Hilton had made getting Gold pretty easy even 20 years ago. But riding the hotel program was less common for hotel guests as the proportion of hotel guests signed up for the loyalty program was much much lower then than it has come to be in the years since.
As and with the death of the 100k-150k points for a 6-night award stay basically anywhere in the portfolio (as a Silver, Gold or Diamond), so with the more rapid disappearance of US Hilton lounges. Once a hotel chain jumps onto one big cost-cutting approach for the benefit of the hotel owners and/or itself, additional cost-cuts tend to more quickly follow and hit the hotel guests.
Hilton further cutting costs of the Gold and Diamond breakfast benefit in at least some market(s) is probably not out of the picture. One way to pull that off would be for Hilton to follow in the footsteps of Hyatt and Marriott in making a new status tier arrangement to replace the existing one and adjust the benefits matrix (to cut the proportion of hotel guests who are eligible for a hotel breakfast benefit on the bass of loyalty program status). It’s a cost-cutting approach used before by travel service provider loyalty programs and likely to be repeated in some way by the very Hilton that gives away Diamond status for qualified credit card holders.