Calling Play Services an "app" doesn't really tell the whole story. For starters, it
has an insane amount of permissions. It's basically a system-level process, and
if the above list isn't enough for whatever it needs to do next, it can actually
give itself more permissions without the user's consent. Play Services
constantly runs in the background of every Android phone, and nearly every
Google app relies on it to function. It's updatable, but it doesn't update through
the Play Store like every other app. It has its own silent, automatic update
mechanism that the user has no control over. In fact, most of the time the user
never even knows an update has happened. The reason for the complete and
absolute power this app has is simple: Google Play Services is Google's new
platform.
