Google plans to adopt new privacy restrictions to curtail tracking across apps on Android smartphones, following Apple Inc.
AAPL,
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
FB,
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
GOOG,
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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