Rather today Fast company shared an article noting that Google has yet to update its iPhone and iPad apps to suit the new App Store privacy tag requirement. Fast company speculated that Google might try to delay the disclosure of data from its privacy tags, but it turns out not to be.
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According to a report by TechCrunch, Google is not positioning itself against Apple’s privacy tags and in fact plans to add privacy data to its iOS app catalog as early as this week or next week.
Apple implemented app privacy information in iOS 14.3, after promising the feature when iOS 14 was announced. App privacy tags provide customers with a way to determine what data an app collects about them before choosing install it.
Apple requires all apps to report privacy information to the “app store” and developers must identify all use and data collection cases. Tags are divided into categories, including data that is used to track you, data that is linked to you, and data that is not linked to you, indicating that it is anonymized.
There has been some negativity associated with the privacy of the apps, as Facebook was called to have a long tag due to the amount of data it collects and it is very possible that Google has similar privacy tags.
As of Dec. 8, all app updates submitted must include privacy tag information, and most Google apps designed for iOS devices haven’t seen updates since Dec. 7. It’s unclear why Google has delayed updating its iOS apps when it updated Android apps, but it could be due to the holiday season. Google implements a code freeze from late December to early January, which TechCrunch suggests that it could be the reason for the lack of iOS updates.