Written by Prof. Rom Feria
Apple’s iOS/iPadOS 14 is getting Facebook scared of losing ad revenues and warns its advertisers about it (I am not linking to the actual Facebook post). Facebook is trying to make it look like it is a bad thing to reduce the reach of its tracking. Note that this is not a new iOS/iPadOS feature — it is just Apple informing the users what ad trackers were blocked by the operating system. Frankly, if you have Pi-hole.net on your network, you will see the URLs that are being blocked whilst using the current iOS 13.6.1. Advertisers should have read the writing on the wall already — that targeted ads, using an AdTech company, like Facebook and Google, are not that effective with more and more users installing blockers or using VPN services with built-in tracker blockers. Unfortunately, this is one iOS/iPadOS feature that will not be available on Android — unless you use LineageOS.org or GrapheneOS.org — well, it can appear, but I am sure only non-Google trackers will be blocked!
Privacy-centric search on iOS 14
It is very well documented that Apple is getting billions from Google to make Google Search the default. Whilst I prefer that Apple makes this user-configurable when the device is first activated, similar to how Google did it in the EU (minus the bidding for placement), I always make sure that I select DuckDuckgo.com as my default.
Using Spotlight to search is a different matter, as I have not found a way to by-pass the default search engine Spotlight uses. It used to default to Bing, but I think it is back to Google. However, iOS14 seems to be different (I have not tried examining it yet) as per Jon Henshaw’s article, “Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine to compete against Google Search”. And it is true that Apple has a bot crawling the web, and it is even documented on the Apple website at About Applebot. Is this Tim Cook putting money where his mouth is by investing on their own search engine to displace Google search and risk not getting the billions of dollars, in favor of privacy?
Similar to how Apple remove Google Maps and replaced it with their own, privacy-centric, Apple Maps, replacing the most popular and largest search engine with a new one from Apple, not even from established search engines such as DuckDuckGo, will definitely be painful to swallow. However, I am sure that there is a strategy there somewhere — maybe something like Apple’s own instance of the open source search engine results aggregator, Searx, enhanced by their own Applebot.
Apple owning the search engine makes the target at their back even more prominent to regulators! I am hoping that Apple will make it user-configurable on device activation. Something like select your default search engine, select your default web browser, select your default mail client, and select your default map software, which is similar to Android’s search engine selection in the EU.