You criticized the analogy and ignored the entire rest of the text which made my point entirely clear. Why do people do this?
OK, fine, here's another analogy: "I'm going to be leaving in 10 minutes, so if you have any questions, you'd better ask them now." The thing being "threatened" here is entirely in the speaker's control β he could opt not to leave. So is that an ultimatum? I don't think it would generally be viewed that way. Why? Because there is no threat being used as leverage to get something β the speaker (i.e. Google) isn't really making demands here, but rather stating what it's going to do. The thing being "threatened" will happen regardless; this is just an advisement that it will happen so that you can respond accordingly.
Put another way, the "threat" component of an ultimatum can't be unconditional. It is conditioned on noncompliance. AFAIK that's the defining characteristic of an ultimatum. It is possible to read this as being a conditioned threat, but it seems entirely reasonable to me to read it more in the spirit of "I'm going to do something, so here's your chance to get ready." It's entirely possible that Google doesn't care if it receives any further input (which is theoretically the "demand" in this ultimatum).
What's being threatened is that something will be shipped and frozen without review, input, or comment, if comment isn't made immediately - not that something is going to be shipped.
OK, fine, here's another analogy: "I'm going to be leaving in 10 minutes, so if you have any questions, you'd better ask them now." The thing being "threatened" here is entirely in the speaker's control β he could opt not to leave. So is that an ultimatum? I don't think it would generally be viewed that way. Why? Because there is no threat being used as leverage to get something β the speaker (i.e. Google) isn't really making demands here, but rather stating what it's going to do. The thing being "threatened" will happen regardless; this is just an advisement that it will happen so that you can respond accordingly.
Put another way, the "threat" component of an ultimatum can't be unconditional. It is conditioned on noncompliance. AFAIK that's the defining characteristic of an ultimatum. It is possible to read this as being a conditioned threat, but it seems entirely reasonable to me to read it more in the spirit of "I'm going to do something, so here's your chance to get ready." It's entirely possible that Google doesn't care if it receives any further input (which is theoretically the "demand" in this ultimatum).