The feature seems to be designed to give employees at stores selling Pixel phones and other models deep access to the devices for demonstration purposes, as per researchers at iVerify who shared their findings with The Washington Post.

This discovery, coupled with Google's lack of explanation, has alarmed the intelligence contractor and data analysis platform vendor Palantir Technologies to the extent that it has ceased issuing Android phones to employees.

Palantir Chief Information Security Officer Dane Stuckey said: "Mobile security is a very real concern for us, given where we're operating and who we're serving.”

"This was very deleterious of trust, to have third-party, unvetted insecure software on it. We have no idea how it got there, so we decided to effectively ban Androids internally."

The security company contacted Google about its findings more than 90 days ago, but the tech giant has not indicated whether it would remove or fix the application.

On Wednesday night, Google said it would issue an update to remove the application.

"Out of an abundance of precaution, we will be removing this from all supported in-market Pixel devices with an upcoming Pixel software update," said company spokesperson Ed Fernandez.

He added that distributors of other Android phones would also be notified.