>Apple went to the mat to protect its customers from the FBI. That earns ️<3 from me. Do I think Google would look out for me like that? Hahah, no, I do not think so.
They implemented countermeasures on their devices to prevent the exact situation where the FBI would compel them to produce a signed, backdoored, firmware like they wanted Apple to do after San Bernadino.
If this works as described and there are no tricks (such as Google changing your account password from their servers to a known password and then logging in), then that is a great step in the right direction.
A very important next step would be to make this a required feature for all handset developers who wish to use Google services such as the Play Store. As long as it's a niche feature only used on the Pixel, it's more of a good gesture than a substantive benefit for users.
They implemented countermeasures on their devices to prevent the exact situation where the FBI would compel them to produce a signed, backdoored, firmware like they wanted Apple to do after San Bernadino.
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/05/insider-at...
Unless you have the device's passcode, you can't update the firmware that deals with passcode checking, unless you wipe the data.