Google is making massive annual payments to Apple to be placed as the default search engine on its devices. Research indicates a price of $15 billion for the privilege in 2021.
Facebook, Google and Netflix are facing fines and actions for privacy violations, with Facebook assessed the second-largest amount in the country's history for its treatment of facial recognition templates.
Documents leaked to Vice's Motherboard magazine indicate that, between 2018 and 2020, Google fired at least 80 employees for data misuse. At least a few involve employees accessing user accounts and manipulating or deleting the data of other employees.
Google is now calling for Privacy Sandbox technologies to be in place in the Chrome web browser and available to third party developers by the end of 2022, and for tracking cookies to be phased out of the browser beginning in mid-2023.
The day is fast approaching when Google drops support for third party cookies on Chrome. Will these changes to the way users are tracked finally bring about the end of ad fraud?
As with Apple's new program, the proposed privacy labels are meant to give end users a quick reference to the range of data that Android apps are asking for.
Google and Apple’s contact tracing app was supposed to put user privacy first. Each of the tech giants has blocked the most recent update from the NHS, citing privacy violations.
The unique device identifier that Apple uses for personalized ad tracking, the IDFA, has been in the news lately. You may soon be hearing just as much about Google's equivalent for Android, the AAID.
Interest-based advertising is a critical component of Google's revenue. The company has stepped up testing of its FLoC initiative, which it calls a "privacy first" approach to targeted advertising.
Though Google is more reliant on targeted advertising for revenue than Apple, a recent report cites company insiders in suggesting that similar anti-tracking measures are being considered for Android.
