I wonder how many privacy policy changes Google got away with by discretely sending emails over the years and/or showing popups with overwhelming text that no one would bother reading and click <i>Agree</i> because they simply wanted to get something else done immediately (like read emails or use navigation).<p>In a way, the current hysteria is a lesson in the power of <i>defaults</i> [0]. If the default for an app/service was <i>private and secure</i> and later you make the "mistake" of <i>clearly articulating</i> that you're going to be less private... it is going to end up a PR disaster. But... if you confuse masses along the way with large privacy policies (or other such dark patterns), you may get away with it as has happened many times in the past (Windows 10 being a recent example).<p>That's the reason Facebook and others are opposed to Apple because Apple's stance on being <i>private by default</i> will hurt them: Any data hungry app / service is going to have a hard time if it needs to show notices in plain language asking permissions to harness PII [1].<p>In a nutshell, what we are seeing with WhatsApp is may be why Google will never <i>default to private</i> with Android. Whilst Google may throw the technological kitchen sink at the privacy problem; at its core, it remains a design problem: How much do you respect your user's Right to Privacy by choosing the right defaults from the get-go, how simple do you design your UX around it?<p>Despite Apple's own privacy issues, you can't fault them for seeing a pretty good first solution to all of this: A 3-line popup.<p>[0] <a href="https://stratechery.com/2021/new-defaults/" rel="nofollow">https://stratechery.com/2021/new-defaults/</a><p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25654504" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25654504</a>