Google sets the default on things like the Drive for Desktop app to "streaming". It literally removes the original version of the file from your computer and puts it solely in the cloud. This is an advertised feature.

Google tells the customers not to worry. It is not the customer's fault for not knowing better when the companies that sell this shit tell them, routinely, "Just put it in the cloud, my man. We got this, s'all good bro."

Consumers should be better educated and more aware, it's true. It's not news that there's a lack of widespread tech literacy and awareness of best practices among average people.

But that's in part because companies don't tell them the truth. They mislead, lie, and omit. They seek to make the user trust them so they stay as customers. Google can't make such service that advertises itself as set it and forget it and not be held to blame when their customers find out their promises were shit.

But people being people, even if this is fixed there are always going to be people that swear it's not. Because they are either crazy, vengeful, or because they truly Believe a file should be there (even if they are simply misremembering/wrong). At some point a company has to move towards and nip the complaints in the bud because there is always a subset of people that will continue to bitch about it forever.

Ah yes, the classic presumption it's always user error and "vengeful complainers" right around the point where the dev gets tired of trying to help.