Privacy is now coming to the forefront of all tech which has, over the past two decades, leveraged privacy to make billions of dollars collecting and selling user data. Now that the public, and the government (to an extent) has caught up, many tech companies are pivoting before regulations take control. Apple, with its most recent iOS update now indicates what data each app you download on your iPhone collects. Google, per the article is now disabling tracking of user browsing history. The question is: Is this just Google shifting our focus? It seems that with AI and their thoroughly developed algorithms, Google can now glean the same insights that they were collecting from user web tracking. The majority of Google revenue comes from selling ads, so I don't see that changing for a company that makes over $160B in annual revenue. How they do it may change, but isn't the issue using consumers data that they collect (for free) and selling it? How they do it, in a sense, becomes irrelevant because it still invades on consumers privacy. Not surprisingly, Facebook has taken the opposite approach and spun these recent decisions by Apple and Google as hurting small businesses (which I highly doubt Facebook really cares about). The next few years will be interesting as we are forced to have a more honest conversation on privacy and the revenue these tech behemoths generate by exploiting it.
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