Android 12 got the biggest privacy boost in recent years. Most were analogous to iOS 14’s privacy features with an exception in Bluetooth permission. By removing access to location services from Bluetooth, Google managed to weaken Facebook’s location-based advertisement business.
However, the absence of a similar feature like App Tracking Transparency from Google I/O 2021 was a bummer. Gladly, though, our disappointment was short-lived.
Only yesterday, Google announced its plans to make advertising ID an opt-out feature.
Google doing this means they have an alternative the rest of the industry doesn’t.
Yes, that is great, and terribly suspicious.
I think there are three options here:
1) Google has another way of tracking that doesn’t rely on app tracking or location tracking
2) Google has found a better way to market things that doesn’t rely in tracking
3) Google is using this as a buffer for anti trust/ privacy regulation in the EU.
I have no idea which of those is right, but the alternative, that Google is just doing this for the good of human kind, makes no sense.
Really Google behavior tells us a lot. I would say 1 and 2 is not the case yet the reason is Google attempt things like “Google’s FLoC” if they had a working solution they would not need this development. The important point is yet we will see Google attempt to develop either the 1 or 2.
Point 3 this that this is to buffer anti-trust/privacy regulation is correct its not just the EU.
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/judge-upholds-privacy-lawsuit/
Its really simple to forget that Google is currently in USA courts over possible breaking USA privacy regulations. EU is the loudest about there privacy regulations but other countries have privacy regulations that application/location tracking has been legally questionable and with court cases could be proven illegal out right.
Please note a lot of the countries laws tracking without consent or valid legal reason is against physical laws to prevent stalking. As the legal system in each country catches up with the internet we can expect parties like Google to be prosecuted unless they solve the second point as in find way to market effectively without tracking. Finding another way to track is most likely going to break the physical laws designed to prevent stalking when they come applied to the internet electronic communications.
The internet is ceasing to be a lawless place and this resulting in prior lawless behaviors having to stop.
Thom Holwerda,
I am also suspicious of google and apple for that matter giving themselves privileged access to tracking data. Open source code would enable us to independently audit their activities, but It doesn’t help that both apple and google use proprietary blobs in both IOS and Android. Just because they have a lot of power doesn’t strictly imply they will abuse it, but they certainly have a lot of opportunities to do so.
4) Google (and Apple) want to keep collected data to themselves and their paying customers. Letting Facebook and advertising networks tap to these data for free is not in Goggle/Apple best interest.
It’s an interesting twist that the largest privacy offenders start competing with each other in such way that is somewhat good for their users’ privacy. “Somewhat” because neither Apple nor Google have a slightest plan of reducing user tracking, quite the opposite.
For sure this is just a beginning of the trend but I wonder if at some point this will make users treat their data as an important asset.
What if Google figures, “if you can’t stop it, get out in front and lead the parade”? If they’re betting that most people don’t really care about tracking, and so will just leave it the default?
The default will most like come in time what is the default to be legal in the most areas. Most people as individuals not having a care about tracking is one thing. You have to remember governments around the world have badly been hit by covid-19 costs. This now means we have governments who will be going over their law books looking for ways to fine the living heck out of companies this is going to last for quite some time. I really do expect existing stalking and privacy laws that are normally only enforced in the physical world to be enforced in the online space to attempt to refill the bank accounts of governments.
People need copyright type ownership on their data, including their digital fingerprints, i.e. unsolicited data. Solicited data, like when a website asks for your e-mail address, is somewhat protected, so there is a precedent. Ideally Google would have to pay you for your data. Their business model is based on covertly harvesting free personal information and selling it. Everything they do serves this purpose. It’s a horrible waste of human ingenuity. In this sense Apple is head and shoulders above Google, in that they are trying to make beautiful usable products. And be a monopoly. Minor detail.
> horrible waste of human ingenuity
But it might drive some development that creates a useful offshoot in some other domain. I’m reading the Scientific American article about percolation theory (“The Mathematics of How Connections Become Global” April 1, 2021), which is probably pertinent to this.