Comments that say "this is not a surprise" have a strong subtext of "I told you so" and "I knew this all along, but you didn't", whether the author realizes it or not.

They're usually made so the authors feel better about themselves, but they have a very negative effect on the rest of the community reading them as it gives them a sense of powerlessness.

I always try to counteract such comments with 2 arguments:

1) it may not be news to you, but it's probably news for a lot of other people. Most people have their own real-world issues to think about, they don't wonder about for hours every day on what Google may be doing against them while utilizing Google's services. Most people are trusting and think company X (or their government) "wouldn't do evil thing Y" to them. Of course, they're usually wrong. Company X/government would absolutely do that evil thing Y to them if they are not vigilant or it benefits them monetarily or otherwise.

2) Something is still news if it happens again or it gets escalated to a higher degree of aggressiveness from that company X/government. Should we all hear about something evil Google has done once and be done with it? Then make our choice whether or not to trust them and use their services forever? Of course not. These things need a "build-up" period before a decision is made. This is why the expression "breaking the camel's back" exists, and it's what happened now with Chrome 69 and these new issues coming up. It's only now that people have said "Okay, are you f-king serious now, Google?! I've let your shit slide in the past, but no longer!"

> We should still call it out each and every time we see it, even if we are repeating ourselves.

Seems like the right response would be to stop using the problem products. If you think you can't afford to, I hope you like Google. This is in no way surprising.