Google wants to limit tracking on Android smartphones

Android smartphones

Android devices have a global market share of 80 percent. In Germany, the share of the smartphone market is 58 percent.

(Photo: NurPhoto/Getty Images)

san francisco The Google group wants to make targeted advertising more difficult for smartphones with the Android operating system in the future. The company announced a feature called “Privacy Sandbox” on Wednesday. Their goal is to introduce new, more private advertising solutions, explained the responsible Google manager Anthony Chaveze.

This includes, for example, that collected data should not be shared with third parties. However, the new system will be introduced in two years at the earliest to give advertisers the opportunity to adapt to the changes, Chavez wrote in a blog post (blog post in the original).

Last year, Apple limited targeted advertising on mobile devices with an update for its iOS mobile operating system. The Facebook group alone said that the company had lost around ten billion dollars in advertising revenue as a result. The Facebook parent company depends almost exclusively on advertising for its income. The business model is based on particularly targeted advertising.

If Google implements data protection as strictly as Apple, Facebook will be hit hard. Because Google is still significantly more important in the smartphone market than rival Apple. After the Google announcement, the shares of the Facebook group fell by six percent. The company reached its lowest rating on the stock exchange in a year and a half.

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Android has a market share of more than 80 percent in the global smartphone business. iPhones account for almost all the rest. In the US market, which is lucrative for Apple, the iPhone share is estimated at around half. In Germany, the share of Android smartphones is around 58 percent, while the share of iPhones is 39 percent.

Google wants to give up advertising IDs completely in the long term

Previously, both Apple and Google had allowed advertisers to specifically track users on mobile devices. In addition, so-called advertising IDs were used, which allowed companies to specifically identify users across multiple apps and thus create profiles for preferences and interests.

Apple introduced a function last year with the update of the iOS mobile operating system to version 14.5, with which users must actively agree to the collection of data for advertising purposes. A survey of smartphone users in the United States conducted by Forbes magazine last week found that 61.5 percent of them did not want to allow targeted advertising.

Google, on the other hand, introduced a function for Android users last June that did not ask them directly for their consent to targeted advertising, but they could use their device settings to prevent their advertising ID from being shared. Now Google is going one step further: in the long term, advertising IDs are to disappear entirely.

Big differences in business model

Apple and Google have repeatedly come under criticism for their advertising practices. The Austrian data protection activist Max Schrems had used the tracking via advertising IDs as an opportunity for official complaints against both groups. European data protection clearly stipulates that users must be able to make decisions about how their data is handled. Apple then modified its operating system. Google is now apparently also rebuilding Android.

Apple and Google have repeatedly introduced new options for data protection over the past few years. Information about which data the apps want to access is now displayed on the mobile platforms of both operators, for example when apps are installed.

However, the business models of Apple and Google differ significantly. While Apple generates most of its revenue from the sale of devices, Google itself is heavily dependent on advertising revenue. In the European Union, there are several proceedings against the company, which deal, among other things, with the group’s advertising model.

Google said 90 percent of apps for its Android devices are free for users. The developers are often dependent on advertising revenue to finance their work.

More: Facebook, Snap and Co. lose billions in revenue: Apple’s tracking protection has such an impact.

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