Google’s most popular iPhone apps have gone by weeks without mandatory privacy labels or updates

Three weeks after Google She promised that she would add An apple Mandatory app privacy labels “As soon as this week,” none of the company’s main apps contain the labels, including Gmail, Search, Pictures, Docs, and YouTube.

it was there some questions About whether Google isn’t intentionally updating its apps to avoid the labels, so I searched every Google app in the iOS App Store to see if updates were coming.

Some have: 12 apps that now have iOS privacy ratings, though they might not be as recognizable as YouTube or Gmail:

• Stadia
• Google translator
• Google Authenticator
• Google Play Movies & TV
• Google Classroom
• Google Viber
• Google Fiber TV
• OS wear
• Onduo for diabetes
• Baseline for the project
• Google Smart Lock
• Animated Images – GIF, Collage

By clicking on the privacy stickers, it makes sense. Some apps, like Google Authenticator, don’t capture much information, while Google Translate and Classroom have a huge list of privacy notices.

Again, this does not necessarily mean that Google is taking the pictures All From that information once you open the app. The privacy sticker only displays all the things that are included in the app May Capture depending on the features you use. And while you may have to scroll a little bit through the list, Nothing like Facebook The list is seemingly endless.

However, there are some anomalies. “Motion Stills – GIF, Collage” is an app that hasn’t been updated in three years, however it does have privacy labels. It’s probably fair to say that this wasn’t the app we had in mind when Google promised it would start rolling it out.

Apple launched these privacy labels on December 14th, and companies like Google can no longer update their apps unless they add these privacy labels first. So when some people noticed that Google stopped updating their apps, They speculated that it might be to avoid having to admit The amount of data that she was collecting.

Google has denied this, though Says TechCrunch He did not block updates and is committed to adding stickers when those updates are ready. The company repeated this promise In a privacy-focused blog post On January 12:

As Google’s iOS apps are updating with new features or bug fixes, you’ll see updates to our app page listings that include new app privacy details. These labels represent the maximum number of categories of data that can be collected – meaning if you use every available feature and service in the app.

They are trading. It’s not clear when Google will update its most popular apps – the ones that are likely to absorb the most user data, however.