{Google, Apple, Steam, etc} all do this with their walled gardens. It's sad, but it's not unique.
Perhaps if there were way to make the rules more programmatic and less ambiguous, these might be easier to resolve (like writing code to fulfill unit tests). But I suppose it probably still gets evaluated by humans on a subjective judgement, even if there is an objective rubric for most of the requirements.
Initially I was a fan of the curation approach, particularly for Apple and iOS since it was a new platform. Sadly, it's obvious that none of them can keep up with all the reasonable edge cases. Curation just doesn't scale and I don't see AI/ML or anything else closing the gap any time soon.
This happened to me as well, and my extension was quite popular and very lucrative.
What I ended up doing was uploading it to the store under a new category and hoped it would be reevaluated under different people or constraints and it worked. Has been up and running for over a year.
And this is why I stopped developing for Google's platforms. Extensions? Android? Forget it. Been abused by their rancid practices too many times, and heard too many similar horror stories. Not worth it.
Perhaps if there were way to make the rules more programmatic and less ambiguous, these might be easier to resolve (like writing code to fulfill unit tests). But I suppose it probably still gets evaluated by humans on a subjective judgement, even if there is an objective rubric for most of the requirements.