Oh, to be clear: Google will absolutely provide you a phone if you choose not to do this to your personal device.

... but if you're SRE oncall, you'll probably have that phone on you (or at least within hearing distance) at all times when you're on shift. I'd assumed the relevant issue was having a tracking device on your person your employer can access, not whether the employer was footing the bill for the tracking device they encourage you to have on your person.

Again anecdotally: most employees I know just set it up on their personal device. It's more convenient than carrying two devices around when one knows one'll be carrying a smartphone anyway.

I was slightly more alarmed by the "nuke from orbit" than the tracking, though they're both troubling enough. Not that I'm in much danger of working for Google anyway.

Probably worth noting that given the Cloud nature of almost all the Google apps, the opsec model here is that the phone is discardable. Your photos are backed up to Photos. Your mail is mirrored on Gmail. All your docs are in Drive. Your contacts are in Contacts. And so on.

You don't have precious, irretrievable data on that device anyway, because it's a phone (as in, "There's nothing Google's gonna do to your phone that wouldn't happen to it if you dropped it in a toilet, probably don't keep the only copy of your baby's first words on something that fragile").

yes. beyond tracking there is also a spy app on your phone that can likely access personal data.

So, a separate device would save your from that part, at least.