When Apple introduced its App Tracking Transparency feature, it sent ripples that disrupted many in the online advertising industry.
The feature is simply a privacy tool that comes in the form of a toggle and a pop-up option. But what it does, is giving users more control over how their data is shared. With it, users can decide whether apps can monitor and share their activities with others.
The extent this privacy feature can provide, is huge.
If users want an app to not track them, Apple will disable the app from using an Apple device identifier, which is a random string of letters and numbers that is assigned to people's iPhones and is used to track their activities across apps and websites. The next thing Apple will do, is communicating to the app developer, saying that the user doesn't want his/her information to be tracked and shared with anyone in any way.
To users, the pop-up window may seem like a minor tweak in design. But in reality, this simple move has thrown the online advertising industry into upheaval.
And this time, Google is following Apple's lead, by introducing its own privacy sandbox feature.
Read: 6 Months Of Apple's App Tracking Policy, Social Media Companies Lost Almost $10 Billion
Google announced that it would be bringing Apple-like privacy changes to Android, but promised that the feature wouldn't be as "disruptive" as Apple's App Tracking Transparency.
What Google is saying is that, its privacy feature is aimed at limiting the sharing of data across apps and third-party websites.
But in contrast to Apple, Google emphasized that the goal of its privacy changes would be to find a more private option for users that also allows developers to continue making money off of advertising.
In other words, Google wants users to keep their privacy, but still allow developers to continue make money off from showing ads to them.
More specifically, Google said its privacy-minded features would limit the covert tracking of users, but allow advertisers to gauge the performance of ad campaigns and place personalized ads based on recent interests or past behavior.
Google wants the best of both worlds, saying that it's a "more private advertising solutions" for Android..
To make this happen, the change is by adopting some of Chrome browser for Android's privacy features, and plans on removing the Advertising ID tracker.
On its blog post, Google calls this initiative the 'Project Sandbox'.
Since the release of iOS 14, Apple was already giving developers the headaches. And with the following smaller updates to bolster privacy, they all came down to one final move: the iOS 14.5.
The version of Apple's mobile operating system introduced a bunch of new features and improvements, as well as fixes among others. But the most anticipated, was the App Tracking Transparency.
In terms of privacy, this single update alone was probably the biggest Apple ever introduced in years.
The iPhone-maker released the privacy update following a campaign against the feature led by advertising-reliant companies like Facebook.
Apple is able to go full throttle because Apple generates most of its revenue through hardware sales, not ads.
Google on the other hand, is an advertising company. This is why the company cannot par with Apple in terms of blocking trackers.
This is also why the company said that the Privacy Sandbox on Android is a multi-year initiative to build. Google is taking baby steps, one step at a time.
Read: To Be Tracked Or Not? Starting IOS 14.5, Apple Gives Users The Choice