And (more relevant to the discussion), you can actually disable access to individual permissions regardless of what the app requires (though on apps compiled against older sdks there's no guarantee that they won't crash, but I found that it's not an issue in practice and most apps work just fine even if you disable access to things they supposedly require).

That's true. However In Google defense, they tell you upfront what kind of interviews you're going to get and their process it's pretty well known anyway (with all its flaws). I went through the same pain myself a few years ago and I'm not disagreeing that the chap should have just got the job there, but their process is well known and perhaps he just had the wrong expectations.

As part of this, it can be useful to be able to specify where one would be willing to relocate. In my specific case, I'm not interested to moving to the USA, but UK would be fine. It also helps to frame the target compensation, since $60k are very different in the EU if compared to the Bay Area.