Apple makes staggering claim about Google Android online tracking
Top Apple executives labeled Google’s Android platform “a massive tracking device,” according to a disclosure.
The accusation was included in a slide in a presentation that Eddy Cue sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook in an internal email in 2013. The anti-Android allegation is part of an ongoing antitrust case against Google over its dominance of the search engine market, which has been under at least some threat from Microsoft Bing since it began integrating OpenAI models into the market.
The lawsuit found that Google spent a whopping $26.3 billion in 2021 (via The edge) to be the default search engine, handing out money to several competing companies, including Apple.
Apple vs Android privacy
Another slide in the same presentation, posted by US Department of Justicethat edited some of the content compares the two companies and clearly favors Apple for its ability to support different accounts for iCloud, the App Store and the iTunes Store.
The presentation also calls out other major tech companies for their privacy shortcomings, including Facebook for tracking users regardless of whether they have logged out, Google for recording private Wi-Fi communications, Amazon for routing Kindle browser traffic through its own servers, Twitter for collecting iPhone user data without consent, and Instagram for revealing plans to use photos posted on the platform in its advertisements.
It also compares individual services, such as their respective voice assistants, maps and advertisements.
The ten-week trial against Google includes testimony from Google executives and others outside the company, including the aforementioned from Apple.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta is unlikely to rule before early 2024. At that time, it will be decided whether Google broke the law to gain a dominant position in the search engines.
In the event that the court rules against Google, the punishment will likely not be based on a financial penalty, but rather on orders imposed on the company that will affect its position as the largest search engine, which currently stands at more than nine in ten , could seriously harm. 10 searches online (via Statcounter).