Facebook revenue declined sharply since its access to iPhone data has been restricted by Apple on account of change in its privacy rules. There is anti-trust scrutiny of Facebook around the world. There is a decline in the user base. Still Facebook attributed its likelihood to miss the target of $10 billion in ad revenues due to changes initiated by Apple Advertisers who find that their ads had become less effective. Even Google which also sells personalised ads on iPhones gets unfair advantage — allege Facebook. Facebook has to seek consent of the iPhone users for being tracked, but Googles search results and browser do not have to. Thus some ad budgets shift to Google for more effective targeting.

Google has already decided not to use iPhone users data where permission has to be sought. Google does not depend on third party data as Facebook does, since Google runs its own operating system Android and its own ad exchanges.

While doing Google search too, consumers leave behind valuable data which is enough to do effective advertising across Google-owned properties. That is an incentive to advertisers to prefer Google as the media.

Facebook finds it difficult to show whether the ads on its platform lead to sales and thus makes the platform less valuable. It lacks the conversion data. It makes real-time decision-making difficult.

Google banned cross-site tracking through its safari browser since 2017, and that was extended to third-party search engines. As an alternative it offers Duck Duck Go for search in Safari.

Facebook’s criticism of Apple and Google may attract more scrutiny from regulators.

Facebook alleges Google faces a different set of restrictions from Apple. It implies Apple is lenient towards Google since it uses Google as default search browser and Google pays Apple for this.