Google moves towards making Android apps private for it’s users.
The American search engine company, which bought the smartphone operating system back in 2005, are planning to limit data tracking on their Chrome browser. These plans have been extended to cover all apps on their Android based smartphones.
Google’s privacy Sandbox project will limit the amount of data third parties can extract.
Apple have also updated their IOS so that app developers are required to ask permission from app users before they are allowed to track them.
Big firm Meta - which rely heavily on tracking app users behaviours in order to develop products by installing their code onto apps – have taken a hard hit.
The changes enforced by Apple to rival Google will cost Meta $10bn (£7.3bn) this year. Android is used by approximately 85% of smartphone users worldwide which will mean further loss for Meta.
Google also aim to phase out the use of third-party cookies from its browser by 2023. Currently the third party cookies collect people’s browsing history in order to target specific ads at the consumers.
Google had wrote on a blog that it was working on extending its Privacy Sandbox to Android apps as well as trying to find a way to withhold sharing its user’s data to third party cookies.
The search engine company’s aim was to "operate without cross app identifiers, including advertising ID".
Currently cross app identifiers are connected to smart phones and used by apps to exploit consumers private data.
Google promised: "We're also exploring technologies that reduce the potential for covert data collection, including safer ways for apps to integrate with advertising SDK (software developer kits),"
The new plan to disguise its users identities did not go down well with advertisers as Google unlike Apple rely heavily on advertising revenue.
Apple and Flurry Analytics revealed that users had chosen to opt out of third party tracking 96 percent of the time which is why Google took a radical approach to restrict advertisers from tracking it’s users.
Google said: "We believe that - without first providing a privacy-preserving alternative path - such approaches can be ineffective,"
