Companies made cookie banners as obnoxious as possible, because they knew that by making people hate the banners, the population would turn against the GDRP
The original claim was that the compliance was done for malicious reasons to change the law. Another possibility is that lawyers are a cautious bunch and advise their clients to take a less risky option when implementing a legal requirement. From personal experience, I would saw that latter is much more likely and would also explain why government agencies interpret these rules the same way when developing their websites.
