Google Photos now stores 4 trillion photos and videos for more than a billion users. Even millions of iPhone, iPad and Mac users prefer it to Apple’s alternative—better search, more features, cheaper storage (at least until June 1). But if you're among them, Google’s latest data harvesting admission and its continued block on a key Apple privacy measure should serve as a serious warning that it’s now time to switch.
After another week where it’s Facebook’s data harvesting that has made headlines, with disingenuous App Tracking Transparency notifications and Signal posting a brutal reminder as to the invasive nature of the data held on us, let’s not forget that Google is a much bigger data empire forged from the digital marketing gold rush.
After an awkward delay, Google has now filed privacy labels for all its major apps on Apple’s App Store—including Google Photos. And just like Gmail and Chrome and Maps, Google Photos presents a stark contrast to its Apple equivalent.
Apple Photos Vs Google Photos
As ever, the sheer scope of data that Google Photos says it might collect is stark. Google stresses that “App Privacy labels show all possible data that could be collected, but the actual data collected depends on the specific features a person decides to use.” So, for example, “we’ll collect contact info if you want to share your photos and videos with others, or if you decide to purchase a photo book, we’ll collect your payment information and store your purchase history. But this data wouldn’t be collected if you chose not to share photos or make a purchase.”
This is important. And it explains why there are seeming oddities like purchase history and payment information that might be collected by a photos app. Google also points out that iCloud is the storage platform behind Apple’s Photos app, whereas Google Photos offers storage as well as its other features.
But there is a fundamentally different approach to privacy here as well—and ultimately it comes down to trust. Apple sets out to put user privacy first, it has become one of the company’s unique selling points. And that’s credible because Apple is a product company. If you don’t buy its devices and services, it doesn’t make money.
Google is very different. It makes most of its money by selling access to you by showing you ads. And the more tailored and targeted those ads are, the more likely you are to respond and buy, and the more money Google can charge its customers to show you those ads. Everything we’re now talking about as regards privacy flows back to that simple premise. That’s why Safari blocks trackers whereas Chrome is trialing its convoluted, flawed FLoC solution to maintain its targeted ad machine.
As Google explains, “if you watch videos about baking on YouTube, you may see more ads that relate to baking as you browse the web. We also may use your IP address to determine your approximate location, so that we can serve you ads for a nearby pizza delivery service if you search for ‘pizza’.”
That all seems fairly harmless, but the profiles that companies like Google and Facebook can build on each of us is much more granular than this. Each datapoint enables an advertiser to specific the audience it wants to reach. And while we all like Pizza, the same data analytics can be used to influence our opinions and tailor our social media streams to ensure that we live within our own echo chambers, keeping us engaged and online for longer, selling us more stuff and shaping our points of view.
Every app, every platform, every service that fuels these profiles simply exacerbates this situation. And so, while Google and Facebook will emphasize that the stark privacy labels associated with their apps enhances their services and our user experience, it also ensures that the $100 billion-plus in ad revenues keep flowing.
And so, you can form a view. You can ask yourself whether it’s a coincidence that Google and Facebook have privacy labels that are so out of kilter with Apple’s, that it’s simply a consequence of how those apps work, of you can “follow the money.” Google and Facebook make their revenue from digital advertising, while Apple makes its own from selling devices and a services ecosystem. The math isn't complicated here.
There’s a little twist with these privacy labels. They differentiate between “data linked to you” and “data not linked to you.” If data is not linked, it enables a developer to hone its services, to manage its performance, to track characteristics of its usage, even to look at the locations where its app might be in use. If that data is linked, then the developer can tie each of those data fields back to you, feeding its profile on you.
Apple Photos Vs Google Photos
With Apple’s and Google’s photo apps, the difference with such unlinked data is just as stark. While Apple could do better here as well, the only data that Google does not link back to your identity is the diagnostics behind app crashes. Think that through.
Google Photos is a complex platform, and there are reasons that users might need to share information with Google to enjoy its full functionally. But remember, there’s a philosophy at play here. If we look at Chrome, Google’s dominant browser, you’ll see that same pattern—too much data, all linked to identities, nothing unlinked. And it’s much harder to argue that Chrome is fundamentally different to Safari (and the others) in the way the company angles the differences between photos apps.
Chrome Vs Rivals
And so, it really does come down to trust. Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai has assured that “we don’t use information in apps where you primarily store personal content—such as Gmail, Drive, Calendar and Photos—for advertising purposes, period.” But, even if we ignore that advertising/marketing is on Google Photos’ privacy label, advertising is complex, and it doesn’t need to be directly linked to a specific activity to fuel a profile from which hyper-scale data harvesters can derive staggering value.
Google argues that Apple has a unique vantage point with its own users, pulling data from different sources. But Google pushes its users, on Apple devices as elsewhere, to set up Google accounts, which means it has a means to store its own unifying data repository for Apple users in the same way as it can on its own Android OS.
If you are an Apple user with Google Photos on one of your devices, then here are three further thoughts to keep in mind—assuming the privacy labels don’t convince you to consider switching to an alternative, despite all those extra features.
First, there’s a serious difference in how Apple and Google analyze your photos to enable categorization, maps and search. Apple’s Photo App “uses machine learning to organize photos right on your device. So, you don’t need to share them with Apple or anyone else.” What that means is that the analytics is not done on iCloud’s servers, unlike competing cloud-based photo services, including Google’s.
Analyzing all those photos, all that metadata, is of course just more raw information to feed the all-important, all-encompassing algorithms. That analysis fuels the targeted ads, drives influenced clicks, builds up the profile, and enables Google and others to analyze you among millions of others, categorizing you with AI, to infer what it can assume about your likely behaviors and the likely behaviors of others.
Apple warns that “some services process photos in the cloud, which gives them access to your photos. But we designed Photos to process your images directly on your Mac, iPhone and iPad. In fact, the Apple Neural Engine with the A13 and A14 Bionic chips performs over 100 billion operations per photo to recognize faces and places without ever leaving your device. And when apps request access to your photos, you can share just the images you want—not your entire library.”
That last point in another swipe at Google, leading to the second critical consideration for any iPhone user with Google Photos on their phone. When Apple released iOS 14 last year, it gave users the option to share only selected photos and videos with apps, rather than their entire collection. Why should an app have access to years of memories, when all you want to do is edit a few photos or videos?
Well, Google doesn’t buy into this limitation when it comes to iPhone users. When you install Google Photos you will receive a message telling you that “Google Photos needs access to all your photos.” It says this is to view, share or use its optional backups. But from a privacy perspective the message is much clearer. All or nothing, and you’re shifting all that data out of Apple’s privacy-first enclave to someplace else.
New installation message
Always have that data collection and analysis philosophy in mind—which brings me to the third consideration. When you use Google photos, then many of your images will contain hidden data, embedded into the files, that discloses the time and exact location the photo was taken, the device you were using, even the camera settings. Google admits it pulls this so-called EXIF data into its analytics machine.
“We do use EXIF location data to improve users’ experience in the app,” I was told by a company spokesperson, “for example we might use EXIF information to surface a trip in our Memories feature or suggest a photo book from a recent trip.”
That last point is advertising, in case that’s not obvious. Facebook has admitted the same to me in the past. Even if you tell your phone not to share your location with Facebook, even if you go into your Facebook’s settings and disable location sharing, then the company will still “collect and process” your EXIF location data.
It’s remarkably simple if you “follow the money” to work out the transactional relationships you’re entering into, in return for all the “free” services you use. If you’re not paying for the product, then you clearly are the product. it really is that simple. And so, when Facebook seems to suggest it may charge users for its apps where they block tracking on their Apple devices, you are being put in your place.
And so, while Google Photos has more features than Apple’s alternatives, make sure you understand the trade-offs. Above all, though, bear in mind that if we don’t opt for apps and platforms that genuinely put privacy first, then we send a message to big tech that we won’t really change our ways, that they can harvest at will.
This year is proving to be a pivotal one for privacy—I’m not sure your data is any safer or your privacy is any better protected in general, at least not yet, but at least you now have the information you need to make informed choices. Now it’s over to you.
