Google didn't update any privacy policies in this article. It is about background collection of location data when location services was disabled that has since stopped. Meanwhile, Apple continues to collect your location data in the background with no way to disable it.
> why would bad privacy policies on iPhone make me feel better about Google spying on me?
Because you're saying that Google is uniquely deceptive on privacy when the main competitor is provably worse.
> Google was forced to respond and change their policies after public backlash.
As I showed, Apple still hasn't changed its policies on WiFi collection. Responding to privacy concerns is better than not responding to privacy concerns by any definition.
It is possible for multiple companies to be bad at the same things.
It's surprising enough that articles were written about it, and Google had to clarify its privacy policy to explain it.[0] It is not intuitive or natural to a normal user to believe that location data will be stored when they have a permission entitled "location" turned off. That's deceptive on Google's part, plain and simple.
On that note, I don't really care what Apple does, why would bad privacy policies on iPhone make me feel better about Google spying on me?
> That's how Gmail was marketed when it launched. Ads were shown based on the contents of emails. Everybody knew this.
Literally the next comment alongside yours is someone who didn't know this.
> If you mean the Street View vans collect WiFi SSIDs, Apple does exactly the same.
Yes, that's what I mean[1], and, again, who cares whether or not Apple does the same? We're supposed to believe this was totally expected behavior that was entirely fine, which is why Google was forced to respond and change their policies after public backlash.
Why do people do this? Why do people look at public, documented controversies and say, "there wasn't a controversy, everyone was OK with it"? This stuff isn't public knowledge, or else it wouldn't be newsworthy.
I've written about this pattern in the past[2], but I'm not going to rehash it in detail here. The short version is that every privacy accusation is denied vigorously until the story breaks that it's actually real. And then suddenly the conversation shifts and those privacy violations were all public knowledge and the controversy was overblown and nobody smart was ever surprised by them. People are paranoid until it's proven they're not, and then they're accused of over-reacting.
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16684818/google-location...
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/may/15/google-ad...
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21778234