Google announced plans to limit advertisement tracking on its Android operating system running on billions of devices, a sensitive privacy issue that Apple has already moved to address on its iPhones.

Reports suggest that, tech giants are under growing pressure to better balance privacy and ad-targeting, as users complain and regulators threaten tougher rules but the companies themselves try to maintain access to the precious data helping them earn billions in ad revenue.

Apple has about 50 percent of the US smartphone market while Google's Android software is used on roughly 85 percent of smartphones globally. Any changes to Android could therefore impact the data from billions of users.

At present, the internet search giant assigns an identity to Android-powered devices, which enables advertisers to have a profile of people's online habits and thus send them ads they might be interested in, according to the reports.

“Our goal is to develop effective and privacy enhancing advertising solutions, where users know their information is protected, and developers and businesses have the tools to succeed on mobile" says Google.

Graham Mudd, Meta's, vice president says, “encouraging to see this long-term, collaborative approach to privacy-protective personalized advertising from Google.”

Rob Enderle says, “Google has a number of ways around (tracking). They are monitoring so much of what you do, and control so much of what goes on in the web search environment.”

“Tracking is much more important to Facebook than it is to Google,” adds Enderle.

According to the reports, Apple’s tweak has sent ripples through the tech world, with Facebook parent Meta saying it expects that policy to cost the social media giant $10 billion in lost revenue this year.

A heavy impact is expected because less data will impact the precision of the ads Meta and other companies can sell, and thus their price, as per the reports.