Google announced Wednesday that it will implement new privacy restrictions that will block tracking across all apps on Android devices, similar to what Apple did last year with its App Tracking Transparency feature .
Google said it is developing privacy-focused replacements for the advertising ID, a unique string of characters that identifies a user's device. Digital IDs on smartphones often help advertising companies track and share information about consumers.
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The changes could affect large companies that rely on tracking users in apps, such as Facebook parent Meta. Apple's similar changes have hit Meta hard. The company said earlier this month that Apple's privacy changes would cut the company's sales by about $10 billion this year.
However, while Meta had protested Apple's changes, it expressed support for how Google plans to implement its privacy settings.
"It's encouraging to see this privacy-preserving approach to personalized advertising from Google," Graham Mudd, Facebook's vice president of product marketing, said on Twitter. "We look forward to continuing to work with them..."
Google said it will continue to support the current identifiers for the next two years, which means other companies have time to implement changes.
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As mentioned above, Apple has been criticized by Facebook and other companies for releasing the App Tracking Transparency feature, which reduces user targeting capabilities (for advertising) by limiting companies' access to the user identifier on an iPhone. With this change, a window appears that allows users to prevent apps from tracking their data for advertising purposes.
Google criticized Apple's approach in its post without naming the company.
" We recognize that other platforms have taken a different approach to ads privacy, blatantly limiting existing technologies used by developers and advertisers ," Google's Anthony Chavez wrote in a blog post . " We believe that — without first providing an alternative path to preserving privacy — such approaches can be ineffective and lead to worse outcomes for user privacy and developers' businesses ."
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The focus on privacy practices could help the company navigate regulatory issues as lawmakers and consumers become increasingly concerned about their data and how it is protected. The company said it will work closely with regulators.
Source: CNBC
