Thursday, 9 May 2024

Google Hasn’t Updated iOS Apps Possibly to Avoid Privacy Labels

It’s been a month and a half since Apple introduced privacy labels, and Google has yet to updates many of its iOS apps to support the feature.

Apple introduced App Privacy Details in iOS and iPadOS 14.3 as a way to inform users of what data apps collect and keep about them. The feature is built around the novel concept that users should know what data companies collect and have a say in it.

Some companies, such as Facebook have already faced quite a bit of flack when they updated their apps and revealed the extent of the data they collected. It’s been speculated that Google may be trying to avoid that by simply not updating.

Google issued a blog post on January 12 outlining its support for iOS App Privacy Details, and said it would be updating its apps to support them. A quick look at the App Store at time of writing, however, only show two apps that have been updated to include the information, namely Google Translate and Google Classroom.

Google’s Privacy Label
Google’s Privacy Label

It remains to be seen when Google will update its more popular apps but, the longer the company takes, the more speculation will build that Google doesn’t want to disclose its data collection.