This is exactly how Google markets Drive. Go visit https://www.google.com/drive/ in a private browsing window and take a look for yourself.
> Your content is safe, private, and never used for ad personalization
> And Drive is cloud-native, which eliminates the need for local files and minimizes risk to your devices.
> Your important work, files, and precious memories are protected by our industry-leading security. You can rest easy knowing that the things you care about are stored safely in the cloud.
If Google markets a product in a specific way I don't think it's unreasonable to criticize Google when they fail to live up to that marketing.
Google does similar things with files stored in the corporate G-Drive product, which is supposed to be a replacement for on-premise file servers (i.e. there is likely no other copy of the data).
At a previous job, we had a forensic image of a compromised laptop stored in G-Drive. Google blocked access to it because of the malware on the disk. No "no, really, this is important and I need to download it, I acknowledge the risks" button, nothing. Good thing the person who uploaded it hadn't deleted the original copy yet.
Think of cloud accounts like any other form of backup. Two is one, one is none.
Hard drives die, cloud services come and go. No backup is forever.