Our best hope is kicking up a huge fuss so legislators and media will notice, so Google will be under pressure. It won't make them cancel the feature but don't forget to remember that they aren't above anti-trust law. There is a significant chance that some competition authority will step in if the issue doesn't die down. Our job is to make sure it won't be forgotten really quickly.
I also think web developers getting together like we did with SOPA/PIPA and raising awareness on our web properties can also help. How do we organize that?
Talked to a few friends inside Google as well and they are also against it.
Firefox is going to be my default moving forward.
There is no reason or way to discuss it with technical merits anyway. Nobody can create a new issue on that repo, nor can they create a PR. Comments on reviews are also disabled.
Many of us are at technical spots that can do this. We need to bring back "Works best with Mozilla Firefox" pop-overs.