Google could follow in Apple’s footsteps and introduce anti-tracking features in Android

Google provides a lot of its products and services for “free”, in which users don’t have to pay for it, but in turn Google gathers your data and uses that to serve up personalized ads. This data gathering practice, not just by Google, but by other companies like Facebook, have been seeing increased scrutiny over the years.

So much so that Apple will be releasing a feature soon that will prevent apps from tracking user data across other apps and websites. This is done to protect the privacy of their users, and now it looks like Google wants something similar for Android as well, although it does seem a bit counterintuitive to the company’s revenue-generating practices.

This is why the report claims that the version Google plans on implementing will be a “less stringent” version compared to Apple’s. This is done to make advertisers happy, while at the same time improving on the privacy for Android users. While Google has yet to confirm their plans, a company spokesman was quoted as say:

“We’re always looking for ways to work with developers to raise the bar on privacy while enabling a healthy, ad-supported app ecosystem.”

Whether or not we will be seeing this feature make its debut in Android 12 remains to be seen, but hopefully the developer preview’s release isn’t too far off and we can start digging in to see if there are any privacy changes under the hood.

Source: Bloomberg