Note that this is 4 months later. That's about as quick as things like this can be done in a big organisation like Google where the decision has to go via policy, legal, engineering, translation, etc.

I believe that Google's goal is to show regulators that Apple has market power. The easiest way to demonstrate that is to follow what they do and make it look like they are in control. The reason I believe this is that it is uncharacteristic of Google to blatantly copy something like this over the years, yet it is clear they are fast following all of Apple's decisions around the app store. I would expect Google to try and differentiate and come out with a new, competitive way to make the developer ecosystem happy.