who knows. I have no idea.
On the other hand, I do believe that when Google was sending this message company-wide, pretty much everybody understood it as "Don't use these words because they can be taken out of context and then you're going to have a lot of pain," not "Don't use these words because then we cannot hide the unethical things we might be doing." I was there at Google.
I really believe that. From everything I've seen, Google consistently does the right thing with regards to avoiding search lock-in, and is substantially above the industry standard in doing so. Just try changing the default search engine in Chrome vs. Edge!
Companies ask employees to refrain from discussing such stuff because most employees are not in a position to evaluate "Does this decision run afoul of antitrust laws?" (And maybe because they actually want to hide something, but in that case, we had better see actual evidences of the supposedly wrong behavior, instead of "Company X asked employees to avoid words that may cause expensive lawsuits.")