It’s a thing born in google. It shows. The reasoning behind problems and solutions is so abstract that makes for a beautiful paper or a nightmarish reality. In the ‘80s there was a little known machine, called the Commodore Amiga. Paths were addressed by a volume:folder/file schema. Apps had logical volumes too (progdir:) and the os injected others (env: temp: fonts: ..) guess what? Just use that schema and control what an app can access or not. If you don’t give me a volume for a disk, I cannot make my way to it if it’s not collated into a mountpoint thing
Now checking my android phone, main screen just there on the top ... oh hey google in a multicolor G ...
yes they both qualify as adaware. The difference seems that the Apple approach is at least context-aware. You don't get random ads or suggestions system-wide. You get ... newspaper ads in the newspaper app, or music ads in the music app.
I honestly wish we had the same on the android front. Google is decidedly much more invasive these days