Two weeks ago, a report from Fast company stresses that Google has suspiciously not updated the vast majority of its iOS apps since December 7, a day before Apple required developers to provide a privacy report for every app available in the App Store. Following the report, Google quickly backtracked, saying it would start updating its iOS apps with the privacy labels the same week, the week of January 4th.
Two weeks later, Google has not yet updated the vast majority of its iOS applications with these privacy labels, including its popular apps like Gmail and YouTube. Even if Google has no bad intentions, this scattershot approach leaves users puzzled and worried.
According to the information collected by 9to5Mac, the first Google app with the new App Privacy Label in the App Store, is Google Authenticator. It’s Google’s popular 2-step verification app, and it was last updated on December 7th.
Google Authenticator has a relatively short privacy label, and the company states that location data, user content, identifiers, and diagnostic data can be linked to the user.
Google Translate has also been updated with the new privacy tag in the App Store:
It appears from the publication the only two Google applications so far updated with Privacy Labels, more than a month after the requirement went into effect.
Interestingly, some apps, such as Google Slides, have been updated since December 7, but they still do not display the app’s privacy tags. For example, the Google Slides app was updated on December 14th, but Google has not yet provided details about its privacy practices to the App Store. Google’s education app Socratic was updated on December 15 and also does not contain privacy details.
The original Fast company report suggested that Google avoid updating its iOS applications due to the new requirement that all apps display these privacy labels. Apple has begun requiring developers to submit their new privacy information to the App Store to update their apps on December 8th. The App Privacy Labels will be visible to users on December 14, and this coincides with the release of iOS 14.3.
Follow the Fast company report, Google issued a statement to TechCrunch, which promises that they will start launching App Privacy Labels for its apps that week, the week of January 4th or next week. Since then, Google has not achieved this promise, and since then no additional apps with App Privacy Labels have been updated.
Google also included a little thing about these privacy labels in a blog post last week, again saying that privacy labels are coming, but without a specific timeline:
As Google’s iOS apps are updated with new features or to fix bugs, you’ll see updates to the list of app pages that contain the new app’s privacy information. These labels represent the maximum categories of data that can be collected – that is, if you use every available feature and service in the app. The data you provide to Google products provides you with useful services, and you can always control your privacy settings by visiting your Google Account or visiting the Google products you use on iOS directly.
9to5Mac’s take
Apple said that there are several important pieces of important information that developers need to keep in mind when preparing the App Privacy feed labels for their applications:
- Developers must identify all possible data collections and uses, even if certain data is only collected and used in limited situations.
- Developers’ responses should follow the App Store review guidelines and applicable laws.
- Developers are responsible for keeping your answers accurate and up to date. If you change practices, update your answers in App Store Connect.
The point of this data is not to embarrass developers, but rather to give users more insight into how their data is used. When a user visits the App Store and notices that certain applications collect more data than others, they can make more informed decisions about which apps they want to use.
There are several reasons why Google may avoid the labels, and not all of them are malicious.
First, it’s normal for developers to take a break from updating applications during the festive season, even large companies like Google. For example, Chrome went from December 2019 to February 2020 without an update last year during the holiday season.
On the other hand, Apple announced that these “nutrition labels” for the app’s privacy would still be needed in November, so that Google could plan to have them ready in time and before the holidays.
Internally at Google, it is likely that the task of adding the labels falls on each individual app team, and Google provides only general guidance. This may be why Google Translate and Google Authenticator have added privacy labels, but not other programs.
Finally, you should ask yourself how Google’s single account system will affect these labels. Virtually every Google application requires you to sign in with the same Google sign-in, which impacts privacy practices and makes it easier for Google to link data from different applications.
Again, my point is not to say that Google is malicious in taking a distributed approach to running the app privacy labels. As more applications add the labels and the longer Google takes, the more suspicious users will find them if they see the “No data provided” label in the Google Apps App Store list.
Apple follows a leading approach to keep users aware of how their data is used. The app privacy labels are only part of this approach, and Apple will soon introduce additional privacy controls related to tracking various applications.
The optics of Google’s decision to take a slow and diffuse approach to setting the labels of app privacy is bad, even if it is not Google’s intention. Ideally, the labels will appear sooner rather than later for the sake of users to know more about how their data is used.
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