A report from Fast Company enlightened the public with the fact that Google has not updated more than half of their apps present on the App Store since Dec 7.
Apple before this had asked all the developers whose applications are present on the app store to provide a privacy report for every application. This means that under each app the developer has to let the public know with full honesty that which of their data is being used and shared. Google had assured Apple that they will start updating the apps on iOS with the privacy labels the same week that is the week of January 4th. However, it still failed to do so completely.
It has been over two weeks since Google claimed to have start working on the update and privacy labels and not even Googles’ most used application like Gmail and YouTube have been updated. The only two applications of Google we can see with the privacy labels are Google Authenticator and Google Translate. Google Authenticator is Googles’ two step verification app which was last updated on December 7th with the privacy label showing which said that the app will collect location data, user content, identifiers, and diagnostics data from the users while Google Translate has been updated with the privacy label as well.
Even though, Apple cleared the fact that they will need privacy labels updated with all the apps on Apple Store a month ago Google has only managed to update two of its applications. While some applications Google Slides and Socratic which is an education app by Google were updated after December 7th with Google Translate being updated on December 14th and Socratic being updated on December 15th neither of the two apps show any privacy information below them. The public is still clueless as to why Google is doing this.
Apple wants to be true to its users and hence have asked all the developers to update the privacy information with each app so that the users know which app will collect which of their data and in case they feel like that a certain app is collecting more data than others they have the advantage of deciding whether they want to install or update it. This will give the users transparency about their data collection which in all honesty is actually fair.
The reporters from 9to5Mac had some self-assumptions as to why Google is doing this and we might just think they are pretty logical.
Well the first reason could be that Google does not update its apps and features during the holiday season and it has also been noticed that Chrome last year did not update anything from December 2019 till February 2020 as most of the workers are off during the holiday season to plan an update, but on the other side Apple had asked for these updates in November 2020 which gave Google a lot of time before the holidays began to update the apps.
The second reason could be that Google has assigned the update of privacy label for each app to the individual app team while just providing general guidance itself. It can be possible that the individual apps are being rather slow in updating the privacy information considering Google Translate and Authenticator have already been updated.
However, no certain reason is known as of yet and Google has still not commented on this matter.
Read next: Google Limits Access To Chrome API For Third Party Browsers And Developers Relying On Chromium
Apple before this had asked all the developers whose applications are present on the app store to provide a privacy report for every application. This means that under each app the developer has to let the public know with full honesty that which of their data is being used and shared. Google had assured Apple that they will start updating the apps on iOS with the privacy labels the same week that is the week of January 4th. However, it still failed to do so completely.
It has been over two weeks since Google claimed to have start working on the update and privacy labels and not even Googles’ most used application like Gmail and YouTube have been updated. The only two applications of Google we can see with the privacy labels are Google Authenticator and Google Translate. Google Authenticator is Googles’ two step verification app which was last updated on December 7th with the privacy label showing which said that the app will collect location data, user content, identifiers, and diagnostics data from the users while Google Translate has been updated with the privacy label as well.
Even though, Apple cleared the fact that they will need privacy labels updated with all the apps on Apple Store a month ago Google has only managed to update two of its applications. While some applications Google Slides and Socratic which is an education app by Google were updated after December 7th with Google Translate being updated on December 14th and Socratic being updated on December 15th neither of the two apps show any privacy information below them. The public is still clueless as to why Google is doing this.
Apple wants to be true to its users and hence have asked all the developers to update the privacy information with each app so that the users know which app will collect which of their data and in case they feel like that a certain app is collecting more data than others they have the advantage of deciding whether they want to install or update it. This will give the users transparency about their data collection which in all honesty is actually fair.
The reporters from 9to5Mac had some self-assumptions as to why Google is doing this and we might just think they are pretty logical.
Well the first reason could be that Google does not update its apps and features during the holiday season and it has also been noticed that Chrome last year did not update anything from December 2019 till February 2020 as most of the workers are off during the holiday season to plan an update, but on the other side Apple had asked for these updates in November 2020 which gave Google a lot of time before the holidays began to update the apps.
The second reason could be that Google has assigned the update of privacy label for each app to the individual app team while just providing general guidance itself. It can be possible that the individual apps are being rather slow in updating the privacy information considering Google Translate and Authenticator have already been updated.
However, no certain reason is known as of yet and Google has still not commented on this matter.
Read next: Google Limits Access To Chrome API For Third Party Browsers And Developers Relying On Chromium
