There are indications that the wait could end. It seems that Google has finally decided to start updating its major iOS apps. The company released an update for YouTube this weekend, more than two months after its last update.
As he explains 9to5Google, who saw the update, it’s normal for Google to stop updating apps in December for the holidays. Updates are not posted during the holidays because there may not be as many staff as usual to fix any issues related to them. However, updates are usually resumed in early January. That didn’t happen this year, though, and a lot most of Google’s iOS apps haven’t been updated since December, according to the media.
There was immediate speculation, of course, about a possible reason behind the delay. The popular theory was related to that of Apple new privacy tags, which aim to inform users about the data collected by applications and whether this data is related to or used to track it. Apple released the tags in December and now developers need to include them to update their apps and send new ones.
This theory does not apply to YouTube, which already had tags before the Google update this weekend. 9to5Google states that YouTube Music, YouTube TV, i YouTube Studio they all had their labels in early February. However, none of these apps have received any updates in months.
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Google has also come out and said that the they should not be delayed to Apple’s privacy tags. In January, it began deploying more tags to its apps and also released one blog about privacy which mentioned the labels.
“As Google’s iOS apps are updated with new features or to fix bugs, you’ll see updates to our app’s page lists that include new app privacy details,” Rahul Roy wrote. -Chowdhury, vice president of product privacy. “These tags represent the maximum categories of data that could be collected, that is, if you use all the features and services available in the application.”
Gizmodo has reached out to Google to ask why other major iOS apps haven’t received updates yet and when we should expect them. We will update this blog if we find out again.
Does this mean that Google is not concerned about Apple’s new privacy tags? Oh no. Google’s main business is advertising and there is no doubt that they have held conversations about tags. However, in this case, it’s probably safe to say that the delay in upgrades is related to something else. Maybe even something completely normal.