Google vs Apple: Whose Privacy Policy Is Better?

Apple has made privacy a central part of its brand identity. "Privacy is a fundamental human right," says the homepage. Google, meanwhile, runs one of the largest advertising businesses in human history — a business built on knowing what people search for, watch, and think about.

The question is how much reality matches the marketing. We've analysed both companies' privacy policies in depth. Here's what the documents actually say.

The business model difference

Start here, because it explains almost everything else.

Google's core revenue is advertising. In 2024, Google's advertising revenue was over $200 billion. That revenue is generated by knowing who users are, what they're interested in, and when they're ready to buy. Collecting user data isn't a side effect of Google's business — it is the business.

Apple's revenue is primarily hardware, software subscriptions, and the App Store. Apple does run an advertising platform (App Store search ads and the wider Apple Ads network), but it's a fraction of their business. Apple can afford to offer stronger privacy protections because they don't rely on surveillance-based advertising as their primary revenue source.

This structural difference shapes everything that follows.

Data collection

Google collects:

• Everything you search for across all Google services
• Your location history across all your devices
• Watch history on YouTube
• Email content in Gmail (for product features, not human review)
• Browsing history via Chrome sync and the Google advertising network on third-party sites
• Voice recordings from Google Assistant
• App usage data from Android devices

Apple collects:

• Account information (Apple ID, email, payment details)
• Device usage data — limited by default, not linked to your Apple ID for advertising
• Siri requests — processed on-device where possible, with a strict opt-in for voice data storage
• App Store usage and purchase history
• Location for services like Maps and Find My — not used for advertising profiles

The structural difference is significant. Google builds detailed profiles across all its services and correlates them. Apple processes much more data on-device and does not correlate app usage data across services for advertising.

Data sharing

Google shares data with advertisers through its advertising ecosystem. While Google doesn't sell individual user profiles to third parties, the effect of its advertising product is that advertisers can target users based on highly specific behavioural signals. The data doesn't leave Google, but the targeting it enables is functionally equivalent to a detailed data handoff.

Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT), introduced in iOS 14.5, requires apps to ask your permission before tracking you across apps and websites. Since its introduction, the majority of users have declined cross-app tracking. This didn't help your privacy with Apple itself, but it significantly reduced third-party tracking on iPhone.

Apple does share data with third-party service providers, but restricts them from using it for independent purposes — the standard "service provider" constraint that most privacy-respecting companies apply.

Your rights and controls

Google offers:

• A comprehensive dashboard at myaccount.google.com showing collected data
• Auto-delete settings for location history, activity, and YouTube history
• The ability to download all your data (Takeout)
• Ad personalisation controls (though these don't stop data collection)

Apple offers:

• A privacy nutrition label for all App Store apps
• App Tracking Transparency prompts
• On-device processing for Siri, Face ID, and Photos ML
• A data download request via privacy.apple.com
• Fewer controls needed, because less data is centralised

Our scores

In our analyses:

• Google scores 26/100 — grade D. The scale of its cross-service data collection and advertising use is the dominant factor.
• Apple scores 78/100 — grade B+. On-device processing, limited advertising data use, and explicit user controls distinguish it clearly from Google.

Apple's privacy marketing is, in this case, largely accurate. The company's business model genuinely aligns with stronger privacy practices. Google's practices are not malicious — they're the rational result of running an advertising business at scale — but they represent a fundamentally different relationship with user data.

The practical difference

If you use Google services (Gmail, Search, Maps, Chrome, YouTube, Android), you're participating in a data relationship that builds a detailed profile of your interests, behaviour, and location. Google's controls let you view and delete that data, but they don't stop it being collected in the first place.

If you use Apple's ecosystem and take advantage of its privacy features, significantly less data about you is centralised and available for advertising use. The trade-off is paying more for hardware and being locked into Apple's ecosystem.

Neither company has a perfect privacy record. But on the basis of their privacy policies, their business models, and their product choices, the gap between them is real and substantial.

Compare them directly in our Google vs Apple comparison tool, or read the full analyses: Google and Apple.