Let's be clear about this ..
we WILL removed it in Peppermint because any data from Peppermint would not necessarily be useful to Ubuntu, and because
we have no interest in or need for the data ourselves.
That said I think people are seriously overreacting about this .. they're NOT collecting "usage" data beyond which apps are installed which they could already monitor (in a less accurate way) if they wished by simply counting what is downloaded from launchpad, as Arch/Mint/Debian/etc. could also do and probably do do do do.
People are saying daft things like "it's the beginning of a slippery slope" and "it's just like Microsoft".. erm, they are giving ALL privacy conscious types a clear single click option to disable it. They are NOT collecting user identifiable data beyond that which is impossible not to (what I mean by this is even now every time you download an update or software your IP is theoretically available to them as it would be to Arch/Debian/etc., but they don't AFAIK do anything with it) .. they are NOT logging keystrokes, or reading your user files.
When they
don't tell you, don't give you the option to disable, and collect data on what you actually do on your computer I'll moan too .. but they'd never survive that because it couldn't be hidden (benefits of open source, and the paranoia levels of those that use it).
This info will allow them to target limited resources, it will allow them useful (but anonymous) stats with which to attract developers or prove things to third parties such as nVidia and possible give them leverage to make them sit up and take notice, it will tell app devs if their software is buggy, it will give other devs an idea about which apps they could attempt to 'squeeze out' with better software ..
it is NOT spying on you any more than McDonald's are spying on you because they know which burger and drinks to reorder (or not) because they anonymously counted sales (and complaints).
(okay maybe not a great analogy with what's happening with KFC ATM .. how the heck did KFC run out of chicken?, you'd think it's a pretty integral part of their business model

)
[EDIT]
Crash report metrics have always been collected by Ubuntu's apport (as they are by KDE and others crash reporters) and published .. the only real difference is they're now asking you ONCE if you want to take part in bug triage instead of every time an app crashes.
https://errors.ubuntu.com/I have no doubt the data is very useful for identifying problems that need attention and giving us a better experience (not to mention spotting apps that may be doing something they shouldn't) .. how else would they get that info ?
Sidenote - Good god according to apport gnome-software is buggy as heck, and has been forever

Again Peppermint does NOT ship with apport, this was (and remains) a decision about ISO size not because of privacy concerns .. and obviously because Peppermint doesn't crash in the first place right ?
