The Wall Street Journal: Google to curtail cross-app tracking on Android phones

Google plans to adopt new privacy restrictions to curtail tracking across apps on Android smartphones, following Apple Inc.
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 in putting restraints on an advertising industry that has covertly collected data across billions of mobile devices.

Google’s plans for Android could hasten an end to more than a decade of advertising practices across smartphones in which companies including Meta Platforms Inc.’s
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Facebook layered their code into hundreds of thousands of apps to track consumer behavior.

Apple’s changes, which went into effect last year, have already upended the digital-ad industry and contributed to a wipeout of more than $300 billion from Meta’s market value.

Google
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said Wednesday that it plans to develop more privacy-focused replacements for the alphanumeric identifiers associated with individual smartphones that some apps use to gather and share information about users.

An expanded version of this article appears on WSJ.com.

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