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Message on an Android smartphone: Google wants to change its business model as little as possible

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Torsten Kleinz / DER SPIEGEL

Anyone who opens a service like Google Maps in the browser or the Google Play Store on an Android smartphone these days will probably be confronted with a message: "Some Google services are not linked."

Many users will probably have little use for this approach. We explain what it's about.

Why does the message appear now?

The background to the new user query is the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which came into force in Europe at the beginning of March. The law is intended to make it more difficult for large IT platforms to exploit their key position on the Internet for their own advantage. An essential part of the new regulation is that providers such as Google, but also the Facebook group Meta or Microsoft should no longer be able to easily exchange user data between their various services.

The idea behind it: Smaller but possibly more innovative companies find it difficult to gain a foothold in the market due to current practice. Because many users shy away from setting up a new account when they can use an existing account. With their billions in profits, IT companies have also been able to buy up many competitors in the past and integrate their products into their own services.

The new pop-up shows: Google has no plans to stop sharing data between different apps and services. Instead, users should give the IT group a free ticket.

Do I have to decide immediately?

No. You can simply put the question back and Google will send another reminder after three days. If you want, you can also access the settings at a time of your own choosing using this link.

What if I don't want to link services?

Everyone is free to refuse to link different offers. However, this can lead to a certain loss of comfort. In the past few weeks, many users have noticed that it was no longer as easy as before to access Google Maps from Google Search.

To what extent this is actually in line with the new EU laws is questionable. At the beginning of the week, the EU Commission expressed its disappointment with the implementation of the new rules by some companies and initiated several investigations: the companies are suspected of continuing to give undue preference to their own offers. If they do not bring their offers into line with the DMA, they face high fines.

Why does Google want to link data?

For the group, collecting and evaluating data is the central business principle. In particular, the group benefits from creating very precise advertising profiles from the use of various services. For example, if Google knows a person's exact route to work thanks to the navigation function in Google Maps, advertisers can recommend nearby stores. And those who search for car brands can be targeted for lucrative advertising from car manufacturers and insurance companies.

Apparently the group is not prohibited from continuing to provide users with convenient offers. The company points out in its help section that it is possible to exchange necessary data between different services even if approval is not available. As an example, Google cites the Gmail service, which can access the contact data stored in the Google account, and the Google Play Store, which uses payment data stored with Google.

The group has found a different solution for the movement profiles. Instead of saving them preset on Google servers, they are now saved directly on devices such as smartphones. Users can then decide whether there should be a backup copy online, which should then be distributed to different devices.

If you are concerned about your own privacy, you can completely deactivate the storage of movement data, Google searches or YouTube playlists in the account settings.

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