If you value your privacy, you might want to delete this Google app from your iPhone
More than ever, users expect their electronics to keep their data private. Apple is at the forefront of the latest privacy push, with the iPhone maker having introduced various features to improve privacy and security over the years. The app privacy labels and anti-tracking features built into iOS 14 are the best examples of what improved privacy looks like. iOS 15 adds a few more notable privacy improvements as well, including a VPN-like service that will be bundled with the premium iCloud+ subscription.
Called Private Relay, the new service will make it impossible for advertisers to track iPhone and iPad users browsing the web on Safari. Private Relay is even better than a regular VPN service, as the companies (Apple and a third-party provider) that anonymize and encrypts the internet traffic can’t see that traffic. Some VPN providers might be privy to that personal information; that’s why Private Relay is a better alternative to protecting users’ privacy. But if you value your privacy and plan to use Smart Relay when iOS 15 rolls out of beta, you might have to delete a great Google app from your iPhone.
One of the side effects of Apple’s tremendous interest in privacy is Google having to develop similar privacy-protecting features for Android. That’s more problematic for the Mountain View-based company as Google makes most of its cash from advertising. It’s personalized ads that bring in the most money, and you can’t deliver personalized ads as efficiently if you have to match Apple’s privacy features blow for blow.
Google makes some of the most popular apps and services, and most of them are available free of charge for users. They’re free exactly because Google makes money off of personal data, which is monetized via ads. And Google’s apps are available across virtually every platform, from Android to Windows to iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.
Google also makes the world’s most popular browser, and Chrome gets better with every update. However, Chrome is at the center of a controversial privacy change that involves switching from third-party cookies to a new FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) system. FLoC has been widely criticized, with non-profits like the EFF and other web browser developers (Brave, Vivaldi, Microsoft, and Mozilla) having voiced their concerns about it.
