I think that in practice, that applies to only the privacy sensitive features. Would you be upset if suddenly they rolled out a feature that reduced battery consumption by 10%?
This particular case was obviously a bug, but I suppose every software manufacturer is continuously doing A/B testing, and 99% of time the user would not even notice. I would be surprised if Google was not doing A/B testing, and did not have the whole framework for doing it.
If they secretly installed it, of course I would be. It's not like this is the only way to deliver features...
On live (not beta), unsuspecting users, without their consent?
If you're talking about battery saving mode, I would be upset if they activated the feature (turning it on) without my consent, yes. I don't have issues with Google pushing improvement to their code via OS updates.
From my perspective there shouldn't be a problem for Apple to have the regular updates work as you describe. And also for them to have an alternative method they can use without any user intervention at all. (Which probably very seldom is used.)
> Did you even read the post? It was a bug... They do A/B testing and experiments all the time. What's up with hackernews and going full technopanic at the smallest most benign things. It's not like someone at Google hacked into your phone and turned battery saver off.
I'm sure he did read the post.
For Google to perform A/B experiments on a random person's phone, they'd have to remotely manipulate that person's phone, which means Google has control of it at all times. They shouldn't even have the capability to perform an A/B test. We're not talking about some webapp running on their servers.
Ever heard of remote lock down features?
Don't use a Google phone if you don't want to be the product. That simple. Why would anybody trust Google and the Android ecosystem with security in general?
Sent from my galaxy s9
anecdotal story with absolutely zero proof