Will Google Overhaul Android’s Privacy Policy Or It’s A Trick?

iOS 14 brought a lot of improvements over the previous generation. But there was a change that made many others turn in to an Apple opposition. And now, it turns out Google is going to overhaul its privacy policy as well.

iOS 14 / 14.5 Privacy Policy

If you remember, iOS 14 enabled the new privacy labels that display what kind and how much personal information is collected by apps on the iPad and iPhone. Of course, it didn’t mean users can change anything. But starting from this version, any Apple user can know what kind of data is collected.

However, with the release of iOS 14.5, Apple made many developers cry. Though Facebook has been the most complaining company, all other manufacturers including Google suffered as well. We are talking about the new anti-tracking feature that forces all devs to ask users for permission on tracking them and collecting data about their activity. Not surprisingly, most Apple users decline this so the developers couldn’t understand their users well and display more relevant ads.

Google’s Privacy Labels To Change As Well

As for Google, a new report proves this company may make it harder for developers to track users on Android. But this could be something quite different. Anyway, Google is expected to roll out its new privacy policy features in 2022.

Recently, we learned that Google Play Services is going to delete the advertising ID when you opt out of interest-based advertising. As you know, advertisers use those identifiers to track people online. Moreover, Apple’s new privacy label is related to the unique iPhone identifier. So is Google’s alternative solution really alternative?

“As part of Google Play services update in late 2021, the advertising ID will be removed when a user opts out of personalization using advertising ID in Android Settings.

To help developers and ad/analytics service providers with compliance efforts and respect user choice, they will be able to receive notifications for opt-out preferences. Additionally, apps targeting Android 12 will need to declare a Google Play services normal permission in the manifest file.”

It turns out Google wants to implement an “alternate solution” to track users for analytics and fraud prevention:

“This Google Play services phased rollout will affect apps running on Android 12 devices starting late 2021 and will expand to affect apps running on devices that support Google Play in early 2022. In July, we will provide an alternate solution to support essential use cases such as analytics and fraud prevention.”

Simply put, Google will still collect data but the new system will enhance user privacy. It would be naïve to think Google, which gets billions of income from advertising, will abandon a working system.