Yes, this one is especially annoying. I created an Android app for the Brookstone rover once, see https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.almende.ro... and I got some bad reviews for my app because people don't understand that they have to root their smartphone to enable ad-hoc capabilities. It doesn't only make Google look bad, it also reflects on others.
Well, that's kind of a minor feature and it's understandable that they might decide not to prioritize it. But there are many serious bugs out there that are being ignored.
It would also be trivial for them to ad, as several third-party builds support it and a couple patches have been offered over the years. It's almost certain there's a business/policy reason they don't want to support it.
Sharing a PC's wired connection via ad-hoc WiFi is still a pretty common use case. Mesh networking for communication in emergencies would be an awesome use case, but it depends on a lot of people using it for most of its benefit, and the installation procedure starts with "first, root your phone".
This is just official confirmation that they don't care -I wonder why they did it... if you want to be silent just keep doing what you've been doing so far: ignoring the reports.
Many developers know that many important bugs remain open after many months and Google doesn't care at all, but the average Joe has no idea.
The original title "Someone silently closed 37% (19/52) of Android bugs with 500+ stars on Dec 25th" is fairly accurate. Silently not only means without adding a comment, but also hoping no-one would notice which is why Christmas Day is chosen. It reminds me of a year ago, also under cover of Christmas Eve, when one of the 5 despots of Groovy, the programming language chosen by Google to power its Gradle-based Android builds, launched a weekly mailout newsletter from his own personal website, putting announcements there ahead of the community mailing list, and soliciting for subscribers in a clear attempt to take over.
edit. title has been fixed.