Google announced its iPhone apps would cease all user-tracking activities online after Apple turned the heat on the search engine giant.
After holding out for more than a month, Google announced in a blog post that its iPhone apps would stop the tracking of users online in compliance with Apple's new App Tracking Transparency policy. The company published the blog post on Wednesday. Google's latest move came after many developers asked why the search engine's iOS apps still have not complied with Apple's new privacy and transparency requirement.
With Google's iPhone applications complying with Apple's new app tracking policy, these applications will no longer ask users to allow the app to track them. Although the Cupertino tech giant's App Tracking Transparency policy is not yet in effect, observers expect it would give users of iPhone and iPad more privacy. The downside is that the policy could also cost advertisers billions of dollars in potential revenue.
Google No Longer Needs IDentifier For Advertisers
Apple uses the Identifier For Advertisers (IDFA) as a way for online advertisers to track users. According to Google Ads' chief, Christophe Combette, Google no longer needs IDFA. "When Apple's App Tracking Transparency policy goes into effect, we will no longer use information (such as IDFA) that falls under ATT for the handful of our iOS apps that currently use it for advertising purposes," Combette wrote in the blog post.
Google apps on iPhones and iPads will have more privacy than on Android devices thanks to this change. https://t.co/Mm9bTQAh0Q — Andrew Mossberg (@aemossberg) January 27, 2021
The Cupertino tech giant explained in the past that it is not killing off IDFA, but the company is making some changes to it, which includes requiring users to give first their consent to its use on an app-by-app basis using the App Tracking Transparency policy prompt. Despite the clarification of Apple as regards IDFA, Google announced it no longer needs the feature. "As such, we will not show the ATT prompt on those apps," Combette explained.
ATT Implementation
Many industry observers expect Apple would implement its App Tracking Transparency policy in the latest iOS 14.4 update and its iPadOS equivalent. However, when the Cupertino tech giant released the update on Tuesday, everyone noticed that the new ATT policy is not in place yet. Apple did not say when it will implement this policy or even give a timeframe for its implementation.
Major players in online advertising like Facebook and Google rely on advertising revenues. Such revenues come from these companies' free applications, which sell targeted advertising space to their users. In 2019, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, revealed that 80% of its total revenues came from ad sales. With Apple's App Tracking Transparency policy in place, these free apps would have to ask permission from the users for the app to continue tracking them and continue feeding the users with targeted ads. If users opt-out of ad tracking, then Google's, and other major players' revenues, would drop significantly.
