I'm glad someone is trying to doing something hard that will benefit people. We need more companies that want to do the hard thing, not the easy profitable thing.
Telemetry would allow them to make their product better for more people and know where to invest to benefit their users more. In this case proitability is proxy for how much value people get from the proxy. The thought that something is bad because it is profitable is misguided.
Telemetry is a cheaper solution to hiring quality assurance. Many will feel sharing their usage details to increase profits is acceptance and others might feel this free product isn't so free anymore.
No, collecting information on how many times someone types the sequence "abcd" is a waste of resources. Figuring out what telemetry will be useful and understanding the privacy implications is important.
>Telemetry is a cheaper solution to hiring quality assurance.
These are not comparable. Telemetry is about understanding how the product is operating. QA is about testing the product.
The main downside is the extra work and cost of getting it all set up, properly cleaning up unneeded telemetry, and making sure telemetry itself doesn't cause performance issues.
>No concept of misleading info or bad product development direction from using it?
Telemetry doesn't replace a strong protect sense, but without telemetry you are flying blind.