Why does Armory request outgoing connections to google.com and microsoft.com?

[pf]

On launch, Armory insists on outgoing internet connections to all kinds of dubious locations:

microsoft.com
google.com
plus.google.com
s3-1.amazonaws.com
<somelongstuff>.metric.gstatic.com
bitcoinarmory.com

This is not very trust-inspiring IMO. Should the "silent sentinel" of bitcoin security for billion dollar hedge funds really be requesting outgoing connections to Google and Microsoft?

And if I deny Armory access to all of these, it goes into "Offline" mode. Why? Wasn't the whole point that the only thing needed was Bitcoin Core running in the background? So why isn't it enough to just trust Bitcoin Core with outgoing network connections while keeping Armory barred from outgoing internet connections completely?

[Carlton Banks]

Old topic, but probably buried in the Armory Discussion thread.

The connections are pings, just to establish whether internet is available or not. You can turn it off in Settings. You could also edit the source code to ping different URL's, although there are licensing complications you should be aware of if you do edit the code.