Can android collect info about wifi routers even if Google Play Service is disabled? Androids newer versions have changed the 'GPS' button into a 'Location' button which now offers 3 options for determining your position (recording wifi router information and comparing it to a google database, using the devices GPS, and doing both) each of those options prompt a disturing and annotying popup each time you turn the GPS on, "advising"/badgering the user into sharing his information with Google.

The only solution which was suggested to me for this popup problem (without installing any 3rd party apps or rooting the phone) involves disabling the Google Play Service- it worked great exept that it created something strange which I'm not sure about... If previously the user could choose which way of locating he wants and the device remembered it- now every time the GPS is turned on it is automaticlly goes into "local device&amp;wifi tracking" mode (the first option).

I want to know if a)Does the device indeed monitors that information (even if it can't send it anywhere with google services being disabled)? b) any way to stop it? c)can this default be changed so that only the local GPS chip will be used? 

Thank you very much!
Android collects information about WiFi routers through the normal course of WiFi operation. You cannot get around this fact if you want to use WiFi. During normal WiFi operation the device listens for management packets like beacons that are sent from WiFi access points, and this information, which is used to communicate with WiFi APs, can be used to estimate location with an appropriate database (Google, Apple, Skyhook, etc.). 

In some older versions of Android, it was actually possible to read the AP information with network permissions only and estimate the location using this information with a custom query to a database (not directly through Google's service). In more recent versions (maybe starting at 6?), I think this loophole has been fixed, so that the results of a wireless scan no longer give AP information that can be used to compute location. See https://stackoverflow.com/q/34957118/4107809. 

I don't know anything about the default settings.