Google takes aim at Apple privacy

Google has taken a swipe at Apple over its privacy practices while it attempts to improve its own.

Google has taken a swipe at Apple over its privacy practices while it attempts to improve its own. It wants to develop better privacy constraints for Android that will offer increased user privacy while still giving advertisers user data.

One of them is to let users zero out their advertising IDs, which apps use to identify users behaviours on their phones.

In a blog post today, Google announced a multi-year project to build an Android ‘privacy box’ where it will introduce new privacy solutions. It named Snap, Rovio and Duolingo as collaborating with it on the project.

However, it won’t be matching rival Apple which requires users to give explicit permission to apps before they can track general phone usage.

“We realise that other platforms have taken a different approach to ads privacy, bluntly restricting existing technologies used by developers and advertisers,” the blog says in a thinly veiled swipe at Apple.

“We believe that — without first providing a privacy-preserving alternative path — such approaches can be ineffective and lead to worse outcomes for user privacy and developer businesses.”

Last year it was predicted that social media firms such as Facebook stood to lose $US10bn from this new capability on iPhones.

In its announcement, Google says it is exploring ways to reduce the potential for secret data collection, including safer ways for apps to integrate with advertising software development kits.

It wants to satisfy third-party use cases without third-party cookies or other tracking mechanisms.

Google APAC Head of Privacy Jessica Martin cited recent privacy measures, such as an ability to see when your camera or microphone is on, restricted use of ad IDs for children, and fraud detection.

She said an ability to zero out your ad ID “gives you the choice as to whether or not you are being tracked”. But she couldn’t give “a unified answer” as to whether it stopped users being tracked across apps altogether.

But she said users would have increased control over the access permissions they grant to each individual app.

Google’s proposals include “privacy preserving APIs” that don’t rely on cross-party identifiers and limit data sharing, and reducing the potential for undisclosed data collection.

The “privacy preserving APIs” would still allow advertising campaign performance reporting and training of machine learning modules, and would let advertisers show personalised ads to users based on their previous interactions. Apps could show relevant ads based on a user’s recent interests.

Google says its existing ads platform will be supported for at least two years, and the company wants to provide substantial notice ahead of future changes.