Following today’s news (February 16) of Google’s plan to introduce a multi-year privacy protection initiative for its Android operating system;

Tammy Parker, Principal Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers her view:

“The writing is on the wall for the targeted advertising industry, as privacy advocates’ concerns are finally being heard and acted upon through a mix of regulation and the industry’s own nascent efforts. Nonetheless, it remains to be seen how Google’s proposed changes will come together—especially as Google tries to delicately balance privacy demands with the needs of advertisers, who drive its advertising-based business model.

“Google’s extension of its Privacy Sandbox effort to Android follows Apple’s introduction last year of the App Tracking Transparency feature, which restricts advertisers from accessing an iPhone user identifier, impairing their ability to track and target users. Google now also expects to eliminate the advertising ID-tracking feature in Android, but it will do so in a phased approach with no definitive timeline.

“Meta, and others involved in the targeted ad industry, appear much more supportive of Google’s approach, which is a temptation in the form of promised industry collaboration to find privacy-protecting marketing solutions that everyone can live with. Google also aims to be less disruptive than Apple, pledging to support existing ads platform features for at least two years, which may be two years too long for some privacy advocates.

“Apple took more of a scorched-earth approach with its privacy efforts, going it alone—as it often does—and drastically impacting the entire digital ad ecosystem. Meta has cited privacy changes Apple made to its iOS operating system as the reason Meta will see a $10 billion drop in advertising sales this year.

“However, Google’s efforts to ‘have its cake and eat it too’ (by improving both mobile and web privacy while seeking to enable advertisers, publishers, developers and others to continue engaging in limited though apparently still targeted advertising) could end up pleasing no one, with privacy advocates likely to cast a raised eyebrow at any advertising solutions deemed to fall short of protecting consumers.”