Another day, another antitrust investigation into a tech giant. This time, it’s Apple: Germany’s competition watchdog on Tuesday announced a new investigation into Apple’s anti-tracking technology, which the company launched last year.
Bundeskartellamt’s investigation focused primarily on Apple’s App Tracking Transparency Framework (or ATT for short). For those unfamiliar, ATT is the set of rules that Apple rolled out as part of iOS 14 that requires third-party app developers to ask permission to track users who download their apps – And when those users say no, ATT shuts down these apps’ access to a bunch of valuable user data. You can recognize this by the small window that pops up asking you if you want to give an app access to your personal information, and you can “Ask the app not to be tracked” or “Allow” Can answer with
Bundeskartelmutt president Andreas Mundt said on Tuesday that “a corporation like Apple that is in a position to unilaterally set rules for its ecosystem, especially for its app store, should create competitive rules.”
Apple likes to brand itself as the privacy protector who bravely stands up to the countless other tech firms that slather your data and do… well, whatever they want with it. Case in point: “Privacy has always been at the heart of our products and features,” an Apple spokesperson said while responding to the German investigation. Naturally, the same companies were outraged when ATT arrived. Perhaps most incensing was Facebook, which said earlier this year that this single update would cost an estimated US$10 ($14) billion in targeted ad sales. Snapchat’s CEO, Evan Spiegel, recently produced a less-than-stellar quarter for his company, even ATT. Twitter and Pinterest stock those two companies once the update is rolled out.
iOS users continue to opt out in record numbers, tech firms continue to sweat, and Apple continues to campaign flashy about its privacy-preserving products. So what’s the matter?
According to the complaint of the Bundeskartelmt, there are some. For one thing, ATT doesn’t exclude iOS owners from Apple’s own tracking of their behavior on their devices. Also, Apple is introducing its own pay-to-play advertising products — such as ads at the top of your App Store search results — that are micro-targeted with data that is now unavailable to other advertisers. An analyst recently estimated that Apple’s advertising business, which is already worth US$2 billion ($3) billion, could grow 10 times by 2025.
Taken together, some operators in the edtech space have called ATT “an obvious market grab”. The apparent need for user privacy may have been a factor driving the move, but ultimately, commercial factors — such as growing its new advertising business — were the real motivators, he said.
Now, it looks like German regulators may agree. “We have reason to suspect that this is the case when we see that Apple’s rules apply to third parties, but not to Apple,” Mund said.
This latest investigation on ATT follows similar investigations from competition authorities in France, the UK and Poland on the same.
We have contacted Apple for comment regarding the matter. In a statement to TechCrunch, a company spokesperson had this to offer:
At Apple, we believe that a user’s data is theirs and that they should decide whether or not to share their data and with whom. We’ve long believed in the power of advertising to connect businesses with customers – and that you can have great ads with great privacy. App Tracking Transparency (ATT) simply gives users the choice of whether they want to allow apps to track them or share their information with data brokers. ATT does not prevent companies from advertising or restrict their use of first-party data received from users with their consent.
These rules apply equally to all developers – including Apple – and we have received strong support for this feature from regulators and privacy advocates. Apple maintains a higher privacy standard than almost any other company by giving users a positive choice of whether or not they would like personalized advertising at all.
We will continue to engage constructively with FCOs to address any questions they may have and discuss how our approach fosters competition and choice while protecting users’ privacy and security.
Personalized or otherwise, it seems Apple is doing everything it can to entice advertisers — and their dollars — away from other tech giants. Given that these European competition authorities are more concerned with preventing monopolies than by shielding user data, there is a chance that Apple’s arguments about privacy protections could fall on deaf ears.
