Developers usually pause app updates over the December holidays and resume working on them in early January. Google behaved like that this year. However, the lack of new iOS releases continued for nearly the entire month, which was odd. App updates didn’t resume until yesterday and today.
Some people speculate that Google wanted to avoid Apple’s App Privacy label, and that was the reason for the lack of updates. As of December 8, the lawmakers require developers to list their privacy practices, as well as the report about how they handle data directly on the App Store. However, Google released two apps (Slides and homework helper Socratic) about a week after that deadline without reporting.
On two occasions, the company reiterated that it would add privacy labels to all of its applications will the release of new versions. In fact, Google plans to add disclosures without app updates.
As the tech giant updates its iOS apps with new features or fixes bugs, users will see updates to their app page listings that include the new App Privacy Details. That label shows maximum categories of data that the company could collect if you use every available service and feature in the app.
However, the company’s update cadence has been significantly delayed in 2021. A former Google employee wrote on Twitter how the tech giant opts to go into code freeze mid-Dec until the first full week of January. This practice is useful as it ensures that services remain stable. During the holiday period, new updates may cause uproar as there might not be many engineers on-hand to fix problems. However, while other iOS developers have returned to their normal cadence later, Android updates resumed early in January.
When did Google release first updates?
It took the company almost three weeks to release the first updates. On Thursday, the Google Fiber client became the first app to see an update since mid-December. Today Play Movies & TV followed it, with both seeing performance improvements and bug fixes.
On Thursday, Google Translate also went through a bigger update that allows people to continuously translate someone speaking a different language in almost real-time. The feature is ideal for translating lectures and speeches. It was first introduced on Android.
Apps like YouTube and Google (Search) that previously got updates weekly have yet to be refreshed. Gmail, Maps, and Photos are also still to refresh.
Chrome 88 for Android and Mac/Windows/Linux got updates last Tuesday, but that version has yet to arrive on iOS.
