Cannot speak for all the teams in Windows, but my team has used it successfully to improve the battery life of machines through A/B tests.
We're able to (on insiders builds) try out postponing various operations until the machine is plugged in to see how it effects the user experience and power draw. It helped us tune a few operations in ways I wouldn't have anticipated to improve battery life without degrading the experience
One of the other comments mentioned this but the blog will also highlight some of the more user visible tests that are run. Generally around optimizing UI flows for usability
If they put the database in their isolated storage then no. Apps are sandboxed to their own isolated storage folder and cannot get access to the other apps folder (the source of your pain)
We're able to (on insiders builds) try out postponing various operations until the machine is plugged in to see how it effects the user experience and power draw. It helped us tune a few operations in ways I wouldn't have anticipated to improve battery life without degrading the experience
One of the other comments mentioned this but the blog will also highlight some of the more user visible tests that are run. Generally around optimizing UI flows for usability