Most of those ads are geared around search queries. Google makes its money selling ads tailored to you as an individual, contextualized by your search or activity. Chrome versus DuckDuckGo, or WhatsApp versus Signal, for example. It’s also wrong to only compare mainstream apps with privacy-first specialists. This is why comparisons are so critical-no privacy label should be taken in isolation. The issue with that reasoning, though, is that competing apps that collect significantly less data offer similar features and levels of performance and security.Ĭlearly, not every user will provide every data field on the privacy label to Google-they’re intended as a worst case, this is the data that could be collected. Google’s viewpoint, that it only collects the data needed to provide its service, is the same rationale WhatsApp gave me for collecting its own treasure trove of data.
Again, this misses the stark difference between an in-session function and collecting linked user data, as suggested by its privacy label. Google didn’t offer any comments in response to this story, but did insist that the justification for its data collection is to provide features and functions-for example tailoring searches to a user’s location. As I commented on Gmail, protecting user privacy is a binary philosophy, “you either believe it’s the right thing to do, or you don’t.” And these new labels have made Google’s (and Facebook’s) privacy claims sound hollow. But now we can see the detail for Chrome, just as we did for Gmail. Google took its time adding privacy labels, with a gap between app updates of some three months after the labels became mandatory. But what Chrome does have in common with Gmail is an avaricious and out of step approach to data harvesting. You’ll note that Chrome isn’t on that list, nor is it an app “where you primarily store personal content.” But it is an app where you enter private and sensitive search terms and conduct private transactions.
In its defense, Google pointed me at comments made by CEO Sundar Pichai, that “we don’t use information in apps where you primarily store personal content-such as Gmail, Drive, Calendar and Photos-for advertising purposes, period.” I have already warned that Gmail collects more data than other leading mail platforms.
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