Nice analogy but like all analogies, it's too simplistic and flawed. You left out one important and critical part: the hypothetical passenger in your example is tied to a specific plane/airline. If you don't like your pilot or plane type, you cannot move to a different airline or request a different plane or a different pilot since you're chained to the specific plane.
Due to Google App Engine's API lock-in, you're stuck with them as a provider... quite possibly forever due to heavy BigTable dependency.
Even though I'm a huge fan of cloud computing, I'd rather use a strategy that uses platforms/planes that are built from reusable parts and allow you to switch your plane/airline provider as you please. Don't like Delta? Just go to AA counter and you don't have to change your luggage, clothing etc.
Until there's a second, GAE-compatible, ISV provider that offers full compatibility with GAE, I'd avoid GAE like a plague.
As if they're not using the same techniques... The 'outrage' is probably just a façade. You can bet that they took notes and will be using some of the same strategies when they get back and start having meetings.
#1 will never work well for the simple fact that when people know that they are being asked to pick something without actually going through the mental process of evaluating options and picking a goal, they will not pick in a way that correlates with a larger population that doesn't know it's being tested.
The best way to test something is to try it on people that actually want something and voluntarily are picking something and going towards a goal... and don't know they're being tested. The proof is in the pudding: if the copy works better than a control, it should produce a sale/signup/whatever.
Asking a bunch of people who are working for pennies if they want to buy some product that they have no clue about and are not in the market for, based on a copy they don't even understand well, is a waste of money and would even do you some damage since your customers might be more sophisticated.
Now, if you positioned it for simple, general websites, it might work better. But then again, those sites are not high paying customers.
About 3 months ago, I needed >50Gb of data uploaded to AWS and I asked a friend of mine who works at Amazon for help. He asked around and told me to mail the external storage to Amazon with keys/bucket info and a special code. I UPSed the stuff and within 2 days of arrival, I received an email with a notification that the transfer was done. Later on, I got the storage back. Everything worked as advertised!
I guess there's so much demand for this sneakernet that they made an official service. I wonder how many other people asked for transfer help before today's announcement...
What boggles my mind is that they didn't care at all about the user experience when they introduced this monstrosity. Not seeing URLs when browsing Digg completely destroyed my user experience.
I'm guessing more and more people will log out and browse it that way.
It's very simple: Google update takes away control from users. This is absolutely the wrong way to handle this.
Say I'm at a coffee shop with wi-fi or using my notebook through a cellular 3G/EDGE network and this update starts downloading a large Google Earth update that I never asked for. Why should I be paying for the charges because Google wants to update their software without telling me?
Another issue is versioning. If I'm working in one version of the software and don't want to use the newer version until others thoroughly test it and fix the critical bugs, why should i be forced to upgrade? I've used a lot of newer versions of software and many were actually worse than their older versions. Again, why should they force users to upgrade? Why not ask?
This Google Update is bad news all around. It installed itself like a virus rootkit on my machine with Google Earth installation and I was never notified (yeah, a note is probably buried deep in a TOC somewhere). Luckily, LittleSnitch told me about it and I removed it from the Launch Daemons... and I also removed Google Earth because of it.
Finally, why should Google get updates about my location at all times? Every time this thing pings their server, my IP is inevitably transmitted to them.
Sparkle does this perfectly. You can completely disable update checking or allow it to check on periodic intervals. And when it finds an update, it informs you with an update window and shows you exactly why it is updating and what was fixed and what more you get. This Ohama thing gives you none of these options and it also runs at all times like a virus.
If MS did this, people would be all over MS. But when Google does it, people defend them.
Any software that adopts this Omaha crap will be blocked from my machine as well.
Omaha checks for updates in the background, when it won't interfere with the user, even if an application isn't running.
They do the same thing on a Mac and this is why I've blocked it and removed the daemon. Google's explanation for doing it is complete BS. They should do what every other app does: check for updates when you start the app.