Google has rolled out an update for its iOS YouTube app for the first time in over two months. The tech giant has provided a bug fix to its YouTube app on iOS, the first update to a major iOS app from Google since December. There’s been speculation that Google wants to avoid Apple’s new privacy labels by not providing updates to its iOS versions of Gmail, Photos, Docs, and Search. However, Google has explicitly denied these speculations.
According to a report from The Verge, the company had last month said via a blog post that it would add the labels to its apps when updates become available. It said, “As Google’s iOS apps are updated with new features or to fix bugs, you’ll see updates to our app page listings that include the new App Privacy Details. These labels represent the maximum categories of data that could be collected—meaning if you use every available feature and service in the app.”
Google further added, “The data you provide to Google products delivers helpful services to users, and users can always control your privacy settings by visiting their Google Account or going directly to the Google products you use on iOS.”
Apple Launched Privacy Labels in December
Apple iOS 14 allows users to view or watch videos from YouTube or other sites web/applications in a floating or movable window. To do this, a user simply needed to press a small icon at the top-left corner of the screen. However, after a month, users reported that the recent change in iOS code has suppressed the procedure that YouTube used to remove the picture-in-picture function.
On December 14, Apple launched new privacy labels for the App Store, which require companies to apply the privacy labels to their iOS apps before they can update their existing iOS apps. Notably, some of Google’s other apps like Authenticator, Classroom, Stadia, and Translate have already received iOS updates.
