Not OP, but I completely agree with their statement that "it definitely significantly impacted the usability of the web."

As others have noted, a ton of sites seem to have just thrown the necessary JS on their site without actually seeing if they needed to, or if they did, if they could make minor changes that would remove the need.

From a usability/user experience perspective, now users have these popups displaying on some number of sites that they visit, often developed with the assumption that they will be accepted by the user.

Based upon some of the experiences I've had, I would say a number of teams neglect to properly test their sites as a user that has not accepted/dismissed the pop-up/overlay.

Serious question - why do people click on them? I simply ignore them and never say one way or the other whether I consent. It never causes me any problems, and I can honestly say that I never consented. Worst case there's 1-2 lines of text at the bottom of the window that have useless stuff in them instead of content. A minor annoyance compared to nav bars that randomly float in and out, email signups that popup after you've scrolled the first time, etc.