"It is magical because it continuously updates an entire development platform invisibly, frequently"

That "frequently" is every 30 minutes, by the way... I accidentally removed the goog updater from my Lil Snitch rules and noticed that it then started asking permission every 30 minutes, on the dot (I started recording the times for a while).

I don't know why it needs to check so often - except that that kind of data would be very useful for noting how often your users were on 'puters, and if they moved around etc.