Years ago, when I perhaps more naively believed in the benevolence of Google, and that wisdom of the Elder True Nerds who worked there would lead us to The Future, I might have applauded them throwing their weight around doing something like that. Possibly with a condescending paternalistic attitude like, "dragging the unwashed masses kicking and screaming into the the future they're too stupid to realize just yet that this will be better for them."
I am no longer so young and naive. Now, there is no doubt in my mind that such a move by Google or the other tech giants would not be made out of benevolence, but because by doing so, somehow, would net them yet greater control over the flow of information across the world. Whether out of an authoritarian desire architect society the right way this time, or chasing their profit margin as far down the asymptote as they can measure, the resultant 1st through Nth order effects would probably be the same for the rest of us.
Control is one argument, but I'd go with the money argument:
All the big cloud providers like Google and AWS as well as the small ones like Hetzner do have an incentive to keep IPv4 going as long as possible. They can charge a premium for things IPv4 "because addresses are scarce". Charging a premium means more profit margin.
At the same time, they do not need to invest in more than lip service for IPv6 support in their offerings: No cloud provider has any comprehensive IPv6 offering, most services don't do IPv6. The edge ones maybe do, but there are always sharp edges, missing docs and general pain, pushing everyone back to IPv4 where the profits are.
I am no longer so young and naive. Now, there is no doubt in my mind that such a move by Google or the other tech giants would not be made out of benevolence, but because by doing so, somehow, would net them yet greater control over the flow of information across the world. Whether out of an authoritarian desire architect society the right way this time, or chasing their profit margin as far down the asymptote as they can measure, the resultant 1st through Nth order effects would probably be the same for the rest of us.