It's hard to tell exactly how long the iOS app has been available, but I found version 7.x of the Android app all the way back in 2015 on APKmirror (it's archive only goes back so far). So presumably the mobile app strategy has been around a long time.
How is that "terribly abusive"? People are getting paid to participate, to me that seems like a higher level of informed consent and more ethical than other forms of user tracking.
I believe the parent was referring to Google having "abused" Apple's Enterprise Cert program - which is the central crux of both this article and the majority of commentary here on HN.
I don't think so, the article linked talks about the other ways the program worked. That specific one refers to the free router they would send users. That has nothing to do with Apple whatsoever.
It's hard to tell exactly how long the iOS app has been available, but I found version 7.x of the Android app all the way back in 2015 on APKmirror (it's archive only goes back so far). So presumably the mobile app strategy has been around a long time.