MacOS – “DatabaseError: database disk image is malformed” error dialog when re-opening Google Drive after re-installation

I recently ran into this problem when doing desktop support for a user, and wanted to share the solution. They had deleted the Google Drive app and re-installed it, but then kept seeing this error dialog when they tried to open the re-installed app:

When I tried uninstalling it (i.e. by dragging it to the trash), I kept seeing another error dialog that said that the application was running (and therefore couldn't be moved to the trash), but the icon in the taskbar wasn't there. I tried searching for the process:

$ ps -ef | grep -i drive
  202  208    1  0  2:06pm ??        0:00.06 /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreAudio.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com.apple.audio.DriverHelper.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.audio.DriverHelper
  501  292  194  0  2:06pm ??        0:03.04 /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/Versions/40.0.2214.94/Google Chrome Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome Helper --type=gpu-process --channel=194.0.484367729 --supports-dual-gpus=false --gpu-driver-bug-workarounds=4,13,22,25,27,36,39,41,44,50 --disable-accelerated-video-decode --gpu-vendor-id=0x8086 --gpu-device-id=0x0a26 --gpu-driver-vendor --gpu-driver-version
  501  526    1  0  2:12pm ??        0:01.29 /Applications/Google Drive.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Drive
  501  588  537  0  2:15pm ttys000    0:00.00 grep -i drive

And was only able to kill its process with kill -9 (yes, I tried the other kills first…), after which I was able to move it to the trash.

I tried reinstalling it with a fresh installer from the Google Drive website but kept on running into the same issue.