Back when I purchased the Droid X, before I was even allowed to touch the phone while it was running, the sales agent at the Verizon corporate store took the phone back and installed Advanced Task Killer. I was told it "needed to be running at all times" because Android didn't run well with lots of tasks. Within a couple of hours that app was uninstalled.
This time around with the Galaxy Nexus the phone was completely clean and the Verizon staff installed nothing. In fact, other than pressing the power button they did nothing with the phone. I had it from the moment the boot screen started up, and did the full activation process myself. I am much happier going through all of this myself and not having the 3rd party crud added before I have a way to see what the stock OS looks and feels like.