According to an update to an antitrust case, Google has teamed up with Facebook to go past Apple's privacy safeguards in Safari to keep tracking end-users, and the search engine is also doing everything it can to stifle other privacy-related legislative activities.

AppleInsider indicates that a coalition of attorneys general filed a complaint against Google in December 2020, accusing the company of "engaging in market collusion to rig auctions."

While the complaint primarily focuses on a contract between Google and Facebook to collaborate rather than compete in the internet advertising market, an update accuses the two digital behemoths of attempting to undermine Apple's efforts to preserve its users' privacy.

The amended complaint, which was first reported by The Register on October 22, builds on the initial claim in certain respects, indicating more ways that Google may have attempted to violate user privacy.

The complaint, according to Google and Facebook “have been cooperating to improve Facebook's ability to recognize users using browsers with blocked cookies on Apple devices, as well as on Apple's Safari browser, thereby circumventing one Big Tech company's efforts to compete by offering users better privacy”.

It’s said that, under the lawsuit, this was motivated by the two companies' tight collaboration and integration of their SDKs, hence, Google can pass Facebook data for user ID cookie matching."

"They also collaborated to harm publishers through the adoption of Unified Pricing guidelines", the report continues.

Apple's products, including Safari, have several privacy protection features, such as Intelligent Tracking Protection 2.0, which was released in 2018.

The method required websites to ask users for tracking permissions on an opt-in basis, with cookies being purged 30 days after the user stops visiting relevant sites and widgets and embeds being tracked independently.

A privacy report in Safari for macOS Big Sur gave users information on whether websites include trackers and how many trackers were prevented from profiling them over the course of 30 days.