I definitely trust Google's team (and large trillion dollar companies with sufficient resources to do this) to make reasonable choices for their users... said, perhaps, someone ever? Certainly not me.

(I wanted to write something far snarkier and sarcastic but getting annoyed at google is like getting annoyed at a lawnmower/Oracle. That plus HN guidelines.)

A tethered connection often just looks like a normal WiFi access point to the computer.

Nope! The Chrome updater on Windows 11 ignores the metered flag.