As is their wont*, Alphabet subsidiary Google plans to weakly follow Apple by offering limited user controls for ad tracking across apps that are less robust than those offered to real iPhone users.
On Wednesday, Google updated what it calls Privacy Sandbox, an initiative launched last year to apply stricter data controls to the internet. Privacy Sandbox focused on Chrome web browsers first, but now is coming to Android. The advertising industry has been waiting for Google to provide details about its Android privacy plans, as they promise to affect ad targeting and measurement, just like Apple has done on iPhones.
Google’s update gave the first hints of the Android roadmap, but it was careful to distance the policies from Apple, suggesting that it would only change advertising on mobile devices after consulting with ad industry stakeholders.
Google said it would “limit” data-sharing through the advertising ID, a unique code for each device used to target and measure ads. Google’s outline looked similar to Apple’s more recent changes that impacted the advertising industry, but ad tech executives said Google appeared more measured.
Google’s timeline forecasted that the privacy initiatives on Android would launch a testing phase by the end of the year with “scaled testing” in 2023.
Last year, Apple launched App-Tracking Transparency, which forced apps to obtain permission from users to collect data about their mobile habits. The change cut mobile marketers off from Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers.
MacDailyNews Take: Google wants to start “scaled testing” sometime in 2023… to be pushed out to 2024 and beyond, most likely, even though it’s weak sauce compared to the privacy-protecting tools that users of real iPhones already possess.
Google’s ad business is built on siphoning user data and tracking users to deliver ads. Google will never be able or willing to offer users anywhere near the level of privacy already long offered by Apple.
Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain English, and repeatedly. I’m an optimist; I believe people are smart, and some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you’re going to do with your data. — Steve Jobs, June 2010
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Window dressing for the gullible
Probably the biggest private data gathering corporation on the planet and certainly the biggest and most successful advertiser is going to stop gathering extreme amounts of private data on a user?
Comedy…
Pfft. Google has learned nothing, and meanwhile the rest of the general population has: if what Google is offering doesn’t protect a user from Google, it isn’t protecting those users from anything at all. Ditto Facebook etc., etc. etc. Seriously people, stop using anything Google makes. if you don’t, this is beyond the definition of moot, and within those devices and services, i don’t know why you’d even bother. Who are these people that still champion Google for anything at all? If you are using google stuff, then Google is spying on and storing your activities. Period and across the board.
Though Apple has lost their right to calling themselves representing user privacy above all else, they are still light years better than the competition, starting squarely with Google. For Google to even intimate otherwise is probably the highest form of an insult to human intelligence possible.