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Comment by spenvo | Hacker News Reader

Check out this infographic that illustrates the frequency of Google app updates before and after December 8 https://twitter.com/Thomasbcn/status/1356645088697454596

After seeing that, one can not help but to assume that 1.) the lack of updates are related to the privacy label deadline and 2.) that most of its apps are in need of bug fixes and aren’t receiving those updates.

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Wow that is wild.

Whilst interesting, that graph does need each app split out a bit more clearly-while it’s clear that none of them have updated since the cutoff, it would be best to be able to see each apps release cadence beforehand.

I agree. It is clear that Google has paused app releases due to this but this graphic obscures how abnormal this is for any individual app. There are 13 apps in that graph and it appears that there are usually a handful a week. So on average they are only updating monthly anyways.

So a 2 month break is just skipping a release (or two) for most apps which isn't a huge break in bugfixes.

The telling thing is that all apps suddenly stopped updating at the same time. And it's still going.

Ars Technica dug into the release history data, and it's just not possible to pretend this isn't a major break with Google's normal update cadence.

In the same period during which they stopped updating the iOS version of Google search, they updated the Android version 27 times.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/google-flags-its-ios...

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